First things first - grab your transcription here.
I fear there’s no offramp from aggravating some members of my audience for whom expletives are a deal-breaker. The best I can promise is not to use them superfluously.
With that said, is your drumming bullshit?
Is mine?
A couple of things inspired me to make this video. First was the interesting fact that some drumming of undeniable technical merit can elicit yawns and eye-rolls, whereas other drumming of manifestly lower technical prowess can inspire.
All of which got me thinking about musical…”validity”, for lack of a better word. And the central paradox that art is subjective, and yet we practice to move toward something.
What is that “something”, and is it possible to be better or worse at it?
In other words, in a world where art is subjective and arbitrary, is it nonetheless possible to be full of shit?
Ultimately, I conclude, yes. Though not necessarily for the reason we’d think. For practically every musical performance someone somewhere thinks is transcendent, somebody else somewhere else finds it intolerably boring.
But is there a difference between “in the eye of the beholder”, and “just bullshit”.
i.e. is there a bigger gap between Aretha Franklin and a “bad” American Idol contestant than between a pop star some love and others hate, and an analogous country music star.
If this seems trivial or philosophical, it’s not.
Because if it’s not possible to be bullshit, then every one of us who’s practicing on the daily should immediately stop this affront to our free time and family time, and just “be authentically us” every time we play, even if that means committing some of the “cardinal sins of bullshit”, like not knowing what we’re missing, having a gap between our authentic selves and the performance, and trying to impress.
But if we can situate bullshit on a continuum of artistic validity, there’s something to practice for. And it’s almost circular. Maybe through our practice we instantiate that continuum.
In any case, I leave you to be the judge.
Enjoy!