Gotta learn when to stay down. Never get in the way of two girls fighting. I learned that the hard way. I was very, very young and my two middle sisters were having a heated argument at the top of the stairs in our house. I, as a mere innocent 6 year old, wanted to pass by and go down the stairs (I’m sure to watch TV or something). Well, pushing started and they fell down the stairs… on top of me. My little head bounced up and down on each step, just like in the cartoons. We reached the bottom and naturally the wind is knocked out of me; having been the surf board for two older girls on a set of hardwood steps. The next phrase has gone done in my family’s history: “Oh my God… I’ve killed him!” Now, naturally, my Mother was taking a crap and nearly killed herself getting her pants pulled up as she raced out of the bathroom. I started breathing and the beatings began for my sisters. I don’t remember much of the fall, my head still hurts to this day. Explains a LOT about me…
From 1975’s “Physical Graffiti”, “Trampled Under Foot” is one of those songs that I cannot understand a single lyric. I get the chorus, but Plant might as well be speaking Martian, as I don’t get a single word. Had to read the lyric sheet to get the gist of the song. I’m like that with a lot of songs.
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Discussion (42) ¬
This is getting surreal. No, wait – it’s getting *real*. Though I’ve never seen two drummers fight it out with flying sticks. Very Stephen Chow of you 😀
Fourth panel is totally mega!
We’ll have to see where those flying sticks end up… hmmm…
Shaolin Drummer!
What were the girls doing? Using the drumsticks as flying knives or darts/jarts?
I’ve been hit by many a drum stick in my day (I’m an annoying little prick at times…) and I figured, hey, what would two drummers use to fight? Fists? Nope. Ninja drum sticks…
🙂
my favourite drummer joke:
during band rehearsals, the guitarist breaks a couple of strings. so he says to the drummer, “hey, can you go grab me a new set of strings from the music store across the street?” … drummer says sure, and goes out.
he enters a store, walks up to the counter and asks the guy for a set of guitar strings. the dude behind the counter squints and says, “yer the drummer, aren’tcha?” … drummer replies “yeah! how’d you guess?” …
guy behind the counter says “because this is a butcher shop, you dumbass”.
*boomboom!*
told to me by a very talented drummer, no less.
–dee!
Okay, let the drummer jokes begin… there are a TON of them…
How do you get a drummer to leave? Pay for the pizza… (as in the drummer is a pizza delivery person…)
Something tells me ol’ Rich ain’t gonna be feeling “On top of the world, looking down on Creation” come the next strip…
Most certainly not…
Why do birds suddenly appear every time you are near?
Because we’re cartoon characters and you keep hitting me in the head, bitch!
Ooh, ooh-ooh-oooooh…. head, bitch….
NICE! Made my day on that one! Needed it too as it’s really frakkin’ cold here near Chicago and we had this damn snow/ice mixture yesterday that’s a real pain in the butt.
So, bring on the Carpenter songs parodies… all together now…
In that particular song, Robert Plant is, apparently, talking about love.
That’s all I ever got out of his lyrics… I’m such a lyric nerd. Never get them right, nor do I really get the “true meaning” of songs. I’m one of those blokes that needs to be hit upside the head with a nice strong 2×4 to get a “message” to sink in.
🙂
Check out the 33.3 book about Led Zeppelin 4. Written by pop-culture guru Erik Davis, it packs tons of meaning, trivia and behind-the-scenes gossip (and production details) about that album into one short, fun book that’s as pregnant with mystical potential as the album itself.
By the way, I read in some article about Zeppelin that John Bonham or John Paul Jones (I forget which one) came up with the staggered tempo of “Trampled Under Foot” in order to “make at least one song those stupid hippies can’t dance to.” He failed, incidentally. I’ve seen folks dance to it anyway.
I’d heard that they structured the song that way so it wouldn’t be danceable, but not whose idea it was. I’d never had any desire to dance to the song before, but once I heard the story it became a challenge, so now whenever I hear it (except on the car radio, of course) I have to try.
I shall now look up that book, Satyrblade… perhaps I can get it for Christmas… I love trivia like that..
Then you must be dancing a lot today, Makkabee, as I’ve got the song playing as I’m reading all these comments…
I go away for a couple hours and BAM! Look at all the stuff you guys posted! Cool!
🙂
Staggered tempo? Bonham should have refrained from thumping away at eight beats to the bar then, ‘cos he drowned out whatever “stagger” was there. I never heard a less ambiguous 4/4 off-the-shelf rhythm.
Bah. This comes nowhere near such classics of obscured lyrics as “Tumblin’ Dice”.
For true lyric incomprehensibility you have to go a long way to beat the late, great John Martyn, who was an accoustic guitar player mostly. I recommend “Solid Air”, from the album coincidentally titled “Solid Air”. He once confessed on stage that even he couldn’t make out what was being sung at times.
J.M. wrote “May You Never” which has been covered by gawdnoze how many artists, and which is on the same album. It’s almost perfect “smoking mixture” music too. Very laid back and unexpectedly accomplished. I saw him do “I’d Rather Be The Devil”, a song with a closing coda that makes heavy use of fast arpeggios played against an echoplex, with no monitors, playing by feel since he couldn’t hear an accurate rendition of what he was playing, only the final, multiply echoed result which was about a quarter second behind his fingering, and he made no mistakes. A jaw-dropper. That song is also on “Solid Air”.
I dunno if I wanna know what happened to those sticks. 🙂
LOL! Me too… Sometimes things are best left to the imagination. Toon in Friday to find out!
🙂
Yeah dee, good one!! Another one I heard: “What do Drummers use for birth control? Their personalities!” (Altho I’ve heard the same joke used for Bass Players, too…) I do have to admit tho – I was always envious of drummers like Karen, who could sing and play at the same time – something that I never mastered (not that I have a great singing voice to start with), but she actually was one of the better ones, and even tho admittedly she didn’t do anything very complex, was a pretty fair drummer, too. Full-time lead singing drummers were actually more prevalent in the 60’s – the music tended to be less complicated & there were several pop groups that had lead singing drummers like Gary Lewis of GL & the Playboys, Dave Clark of the DC 5, Mickey Dolenz of the Monkees, & Dennis Yost of the Classics IV. Besides the better-knowns like Ringo (more as a solo artist), Phil Collins, & Don Henley, my favorite 60’s & 70’s lead singing drummers were Levon Helm of The Band, Buddy Miles of Tribe of Gypsies (with Jimi Hendrix), Pete Rivera of Rare Earth, and even tho they weren’t full-time lead vocalists, Peter Criss of KISS, Roger Taylor of Queen, Kevin Godley of 10cc, Jim Capaldi of Traffic, and session drummer Jim Gordon who played with absolutely everybody, but was best known for his work in Derek & the Dominos (he co-wrote “Layla” with Eric Clapton).
I once saw Metallica play a concert where James Hetfeild admitted he was too hung over to sing and play decently at the same time. Who sang lead on most of the songs? Lars Ulrich – while drumming! He did a pretty decent job of it, too, and they still played for over 2 1/2 hours. Say what you will about Metallica, the dudes are total pros.
Personally, I think Peter Criss had the best rock-n-roll voice in KISS. Paul Stanley has the better pipes, but Criss’ bluesy rasp really makes tracks like “Black Diamond,” “Baby Driver” and “Hard Luck Woman” (and manages to salvage lamer songs like “Hooligan”). His signiture song may have been “Beth,” but if he’d been the lead singer rather than the drummer, KISS would have rocked far harder than they did.
Keith Moon did a bit of singing too, but was uncharacteristically restrained when he did. I found his solo album somewhat disappointing, partly for that reason.
Now here’s a man after my own heart… choke FULL of musical trivia… I love this shit! Very cool, stuff, man! Now this, like some many other musical tid-bits, are tucked away in my aging gray matter of a brain…
As a bass player, I can say first hand my personality lead to many a night sleeping alone after a gig. Yep, bassists are almost the butt of as many jokes as drummers. At least we have that going for us…
Also, I can’t sing a single damn note… great speaking voice… terrible singer. But I can whistle a tune. They say if you can whistle, you can sing (the brain can handle carrying a tune, etc.) I break that rule… you do NOT want to hear me sing… ever.
🙂
Okay, another tale about the drummer who threw his kit at the singer (referred to earlier this week):
Said drummer was, as I mentioned before, a devout Christian. He never drank, never drugged, and never cursed(*). He did, however, beat the living hell out of his drumkit on a regular basis – so much so that I nicknamed him “Wood Shop” because of the splinters I saw flying off his sticks during a gig. So…
Here we are, bashing our way through rehersal. Suddenly, the drummer stops. We all train-wreck to a halt. Turn around to face him. His own face is going red. His fists clench the drumsticks. Then we see why. The 14″ crash-ride cymbal is split from end to end. Now, those buggers are expensive. It’s one thing to replace sticks and drumheads, quite another to replace a quality cymbal. Drummer looks ready to blow. What’s gonna happen?
We all stand in silent fascination. He gets redder and redder. Finally, he clenches his face. “Ohhhhhhh…” he growls. We’re waiting for it… “Awwwwwww – DURN!!!”
We lose it. Totally. Literally laugh so hard we can’t breathe and wind up on the floor, gasping for air.
This just makes him madder, of course. Fortunatly, he used to practice in his garage. There’s a punching bag in one corner. He gets up, strides over to the bag, and beats the living shit out of it.
Never piss off the drummer. It’s a really bad idea.
(For Iron Maiden fans, there’s a great track called “Message From Harry” on the bonus disc of the two-disc edition of Seventh Son of a Seventh Son. It’s not a song – it’s a recording of a backstage argument between drummer Nicko McBrain and band leader/ bassist Steve Harris, aka Harry. A non-stop barrage of working-class Brit profanity, it reveals that McBrain had gone off at a roadie who’d been trying to get a message – from Harry – to McBrain during his drum solo. After the gig, Harris tries to calm McBrain down and explain what happened. Nicko is having none of it, and unleashes the funniest cascade of heavily-accented obscenity this side of vintage Richard Pryor. Finally, one of the guys noticed that the tape is running. “Some cunt’s recording this,” he says as the track abruptly ends.)
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* Said drummer is serious about his conservative brand of Christianity. When Rob Halford finally came out of the closet, our drummer – a devoted Judas Priest fan – actually considered getting rid of his Priest albums because he didn’t want “gay music” in his collection. The last straw between him and me occurred after we’d had an argument about gay rights. Sadly, neither of us was able to reconcile our position with the other one’s perspective, and when the singer wanted me out of the band, the drummer agreed. He and I kinda patched things up years later, but I can’t honestly say we were ever friends again after that. As I heard it, he decided to keep his Judas Priest albums after all, but has refused to see or support the band again since then. Weird. Like I said the other day, only in rock-n-roll…
What do you suppose will happen when he finds out about Queen? :-p
nicko mcbrain is effing hilarious to listen to. i really liked all his “listen with nicko!” commentary tracks on the singles collection. they were a scream to listen to !!! very funny guy.
–dee!
Great story, thanks for sharing!
I’m taking posts like these an putting them into a little Word document (which is now not so small) and may someday do something with them. They’re great stories attached to the songs/comic of that day. Hmmm….
🙂
PS: Byron, your facial expressions really rock this episode. Great work!
Thanks… been working on all of that…
It’s odd, I started 1977 out to be a cartoony world with simple characters and simple “joke of the day” format… Now look what I’ve done! I’m digging it more this way, and seems I’ve got a few folks along for the ride too!
😀
How come your obviously guilt ridden sisters don’t support you now and comment on your life’s work or at least buy a calendar for xmas?
Oh, God, my sister’s read a comic strip? One of the keeps up on it, but is not the “post a comment” type. I’m the out-going one in the family and the one that got into the most trouble… typical guy. Also remember, they lived through these years and have heard the stories, so this is old hat to them.
(But, I never licked a Mystical Frog…) 😉
At what point does some character yell “Quit it! You’ll put someone’s eye out?”
Knowing where the other sticks ended up, I don’t think Richard has to worry about his eyes…
🙂
nice comic, but I really enjoyed that story about you and your sisters, LOL. I once pushed my little sister down the stairs in a laundry basket, telling her it’d be like a roller coaster ride. whoops. More like Slinky-Sister.
Ah, I had many of those “experiments” that my older sisters “performed” on me… where I got sent flying down something, ended up crashing and burning, then got told “Don’t tell Mom, here’s a quarter…” I was easily bought off back then…
🙂
When I was maybe 4 years old I fell down the stairs. My oldest brother found me bawling at the foot of the stairs and very kindly offered to throw me back up.
Much as it pains me to give him credit for anything, he did what he set out to do — after he said that I was too busy laughing to keep crying.
I like this,but The carpenters are my guilty musical secret passion.
Well, ABBA is mine… so we’re even… 🙂 I may poke a drum stick or two at the largest Swedish export since the Volvo…
🙂
I LOVE ‘Trampled Under Foot’! My favorite memory of Zeppelin songs was when our band used to cover ‘The Wanton Song’. My singer never learned the words to it! He just warbled through it and the crowds never new it! Lol, hell, I never really noticed either until he told me. Good times man, good times. 🙂