On the Beat

Clearly, there is no way that I could let Topper Headon talking to the BBC about the health benefits of playing the drums unmentioned.

By the way, the tune to which he is drumming during the interview - you can hear the voices but the drum track has been silenced - is Tommy Gun. See, I can recognise tunes even when they are silent. (It has quite a specific rhythm - easy to identify!)

(Thanks to andrewducker for spotting this.)

Apropos of nothing other than the fact that I am going through a really big Duke Ellington phase at the moment - I was listening to the Vaughn Williams' prom but the beat just wasn't there (so I'm recording for when I am in a more classical frame of mind) - and I just had to listen to the rhythms in Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn's "The Far East Suite" - well, fuck it, such a brilliant piece of music. Jeez - search out Bluebird of Delhi, Isfahan, Mount Harissa, Depk, Amad, and the pure jazz-rock (not an Ellington speciality) of Blue Pepper.

Jeez, it has me dancing.

In last week’s medical column in the Guardian, Doctor Doctor, a reader asked whether it could be harmful to click one’s fingers. The questioner thought it might cause arthritis or something.

This shocked me to the core.

Harmful? To click one’s fingers? Jeez. I’m in trouble.

If you know me well, you’ll know I have a percussive bent. I beat out rhythms, and if I’m not, I’m probably thinking of a rhythm (usually, it is Gil Evans’ arrangement of St Louis Blues.

I click my fingers, I slap my thighs, I click my tongue, I click my teeth (the last probably explaining why for years I have had a dull ache in my molars).

I can actually click all my fingers – all eight of them, rolling from one hand to the other I used to be able to click my toes, but it is easier just to tap my feet – which I do a lot, too.

I click my fingers when I can’t quite grasp the words I am looking for.

I click my fingers in time to music, I click my fingers out of time, setting up opposing rhythms (especially if the music is in 3/4 or 6/8).

I have at times given myself blisters on my thumbs (though that was when I was a hyperactive student dancing through the night – because I click my fingers when I am dancing, too).

The idea that I might actually be causing myself lasting harm through percussive digits is worrying.

Although the doctor did say he thought this was absolutely nothing to worry about.

Hit it!

(And, as an aside, I am shocked at the number of videos on YouTube featuring people clicking their fingers. And there is even a page on WikiHow teaching you how to snap your fingers. Don't these people have better things to do?!)

The man they named a rhythm after has died.

The beat that launched a thousand riffs!

What a shame.

Orwell saw the future as a jackbooted foot stamping on the face of humanity; I saw the future as a fist pumping the beat – a finger snap in time.

Let’s face it; it is not difficult to play the drums. I mean, all you have to do is hit things. What is hard is to play the drums well. But then nobody really notices drummers much; except when they are bad.

( A Slave to the rhythm )

The other day, I switched on the radio, and heard maybe two chords of a guitar-based tune. I turned to my wife and said, “George Thorogood”. Two chords – two beats; and I was right.

This freaked me out a bit; I can’t think when I last heard a record by George Thorogood. I saw them play a couple of times – the Music Machine, I think it was (later, it became the Camden Palace; no idea what it is called now) – but that was thirty years ago.

I have no idea why I recognised his playing. It must have been something in the way he played the chords – the distortion, the timbre of his playing. It was weird.

There are some songs and players I recognise easily: for instance, two drum beats from Springsteen’s Streets Of Philadelphia and I know it (and that is definitely not a favourite tune or anything).

Tunes I know well, I usually recognise quickly.

But I find it strange that I can identify musicians that I haven’t listened to for decades.

The Jam House is a bar cum venue in Edinburgh, allegedly owned by Jools Holland. Still, his visage is all over the place.

I was in there for the first time last week, with a whole bunch of people from work - we were celebrating someone's twenty fifth anniversary with the firm. (This certainly made a change from all the leaving dos we've been having.)

In between very passable bands - though the bands looked older than the audience (which means they looked pretty old!) - there were various quotations and slogans streamed through the light show.

One I really, really liked was: "Dance to a different beat."

I may adopt that one for my journal!