From Bad to...

...not quite as bad.

Tommy Lee is the New Drummer for Smashing Pumpkins

Reasons to be thankful

• PUBLICITY - Billy will be happy, his ego will be stoked as the band becomes a talking point again
• Tommy Lee is better than Mike Bryne
• It’s a new direction for the band
• Tommy Lee is definitely not a destructive human being

Reasons to be disapointed

• He might be better than Mike, but not by a lot

To get into it a little more - Motely Crue have some fucking awful music.  It is dreadful.  Really. It is. And Tommy Lee isn't that good. People like show-off drummers I guess.  

Based on my very limited knowledge, and it is rather limited, in terms of drumming style I can only guess Corgan heard in Lee’s limited phrasing - echoes of those kind of parts Chamberlin wrote which lean towards complementing the melodic leads of the music. But unfortunately he also seems to share some of the same over-indulgent, abrasive and tasteless fills that our old pal Byrne was so fond of.  I don’t know if he fucks up quite as often though. I image not...

Still - this move is a good one for the band though. I think. Maybe.

Well, it’s something different at least.  Billy has at least seen sense to hire a drummer who can do a specific job > a drummer who can sit in for a certain style of record.  Chamberlin’s skill set was so broad and is so strong in so many areas (which afforded the band the ability to flit across genre’s with ease) that it was fucking stupid of Corgan to think he could get in someone to replace Jimmy like for like.  What he got was a Jimmy clone, but without the skill to reach each end of the spectrum or the vision and/or ability to be able to lift the band beyond the mediocrity of his drumming.

It makes sense that if the band (re: Belly) wants to put out a “rock” album – he get an ‘experienced’ 'rock' (hair metal?) drummer to sit in. He might not be the best. He might be more show than ability – but if you can’t get one of the true greats who are able to go across genre’s with ease to join the band – better have someone that is ['good' at what they do] than middle of the road. Right? Get someone to embody that aspect of Chamberlin (or as Billy will put it the Smashing Pumpkins) and another drummer to embody another and so on and so forth... oh and ot also helps that he’s a name. Oh boy does it help. 

But anyway, the good thing is, even though he appears to be a terrible person and a rather shitty drummer, he at least has the potential to make the next album sound different. Which is good for SP from my point of view.  It’s all I hoped for in a new drummer following Jimmy.  The lazy rehash of the old tropes on Oceania was a corporate and safe album.  The opposite of what the band has been.  Billy said it himself.  It was too nicey-nicey.   

Anyway, I haven’t heard quite enough of Tommy Lee’s drumming to pin down what his style is per-se, but the good thing is his style certainly isn’t “trying to copy Jimmy Chamberlin, but failing” and that is something we should be thankful for.  I don’t think us drummers will get anything to write home about in terms of interesting parts or shows of technical skill – but what we shouldn’t get is something that sounds lacklustre and best and embarrassingly amateur at worst.

Don't get me wrong I do sort of think the band I once worshipped has become an absolute joke - but I guess I'm still holding on to a tiny shred of hope that once again Corgan will make something that I enjoy.

How can someone who once had one of the greatest drummers of all time in his band, keep hiring shit ones... meh

Sorry for the opinion piece. But whatevs. It is what it is.

You Know the Score...

Who is the Greatest Drummer of All Time? Slightly rhetroical if you're reading this here I guess - but I it also appears the readers of Consequence of Sound have equally discerning taste in music.  Naturally Chamberlin stolls in the top 16 Drummers of All Time in their recent readers poll - but will he be voted to the number one spot...

http://consequenceofsound.net/2014/05/whos-the-greatest-drummer-of-all-time-round-one/full-post/

Cory Chisel + Jimmy Chamberlin

Turn down your speakers...

Jimmy Chamberlin News (Weekly Round-Up)

As promised - here's some stuff > 

1.  Frank Catalano says that the shows him and Jimmy played in Chicago earlier this year have been filmed and not only that but him Jimmy are going back to the studio (doink) to record even more new music. 

2. As part of CIMMFEST - Jimmy will be appearing on a panel entitled "Live Streaming: From Consumption to Cache" on Saturday, May 3rd at 1:30 - 3:00PM (murica Time).  One presumes the panel itself will be live-streamed somewhere, though I can't see mention of it on the festival page.  Anyway,  this is in addition to Chamberlin's performance in his new band "Mary Shelly" and their scoring of the classic Battleship Potempkin.

3. In contrast Jimmy gives Tyson Meade's track Dusty Come Up for Air some old school bombast.  Chamberlin features on 3 of the forthcoming album's 10 tracks.

4. The day you have all been waiting for is here; Jimmy will be heading down to Vic's Drum Shop on the 23rd of April to celebrate REMO-DAY!

And lastly,   following the disappointment that the most recent Smashing Pumpkins' announcement wasn't the triumphant return of Jimmy to his throne  - in a series of rambling and vague posts, it has become apparent that Billy Corgan is using drum machines to write the parts for the next "Smashing Pumpkins" album.  Here's hoping this 'new' (re: old) approach to demoing yields more interesting results than those of Oceania- "Hey Mike, try and play like Jimmy might ok?"

Frank and Jim 'do some Jazz' (April 14)

Weekly Round-Up

Corgan Announces Plans to Finish Teagarden

Today Billy Corgan announced that his recent announcement about the forthcoming Smashing Pumpkin (version 4) albums will put the Teagarden era out of its misery.   Corgan explains that  “The whole concept of Teargarden seemed like a good idea at the time but when I didn’t get a rapturous response to what I even stated were, C-Pile (at best) songs - I realised this was the fault of the fans who were living in the pass. So, I’m going to wrap-up the era with the absolute opposite of the original conceit (releasing 1 song every 2-3 weeks to stand on their own merit) by producing two more “traditional (in the absolutely ground-breaking sense obviously) self-contained albums”. He went on to explain that the recent rumours that he had fired Mike Byrne were, in fact, true;   “[I] made the same misjudgement as I did with Matt Walker, I tried to make Byrne play like Jimmy Chamberlin. Well, turns out he can. Just not very well. But let me be clear here - It’s not that I was wrong about how good he was, it’s just my shaman told me to do it.” Byrne has been replaced by original Smashing Pumpkins drummer, Yamaha RY30.

Update: “Teargarden:  The Tears Burnz” will be delayed until 2017.



Byrne Announces New Musical Venture

Following his recent spilt from Smashing Pumpkins, Mike Byrne has announce a series of musical concerts based on a critically lauded animated series of films by acclaimed director Kirk De Micco. Following Art tea-House (re: art-school-student-esque) performances of Siddhartha by Billy Krogan and an upcoming live musical performance of the Battleship Potemkin by Jimmy Chamberlain, Burn stated in an interview that “yeah, man, although like I’ve been in Pumpkins and stuff like that, I’m not really that content with only having copied the drum style of Chamberlin.  What I’m really keen on doing is reproducing his and Billy’s other artistic ideas also; to that end I’ve designed a series of 7 concert suites around what I think is widely considered as one of the greatest animated films of all time, Space Chimps 2”

We were told by Byrne’s publicist that he was unable to commend on the spilt from Smashing Pumpkins due to “contractual obligations” but sources close to Mikey reportid that when the subject is broached “he just goes into a bit of a daze, repeating the phrase ‘empty party afternoons’ over and over”.