Designed for hard-swingin’ rock and metal drummers, Paiste’s Heavy Full crashes are new additions to the company’s venerable Signature series. The cymbals come with a Reflector finish and in a variety of sizes—16″, 17″, 18″, 19″, 20″, and a whopping 22″. Because Nicko McBrain and Hena Habegger had a hand in the design, you also know the Heavy Fulls can survive a serious whacking. Check out their sound here. [Update 2022: The sound files have been removed from Paiste’s site. Boo.]
Whoa, remember Loudness, Japan’s contribution to ’80s crotch rock? We’d completely forgotten the group even existed until Blabbermouth reported yesterday that drummer Munetaka Higuchi is fighting liver cancer. After finishing up a few gigs this week with a replacement drummer, the band will go on hiatus until Higuchi gets back to stick-wielding shape. We wish him a speedy recovery…and send him and all the Loudness guys a hearty thanks for this side-splitting trip down leather-studded lane:
Clifford Davies, the drummer who played on Nuge’s “Cat Scratch Fever,” was discovered dead Sunday in his Atlanta home. Cause of demise looks to be suicide—a gunshot wound to the head. As always, details are sketchy at this point, but Davies may have been “extremely distraught over money for medical bills.” We’ll keep you updated.
But it’s for an awesome reason: The Smashing Pumpkins are going to be inducted into Hollywood’s RockWalk. Chamberlin and Billy Corgan will be on hand April 23, 2008, to stick their hands in cement outside the Guitar Center on Sunset. They’ll then perform for the lucky bastards who get inside the store. We’re trying to be one of those lucky bastards, but no one is returning our emails. And we even pretended to be from Modern Drummer. Might just have to settle for this.
What exactly is a high-def drum pad? Beats the piss out of us, but we do know that Danny Carey has been playing a Mandala pad forever. That, thumpers, is endorsement enough.
…But if you insist on the details, here are some easy-to-follow bullet points:
Well, it’s actually The Who’s greatest TV hits, but Moonie features in most of them. Our favorite is definitely the band’s legendary appearance on the Smothers Brothers Show in 1967:
Unbeknown to anyone, Keith Moon had bribed a stage-hand with alcohol to pack his bass drum with a surfeit of explosives. As the band ended My Generation with their trademark stage-destruction, the cameras were momentarily blinded by the blast. As the smoke cleared, Moon lay on the floor, his arm sliced open by cymbal shrapnel, Townshend’s hair was on fire and, it is said, his hearing damaged for ever. Waiting in the studio’s wings, Bette Davis fainted in Mickey Rooney’s arms. Naturally, the band was banned from further US shows.
Now, that is rock and fuckin’ roll.
Didn’t have an extra $30,000 to buy Peart’s 30th-anniversary kit from DW? Yeah, we didn’t either, but if you still got a hankering to have some Neil-like gear, don’t give up. AndrewOlson.com has been collecting photos of Peart-inspired setups for almost two years. Some of them might even cost less than a pair of lungs. A sample of some of the cooler kits:
Developed with input from groove dude Flo Dauner, Meinl’s new Fat Hats are 16 inches of B10-alloy loudness. Meinl also describes the sound of the cymbals as low pitched and dark, but we’re still putting our hard-earned sou on that “loud” part.
Newish Yamaha gear, that is. The company pulled the sheets off this stuff in January at NAMM, but sweet bangables usually take a while to get into the hands of us wee consumers.
First up is a new Stage Custom kit in birch. It’s described as Yamaha’s “first mid-priced birch kit,” but in fact it’s Yamaha’s individual reaction to the industry-wide panic precipitated by PDP. Once DW’s younger bro started offering affordable kits in what were once considered premium woods (maple and birch), other manufacturers had to follow along. Even Pearl finally caved in with its Vision series. If you want the best now, Big Drummer Brother tells you to buy bubinga.
Of course, you could just forget the wood altogether and go electronic. Yamaha’s got you covered there too with its redesigned flagship e-kit, the DTXTREME III. It comes in regular and special flavors. Both get you three-zone drum and cymbal pads, over 1,000 onboard sounds, and over 100 MIDI voices. The special edition also comes with Yamaha’s new Hex Rack System. Take a gander below. And as always, stop drooling on the screen.
Not that we’re complaining or anything, but Yahoo!’s finance page is one strange-ass place to post a really good bio of Elvin Jones. And like a good financial report, it’s big on the stats:
Yeah, dude was definitely a slacker.
A family feud between the brothers Zildjian actually created the cymbal company Sabian way back in 1981, and now it looks like another family feud could possibly tear it apart. Bill Zildjian, son of Sabian founder Robert Zildjian, has filed a lawsuit claiming that his father and brother have mismanaged, misdirected, and mishandled millions of dollars in company funds. Unable to sell his shares without dad’s approval, Bill is looking to be bought out by the family or to be paid dividends with interest. Another alternative, according to the lawsuit, is to
wind up, dissolve and liquidate the company and assets as a whole.
Yikes. Not surprisingly, the company has denied the allegations and has requested that the suit be dismissed. An official statement should be coming soon.
Lawsuits take eons, so there’s probably no need to run out and buy Meinl stock just yet. But if you got any cracked Sabians under warranty, you might just want to take care of those now.
Not to be outdone by Sabian, Gretsch is also sponsoring a contest for the best unsigned bands. At stake is a grand prize package that includes $20,000 in gear and a slot at Gretsch’s 125th Anniversary Concert in New York City. The details:
[via Drummer Talk]
There’s still plenty of time to enter Sabian’s second-annual Dream Spot contest. The winning band will get $10,000 in gear and the chance to play 10 dates on the 2008 Warped Tour. The band’s lucky-ass drummer will also land a one-year deal with Sabian (we’re not exactly sure how many free cymbals that translates to). The details:
The ads have been plastered in all the latest drum mags, and now we’ve finally got a price point for Pearl’s limited-edition hotness. Note the phrase “limited edition”: only 50 kits will be made in each color set…which means the Redline = $$$.
The White-on-White Redline shell pack includes a 13″ x 9″ rack tom, 16″ x 16″ and 18″ x 16″ floor toms, and a big ole 24″ x 18″ kick. The Black-on-Black shell pack features a 12″ x 8″ rack, 14″ x 14″ and 16″ x 16″ floor toms, and a 22″ x 20″ bass drum. Matching 20-ply snares are available for each set.
Price List
Black-on-Black shell pack without snare: $4,999
Black-on-Black matching 14″ x 5″ snare: $1,059
White-on-White shell pack without snare: $5,299
White-on-White matching 14″ x 6.5″ snare: $1,159
No big shock there, eh? But this particular Tommy tattooing actually is something special. It’s the first to be done aboard a jet traveling at 40,000 feet. Star artist Mario Barth did the work, and the Guinness Book of World Records was on hand to document the high-altitude inking. No word (or pic) yet on what the new tat looks like or where it is…but given that Tommy doesn’t have much bare skin to work with, we’re hoping the location is fairly scandalous.
