Every once in a while I turn to my wife and say, “Do you think I should have been a _______?” The blank always contains some sort of job description or avocation that strikes me as sexy but for which I have no obvious talent; the question is usually precipitated by something I have seen on TV or YouTube. “Do you think maybe I should have been a big-wave surfer?” “Do you think maybe I should get deep into the amateur mycology subculture?” “When I retire, should I coach pole-vaulting?” “If we can’t pay for the kids’ college tuitions, should I try to make some money playing online poker?”
You can imagine how the conversation goes from there.
But there is one pipe dream that I think isn’t crazy, or isn’t quite as crazy as all the others. I think I could have been a decent rock drummer. I have a good sense of rhythm, pretty good arm strength, and a strong work ethic. Also, I really revere rock drummers. My eyes drift over the head of the lead singer, behind the guitarist and bassist, and to the drum kit. I could imagine working my ass off to do justice to their tradition. If working hard counts, maybe I coulda been a contender.
I dig Charlie Watts more than I dig Keith Richards. My favorite member of The Band is obviously Levon Helm (also a lead singer, of course). Phil Collins is more interesting to me because of his past as a drummer. Not long ago, I had the privilege of seeing a taping of The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, and let me tell you, seeing ?uestlove behind his kit is a thing of beauty. I already knew that, from what I had seen on the web, in videos like this—
—but it’s even truer in person.
My favorite drummer right now is Sarah Jones, who drums for Harry Styles. I don’t understand exactly what makes her so great—I know nothing about drumming—but watch this (I recommend starting at 5:12 for the sublime “Watermelon Sugar”)—
or this (try 1:23-1:33)—
—and just tell me she’s not the bomb. I mean, she’s the bomb, right?
The main problem with my dream of being a drummer is that I’m not very musical. Or at least, I have always been told I’m not very musical, because I can’t sing on key, and if you can’t sing on key, you’re told you “don’t have a good ear for music.” But I have always felt that I understood music reasonably well. Not as well as my friends who are truly talented—and I am blessed with a lot of musically talented friends—but pretty well nonetheless. I can hear when something is off in a performance, when an instrument or someone else’s voice is off—off key, or off tempo. I also know when stuff is going right: I’ve often, in my life, heard an obscure song or band and said, “They’re going to be huge,” and been right. And music moves me. I feel I get it, and it gets me.
(Which is probably true of most people, if they give music a chance.)
(Interlude: I am sitting in Irving Farm coffee shop in Millerton, N.Y., as I type, and a person just walked in with her dog. When did it become accepted for people to bring medium-size, non-service-dogs into coffee shops? I love dogs—and I have two of them—but I never consented to this, especially in restaurants. I don’t think any of us did.)
Okay, back to the music. It turns out that just because I can’t sing doesn’t mean I am not musical. Says who? Says the Montreal Battery of Evaluation of Amusia (MBEA), a test developed by Isabelle Peretz. I learned about it reading This Is What It Sounds Like, a terrific new book about why we like the music we do. The book talks about how some people like novelty in music, others innovation; some people are more orientated to rhythm, others melody; etc. The main author, Susan Rogers, is a former sound engineer for Prince, and she draws examples from the world of pop, rock, funk, techno, classical, etc., and it’s a lot of fun to read about certain songs, then call them up on one’s phone, play them, read a little more, etc. Just a super-fun book. (Here’s an interview with the author.) And at one point she mentions the MBEA test for musicality and for its lack, which is called amusia. (How is that for a great word?)
I found the online home of the test, and I took it. And it turns out that I can tell when a note is played wrong, and when a rhythm gets screwed up, and when a melody is off … in fact, when it comes to listening to music and understanding what’s going on, I am in the 61st percentile of all who have taken the test. Not Jascha Heifetz–level musicality, but not too shabby, as Adam Sandler would sing.
All of which is to say that maybe I could have played an instrument. I do, in fact, have rhythm. Maybe I could have drummed. Maybe.
Do I think I could have been a serious rock drummer? One with a career? Well … maybe not. I’ve been a music fan long enough to know that the great drummers, like the great singers, guitarists, etc., are usually omni-gifted: they can sing, they can play other instruments, etc. They are great at the drums in part because they could have been great at anything. So, yeah, I guess I should keep my day job.
But I definitely play a credible air drums.
Thank you, veterans
It’s Memorial Day, and there were flags were out at the roundabout (technically a “peanut”) near my house. I don’t know who put them in the ground, but I am grateful. They made me think of the origins of the day, made me remember it’s more than a day for shopping and attending cookouts (two thinks I happily did today). When I was giving a lot of talks about the podcast Gatecrashers, I would often say that schools like Yale and Harvard used to prepare young men to serve God (through the nineteenth century), then they prepared them to serve the country (through about 1965, give or take), and today they prepare them to … be plutocrats? found dot-coms? “consult”? I am conflicted about patriotism; part of me holds with the (possibly apocryphal) saying from Yeshayahu Leibowitz that a “flag is a rag on a pole” (sometimes rendered as a “a shmatte on a stick”), but part of me also remembers that if we don’t stand for something, we’ll fall for anything. And standing for America is something.
Let’s remember those who died.