music, personal

Picking the proper facial expression for your drum solo

I see three basic options:

1. The Neil Peart “Just doing my job” look:

2. The Terry Bozzio “I’m passing a kidney stone” look:

UPDATE: I have no idea what causes someone to disable embedding on a YouTube video. If it’s violating copyright, why isn’t it taken down? So anyway, here’s the link to the Bozzio video.

3. The Mike Mangini “This is FUN, dammit!” look:

And if you want to see a drum solo I actually played once upon a time (no, it’s not me in the video), check this out:

In my senior recital, I actually nailed the section starting at 2:22, which surprised me so much that I botched a couple of notes in the marimba solo that followed. Which is bad, because no one would’ve had any idea if I’d missed something in this one.

And for the record, since Duke had no timpani mutes, I used some gym socks.

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2 thoughts on “Picking the proper facial expression for your drum solo

  1. It’s a shame that Terry’s solo video isn’t available anymore. I hope you downloaded it before some jerk decided to take it away.

  2. I played timpani in the Davidson College Wind Ensemble for four years. I am delighted to report that no audio-visual record survives.

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