Ginger Baker RIP-possibly the greatest drummer ever?

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Greatkudu
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Ginger Baker RIP-possibly the greatest drummer ever?

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Ok thought someone may put something on here,he passed away last week? or earlier in week? anyway,he may have been a very moody chap (to say the least) but possibly the greatest drummer this country has produced? (apart form Jet) He was tour de force.I know his drum sol's went on and on.

But the sheer technical brilliance of the man cannot be denied,RIP Ginger hope you are making alot of noise in Heaven? or Hell?
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Re: Ginger Baker RIP-possibly the greatest drummer ever?

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Incredibly overrated drummer and nowhere near as great as he thought he was, and a massive cunt as a person to boot.
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Re: Ginger Baker RIP-possibly the greatest drummer ever?

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StanInBlack wrote: 12 Oct 2019, 19:33 Incredibly overrated drummer and nowhere near as great as he thought he was, and a massive cunt as a person to boot.
Totally disagree about overrated, not the nicest bloke at times, but at least if he hated people they knew it.
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Re: Ginger Baker RIP-possibly the greatest drummer ever?

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The man was a colossus of a drummer.
Shove it up yer bollocks then!
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Re: Ginger Baker RIP-possibly the greatest drummer ever?

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Pretty much every progressive rock drummer of the early '70s - including Phil Collins - could outplay Ginger, whose playing I always found incredibly lumpen. Give me Mitch Mitchell's playing any day of the week. Ginger considered himself to be a jazz drummer, but he's third rate in that field at best. As Elvin Jones said in '71:  "Cat’s got delusions of grandeur with no grounds. They should make him an astronaut and lose his ass!"
Greatkudu wrote: 13 Oct 2019, 09:58not the nicest bloke at times, but at least if he hated people they knew it.
Which would be fine, if the fucking sociopath didn't hate virtually everybody.
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Re: Ginger Baker RIP-possibly the greatest drummer ever?

Post by theraven1979 »

Didn't he play on Bags by PiL? Not bad drumming that to be fair

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Re: Ginger Baker RIP-possibly the greatest drummer ever?

Post by droopsnoot »

BBC4 showed the edition of Imagine entitled "Beware of Mr Baker" again last week, it was quite interesting. He does seem to be very good if you like that kind of drumming, but it's not for me - I don't mind complicated stuff, but sometimes it just goes on too long. Maybe it's better if you're in the room, and in the mood for it.

He also does seem to be very sure of himself, and very easy to dislike. Hard to tell how much of the unpleasantness in the interview sections were put on for the camera. He's very famous considering that he seems to have played in a relatively small number of bands, each of which (largely down to him, according to the other people interviewed) didn't last all that long.
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Re: Ginger Baker RIP-possibly the greatest drummer ever?

Post by Arthur Streeb-Greebling »

StanInBlack wrote: 12 Oct 2019, 19:33 Incredibly overrated drummer and nowhere near as great as he thought he was, and a massive cunt as a person to boot.
Incredibly overacted? Seriously?
Deffo 1 of the great 3 rock drummers ever along with Moon and Bonham even though I believe Ginger did say we’re both shite, but that was typically him. He may have been a cunt but jeez he was a fucking brilliant cunt!
Agree about Mitch Mitchell though, he was another great.
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Re: Ginger Baker RIP-possibly the greatest drummer ever?

Post by droopsnoot »

I'm not that familiar with much of his stuff - like probably more than one person on this forum, I only knew "White Room" because Hugh did it - but I can see the technical ability of what he was doing. In some ways, though, that can be a bit too much sometimes.

When I saw Wilko at a local music festival before he was ill and got better, his support act was a bloke playing a guitar who was really technically good, did loads of solos and stuff, but it just got a bit wearing after the fifth song with an interminable guitar solo in the middle. I've got a Rush track in my car, and it's great, a nice long song, good melody, but then there's a drum solo in the middle and it just goes on that little bit too long, and I have a genuine sense of relief when the rest of them come back from their fag break and kick back in. I enjoy the Strangs version of "Walk on by", and love the solo bits in the other longer songs, but the difference is that they seem to know when "enough is enough". Similarly I like some Iron Maiden stuff (probably just the mainstream things, if you're an IM fan I'm probably like those people who say they're Stranglers fans because they know Golden Brown and No More Heroes), but again, the twiddly bits don't get boring. "Brighter than a thousand suns" is in my car, and that has a similar structure to Walk on By (a bit of singing, fairly long instrumental, bit of singing, end) but, like WoB, it doesn't get tedious.
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Re: Ginger Baker RIP-possibly the greatest drummer ever?

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Arthur Streeb-Greebling wrote: 16 Oct 2019, 00:55 Incredibly overacted? Seriously?
Yes, seriously!

Moon was frustratingly inconsistent as a drummer, but when he was on form he was superb. I don't think he ever got a great sound on record until the Who's Next/Quadrophenia era, and feel his best playing was actually on late '60s/early '70s live recordings - the playing on "Young Man Blues" from Live at Leeds is something else, for example. Bonham had a particular hard-hitting style which suited most (although not all - here's looking at you, 'D'Yer Mak'er') of what Led Zeppelin did, but while it's difficult to imagine his playing outside of the context of Zeppelin (in the same way as it's hard to imagine Moon's playing outside of the context of The Who), I can't help but feel his way his tight-but-loose way with a groove was more exciting than anything Ginger played in the same mould.

In any case, I wouldn't put either in my Top 10.
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Re: Ginger Baker RIP-possibly the greatest drummer ever?

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droopsnoot wrote: 16 Oct 2019, 10:25I've got a Rush track in my car, and it's great, a nice long song, good melody, but then there's a drum solo in the middle and it just goes on that little bit too long, and I have a genuine sense of relief when the rest of them come back from their fag break and kick back in.
Sounds like the live version of "YYZ" to me, which does have an extended drum solo that doesn't exist on the studio version. As much as Neil Peart was/is highly regarded in his field (and I myself rate him highly as a drummer), he was never really noted for playing drum solos on the studio recordings - I can only think of one between 1974-1985 and that's the one that's on "The Fountain of Lamneth", but it doesn't last for very long and that's a 20+ minute multi-part epic.
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Re: Ginger Baker RIP-possibly the greatest drummer ever?

Post by Arthur Streeb-Greebling »

StanInBlack wrote: 16 Oct 2019, 21:27
Arthur Streeb-Greebling wrote: 16 Oct 2019, 00:55 Incredibly overacted? Seriously?
Yes, seriously!

Moon was frustratingly inconsistent as a drummer, but when he was on form he was superb. I don't think he ever got a great sound on record until the Who's Next/Quadrophenia era, and feel his best playing was actually on late '60s/early '70s live recordings - the playing on "Young Man Blues" from Live at Leeds is something else, for example. Bonham had a particular hard-hitting style which suited most (although not all - here's looking at you, 'D'Yer Mak'er') of what Led Zeppelin did, but while it's difficult to imagine his playing outside of the context of Zeppelin (in the same way as it's hard to imagine Moon's playing outside of the context of The Who), I can't help but feel his way his tight-but-loose way with a groove was more exciting than anything Ginger played in the same mould.

In any case, I wouldn't put either in my Top 10.
‪Ayup Stan, are you a fan of the jazz type drummers or whatever they are labelled as? I can only think of the obvs being Buddy Rich? Even then I’m not so sure if he was labelled Jazz as such. I guess I’m not so much into the technical drummers as such (I may be wrong here) Terry Bozzio? (great on Jeff Becks Guitar Shop and with Zappa too) and the guy from Dream Theater I’ve read a lot about? er can’t think of many more at the mo to be honest, only really know my faves from the 60’s & 70’s and they’ve just stuck in my head) deffo prefer the more powerful groove type of player.‬
‪Gotta agree about Moonie, even Townshend said he would just not have worked outside of The Who and yes the performance on Young Man Blues from Live At Leeds is indeed spectacular, the whole album is incredible, I don’t believe IMHO that any rock band from that era could beat The Who in that live situation, they played so incredibly well together and unusually than rather follow the rhythms of the drums they all followed Townshend who was/is a rather excellent rhythm guitar player.‬
‪I was having a nosey through your posts and you once had a website offering tabs, just wondered are you a guitar player like oneself is?‬
‪Cheers. ‬
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