DRUMMER CAFE

A bass player I had a session with about a week ago, Mike Chapman, relayed this funny story:

Drummer Jerry Kroon, while on a Vern Gosdin session, kept being asked to slow the song down.  When Vern asked Jerry to slow it down again, Jerry said, "Hoss, if it gets any slower we're gonna need a calendar instead of a metonome."

When I hear someone struggling with the time/tempo or maintaining a good pocket ... I say that they are suffering from Groovus Interruptus. 

These are good.
I find the put downs some producers use quite amusing......even if they are directed at me.

One funny session I attended.....

I'd played drums on a track and the artist was psyched to invite his buddy a percussionist in to overdub. He was a rasta percussionist named Jah Bunny.
Firstly it was amusing to watch the grammy awarded engineer struggle with his communication skills, oscillating between "Jah" and "Mr Bunny" when using the talkback between control, room and studio.
The next amusing thing was "Jah" used a large assortment of percussion when we played the track down the first time. We all assumed he was improvising, searching for the exact sound for the song.
Two or three takes went down with the same behaviour. No percussion sound seemed good enough to become a 'part' of more than a few bars.
As I left, the engineer was squirming in his seat and "Jah" had given up on hardware percussion completely and was performing vocal percussion into a very expensive mic.

Speaking of producers, bassist Leland Sklar used to have a bass that he installed what he called his "producer switch" on - it was a stock Fender that had an extra 3 way toggle switch and potentiometer knob (like a volume or tone knob) on it and when he would get those requests (could you make it sound more brown?) he'd go through the big show of flipping the switch to a new position and rolling back and forth the tone pot.
Which of course weren't connected to anything, just drilled and stuck on.

I'm always alert to that scam, especially with monitor guys.
If you ask them to change something, level or eq, they will often twiddle some disabled channel.
My solution.......if I can't hear anything changing, I admit it. Better than saying "yeah that's much better" and giving the twiddler the satisfaction of cheating you. 

We call it "throwing clams" or "I only threw a few clams tonight"

"Keep it Green"- means a variety of things.  Usually fresh.

"From  Jump"- the beginning.

"Dig?"- Do you understand.

"Playing white as rice" means what it means I guess, not grooving.

"The Suck Knob"

"Put some poop in it" "Needs some poop"- low end, fatness to tone

I think this is a prize-winning story.
 

At rehearsals for a big band that I've worked with, the leader will pass out a new chart and then say "Tempo di Learn-o" for the first time through. referring to playing at a slower speed for sight reading.