Guitar Center Drum-Off ‘08 Announced
July 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment
That’s right, thumpers. Time to whip your sticks in shape and woodshed the shit out of your best solo: Guitar Center’s annual Drum-Off is back! Here are the sign-up details straight from the press release:
Sign-ups for the preliminary rounds of the Drum-Off competition begin August 1, and run on a “first-come, first-serve” basis, with a maximum of 30 registrants per store. Contestants must sign up with a Guitar Center drum department associate at their local store—no phone or Internet sign-ups are available.
Local competitions start September 23 in all 214 Guitar Center locations from nationwide. One winner from each store will be chosen to move up to district competitions (24 locations), followed by regionally hosted semi-finals (6 locations) and culminating in the final championship Drum-Off in Los Angeles in January of 2009 (exact date and venue TBD).
COMPETITION DATES
STORE PRELIMS: September 23, September 30, and October 7
STORE FINALS: October 14
DISTRICT FINALS: November 4
REGIONAL FINALS: December 2
GRAND FINALS: January 2009
Roots Drummer Has New Shoes
July 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment
And you can have them too. We’ve kinda bagged on drummers in the past for sticking their names to a clothing line, but ?uestlove, aka Mr. Chillacious, can do no wrong as far as we’re concerned. His Nike signature shoes are the kind of ugly that goes in a circle and somehow miraculously becomes cool. Pick up a pair in New York tomorrow for $175.
Abe Cunningham Fills Us In…
July 31, 2008 | Leave a Comment
…Well, not us specifically, but anyone who peruses The Deftones’s blog. Here’s the straight poop about the band’s upcoming album:
Hey all, we’re almost finished tracking our record up here at The Spot and we’ll head up to Terry’s studio in Seattle next month to add the final touches and begin mixing. We’re all excited about how this record is taking shape, and can’t wait to share it with all of you! In the meantime, we want to let our friends in the Phoenix area know that we’ll be headlining KUPD’s End of Summer Scorcher Sept 20th in Peoria, AZ with our good friends Alice In Chains. Tickets go on sale this Saturday, AUG 2nd at all local AZ Club Tattoo locations. They’ll also be available online beginning Monday, AUG 4th via Tickets.com. Check it out at KUPD.com.
[via Rhythm]
Vadrum vs. Tenacious D
July 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Aww yeah, a new Vadrum video! And this time it’s doubly freakin’ sweet because Jack Black is in it.
[via Meinl’s blog]
Travis Barker Talks X Games
July 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment
We promise this isn’t a site devoted solely to his Travness, but dude is constantly in the news lately. He recently spoke with Metromix Los Angeles about the X Games and his future drumming plans. Surprise, surprise: Blink-182 ain’t much in the cards.
You know, to be honest with you, I haven’t spoken to Tom [DeLonge] in five years. I speak to Mark [Hoppus] every day, he’s one of my greatest friends, so…that’s the status of that. I think everyone would have to be friends, and I think we’d all have to want to do it in order for it to happen.
[via The Most Useless Blog Ever]
Best Buy to Sell Drum Sets
July 29, 2008 | 1 Comment
It’s official: the independent store for musical instruments is effectively dead.
Best Buy will be joining Guitar Center as one of the planet’s largest retailers of gear, including drum kits. By the end of the year, Best Buy plans to have as many as 85 music centers inside its stores. According to the Associated Press:
Each site will use about 2,500 square feet of retail space and include roughly 1,000 different products with well-known brand names such as Fender, Gibson, Drum Workshop and Roland….[D]rum kits will retail for as much as $5,000.
Tommy Lee’s Battleground Earth…
July 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment
…might actually be funny, at least if the commercial below is any indication.
Damn. That means we really were a bunch of dicks (or so at least one un-fan told us) for slagging it off a few months ago. We’ll be checking it out August 3 on Discovery’s Planet Green. So should you.
Travis Barker in The Game’s “Dope Boys” Video
July 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment
We posted a studio vid of this song a month ago, but now the real deal is out. And, yep, Barker is definitely banging Zildjian’s Pitch Blacks.
Muxtape of the Month: August 2008
July 28, 2008 | 1 Comment
It’s not quite August yet, but we couldn’t wait to get up our new Muxtape for your listening pleasure. It includes some of the best drumtastic tunes we’ve been jamming lately, as well as some miscellaneous songs that simply make us want to run naked through laundromats (always the litmus test for aural pleasure, eh?). A Muxtape is FREE to make or listen to, but it’s limited to 12 tracks, so we’ll be changing them throughout the month to feature new music. Here’s what’s playing now:
August Muxtape
- Our favorite new drum song is “If You Fear Dying” from Jon Theodore’s new band, One Day As a Lion.
- Stanton Moore’s “(Late Night at the) Maple Leaf”. The groove is ridiculously great, and the drum breaks starting around 3:55 are HOT.
- Steve Gadd doing downtempo with Sunlightsquare. Very chill.
- “Graveyard Girl” from M83. We love the rawness of the drumming.
- “Improv Jam” from Pnuma Trio features great live electronica drumming. Stupid good.
- Tower of Power…don’t got to say anything else.
- When Buddy Miles played his last paradiddle a few months ago, we were shamefully unfamiliar with his work. That’s no longer the case because Brandi has been playing “Spot on the Wall” nonstop.
- This Keller Williams tune doesn’t have a lick of drums, but his guitar playing is wonderfully percussive. Plus the lyrics are funny as fuck.
Updated Muxtape as of 8/10/08:
- Wally Schnalle, “I Hear You”
- Josh Dion Band, “Bedroom Eyes”
- One Day As a Lion, “If You Fear Dying”
- Stanton Moore, “(Late Night at the) Maple Leaf”
- Sunlight Square, “From the Cosmos”
- M8, “Graveyard Girl”
- Pnuma Trio, “Improv Jam”
- Tower of Power, “Can’t You See (You Doin’ Me Wrong)”
- Buddy Miles Express, “Spot on the Wall”
- Keller Williams, “Restraint”
Lenny White’s Signature Stick
July 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Every Tom, Dick, and Travis has a signature stick these days, so it’s about time living-legend Lenny White got one too. With an appropriately white shaft, his Vic Firth signature whacker is 16″ long and has a .580″ diameter, which is somewhere between a 5A and a 5B for those of us who don’t speak metric too well.
Vic Firth has also posted some really interesting vids of Lenny jawing about drums and drumming here. There’s even a classic live clip of Return to Forever from 1976.
[via DRUM! Magazine]
