>Every once in a while you have to go over to the drummer and hit
>them in the head with a baseball bat. Shut the fuck up.
Not if it's Hal Blaine (or Charlie Watts):
http://www.molehillgroup.com/hal_blaine.htm
MM: One thing I find is that a lot of drummers just play too much. When do you know when not to play?
HB: Well, you know, that comes with experience, learning that less is more. That one good knock in the right place is worth a million sixteenth notes.
Kids today don't listen. I'm amazed--when I go into a studio today, if I go into a studio that I haven't been playing in for some time, where the guys don't know me, everybody has headsets, and the engineer says to me, "Hal, what do you want in your headsets?" And I say, I just want a little bit of everybody and just a touch of the singer, and no drums. They say, "No drums?" That's right. I don't want any drums in my headset. "Why is that?" Well, I don't have to play with me, I have to play with six or seven or eight guys out there. If everybody listens a little bit to everybody, you'll play together. But these guitar players get in, and they say, "I wanna hear my guitar, turn me up, turn me up"--it's crazy. All of a sudden they're playing with themselves. They're not listening to anybody else.
They just don't make music today the way we used to make music. Now maybe each generation has said that, but it's the truth. There'll never be another golden era like the Sixties and Seventies, part of the Eighties. It has all changed. I mean, you can't understand the lyrics today, these kids screaming. These drummers who are using baseball bats for drumsticks. I mean, it's hysterical.
When guys look at me, when they see the Hal Blaine signature stick, they say, "My goodness, how can you play with that little light stick?" I say, first of all, I got microphones on me. I don't have to play loud. I play what I feel. I play dynamics. Now if they want me playing really heavy, I'll just turn the sticks over and use the butt ends, it really doesn't matter. I don't need the sticks that these guys are using--they're building muscles and they're getting cramps and they're hurting their fingers and they're getting deaf.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a8g0b-RpHE&feature=related