Big Drum Thump

…for a pretty face. The legendary stickman became smitten with a bank clerk, hired her to do some administrative work, bought her a bunch of presents (including a $6,500 diamond ring), and later discovered she’d stolen about 55 grand from his account over an 8-month period. The chick is now facing 27 counts of fraud…not counting, of course, when she told Baker that his solo albums were “totally tolerable.”

No time to waste, thumpers. There’s less than a month left to enter Dixon’s “Drum Your Way to Hollywood” contest. All you have to do is haul ass to your nearest Dixon dealer, have a buddy record you playing your shreddingest 2-minute solo on a Demon kit, and then upload the vid to YouTube. Click on over here for the entry and prize details.

Metal Hammer is reporting that Gil Sharone might be vacating the DEP throne. The band hasn’t confirmed or denied the possibility yet, but if that rumor wasn’t eye-stopping enough for you, then check this one out: Raanen Bozzio, son of none other than uberthumper Terry Bozzio, is at the head of the line to take over Dillinger drumming duties.

We’ll keep you posted as the breakup details become available. Unless we’re busy looking for more pictures of a scantily clad Daisy De La Hoya.

Barker and The Game performed a thumpin’ and bumpin’ version of “Dope Boys” on Jimmy Kimmel’s show last night. Check it out before the vid is yanked down.

But Dr. Zoltan might, and to amusing effect. Here the Doc lets loose about Lars’s latest effort on “The Day That Never Comes”:

Dr. Zoltan estimates that it has been roughly 13,140,000 seconds since a snare drum played by Lars Ulrich sounded correct. Dr. Zoltan also estimates that 13,140,000 amateur musicians in home studios all around the world have had no problem with that basic task. You might expect this sort of thing on a low budget — perhaps with a single Radio Shack microphone stuck in a closet, recorded onto a K-mart tape from 1992, but not considering the unlimited financial resources that Metallica has.

Rather than firing Bob Rock, they should have fired Lars Ulrich. Listen to that hi-hat disaster at 1:13. It is one of those moments where the drummer is not so sure he was supposed to go into that section, and he is ducking under the cymbals and looking around at his bandmates for validation.

At least not anymore. He also doesn’t hate Dave Mustaine, though that’s probably just because MegaDave tends to be so freakin’ ridiculous:

I keep coming back to the statistics, which are interesting: he’s never played on a Metallica record, he was in the band for 10 months, 25 years ago! That’s an amazing statistic when you think about it, and still Metallica is such a prominent part of his existence. That’s just mind-blowing, because he has made some of the best heavy metal records of all time. It blows my mind.