Hey everyone,
What I'm putting below is exactly what the title of this topic says. But I must warn you, I got a little indulgent while I was writing it, so it's a little long (3 pages in Microsoft Word). But there's some pretty interesting shit in there which you might be interested to read about. I've also included a pic I took with him with the Drum Clinic ticket stitched to it in Photoshop. I hope you guys enjoy it!
A reflection on Gene Hoglan’s Drum Clinic held at Allan’s Music Store, Melbourne, Tuesday, 20th May, 2008.
As you can imagine, this was a fantastic night. Well worth the conservative $20 it cost to get a ticket. Between the hours of 7pm and 9pm, Gene Hoglan dazzled us all with his sharp, humorous wit, his interesting anecdotes and recollections from a life in Metal, and blew us all away with his ‘Atomic clock’ drumming.
The evening began in a rather surreal and unexpected way. When we were all seated, a girl named Peyton of about 11 years of age, assumed the stage and proceeded to introduce the man we had all come to see. She reminded us of some of his major achievements and even tried to crack a few jokes. It was kinda cute and amusing, but I think most of us were scratching our heads about this – she was hardly a ‘metal chic’. And her connection to the whole thing was never actually explained!
But then Mr. Hoglan assumed the stage. There was a rowdy applause followed by the customary ‘audience gaze of wonder’ that happens when Gene walks in the room. He’s always bigger than you remember him and his presence is so Metal it reeks with a history rich with both live and studio performances that confound the minds of most aspiring drummers and metal enthusiasts alike. In short, he’s an awesome presence in the true sense of the word.
We waited in anticipation as he climbed behind the kit, sat down and grabbed a microphone. At this point it is worth mentioning that the kit had his name and image on the outer skin of both the double-bass drums. A sexy fucking kit, to say the least.
With mic in hand, he talked about why he was here, what to expect tonight, invited us to ask anything at any time and then… started playing the tubs. What followed was a performance that went for about 15 minutes. He started out playing something really cool on the ride for a while, and gradually it spread out across the other cymbals, across to the toms, and finally the snare and double-bass. It built in intensity, complexity and speed into something extraordinary – and this was his warm-up! I could tell that after a few minutes he had completely disappeared into the Zone. In fact it was entrancing to everyone in the room – I think we all got pulled into his zone after a while. This was something that he went on to discuss later actually; he talked about how when you’re playing your fastest, heaviest, most insane shit, it’s usually when you’re the most relaxed, Zen-like even. I’m not a drummer myself, but I could totally understand what he was saying. I think the same sort of thing happens to certain athletes (swimmers and runners for example); once they reach a certain point of physical duress, something happens in their mind and body that is not what one might expect. A state of calm and peace. Wow, this night was amazing already.
After a short break and a few questions and jokes, he decided to show us some new stuff he’s been doing with a Canadian band called ‘Mechanism’. We were lucky enough that he had the guitar/bass/vox tracks playing out the PA while he jammed with it on drums live. Heavy shit for sure! Unfortunately we couldn’t hear the rest of the ‘band’ very well on the PA, but we were there to see Gene anyway, and what he was doing was sick, so it didn’t concern us too much I don’t think. Looking forward to hearing it on CD though!
The inevitable question came up about the Devin Townsend experience. What was it like working with the guy all those years? Gene spoke glowingly about Devin and the whole decade of working with him. He made it very clear that Devin is in a very different place now compared to where he was when SYL began. He said he was by no means the angry, crazy young man that started that band. But in the same breath, he said that SYL has not ‘broken up’ in the official sense of the term, even though they were on a sort of ‘permanent hiatus’. His feeling is that anything could happen down the track – even maybe another SYL record if they’re all in the zone for it! This brought on a few cheers as you’d imagine. But let me make it clear, these were Gene’s thoughts about a possible future, and I certainly don’t think this is something that has been discussed outright with Dev, so please don’t consider that gospel. But the impression he gave was that those guys (all of SYL) are a really tight group of metal comrades and friends that will always have an incredibly strong connection. Hence, when the drummer on the latest Zimmer’s Hole album suddenly couldn’t record when they had the studio space booked, Byron picked up the phone and called Gene, said: “Dude, we’ve got a problem. Do you reckon you might be able to come down and record the drums for this album?” to which Gene replied “Sure”, and the rest is history.
At this point Gene started talking about the fact that he simply never has time to rehearse or practice his chops in his own time, that he usually gets the songs he’s recording drums for about a day before he goes into the studio, or even sometimes when he gets to the studio, as has happened with the Dethklok experience. He then revealed the extraordinary fact that the drums for ‘City’ were recorded in a grand total of 6 hours, and the drums for ‘Alien’ were recorded at the more leisurely pace of 8 hours. Do you realise what I am saying? Every song on ‘Alien’, as far as the drums were concerned, was recorded in 8 hours. I found myself wondering, if the drums for ‘Alien’ were recorded in 8 hours, how long would it take Lars to learn and then play the same drum parts if, on average, it takes him over 12 months to play and record the drums for an album like the Black Album? These Gene-statistics continue to boggle my mind and defy my logic even as I write this 24 hours later…
He talked a little bit about his early days when he was drum-tech for Slayer on the ‘Show No Mercy’ tour. He humbly admitted that, even though he was only 15, he provided Dave Lombardo with some coaching on effective double-bass kick drumming because he just wasn’t quite getting it! At that time, Dave was using only one kick-drum and one foot to do it all. Gene opened his eyes to the notion of using, wait for it… 2 feet! And… 2 bass drums! LOL. So that’s the story of how Slayer discovered the double-bass drum, hehe.
He mentioned that he is in fact ambidextrous, which explained his rather unique drumming style, and which also meant that he could “crank it with either hand”. That comment received raucous laughter, to which he put his head in his hands and said “O, Lord, I am so going to Hell, aren’t I?” Don’t forget, Peyton, the 11-year old girl, was sitting in the front row. LOL! She was loving every minute of this though.
More drum requests came from the audience. He ripped out some tunes from his Death and Dark Angel days (‘Crystal Mountain’ & ‘Thunderhorse’ I think it was called), he played ‘Love?’ in its entirety and the majority of ‘Almost Again’. He admitted that songs like ‘Oh My Fucking God’ are as hard as they sound to play – really fucking taxing, even for him. He also described the strange phenomena of actually forgetting how to play a lot of songs. He acknowledged that this was a ‘strange, but true’ situation; there have been many songs that he has played only for the album recording and then simply never played again. ‘Almost Again’ was an example of this. In effect, he has only ever played this song once, and that’s what we hear on the album. The song was recorded in March 2006, and thus, towards the end of last night’s performance of it, he completely forgot how to play it and just gave up! LOL! It was all a bit of a hoot really, and made the night a lot more fun.
There was a bit more talk about drum technique. He discussed how ankle weights were really important for drummers trying to get their double-bass kicking speed up there at blistering pace. He also talked about getting your ‘meter’ right simply by finding interesting ways to keep a beat or rhythm of some kind going in your everyday activities. In his case, one game that he plays in hotel rooms late at night (no bullshit), is to watch the clock change from one minute to the next, and at that second, shut his eyes and count to 60 with some kind of accompanying beat, open his eyes and watch the next minute tick over at the exact right second, and then keep going till he goes to sleep. He ripped out a great joke here too when he described the 2 digital dots on the clock between the hour digit and the minute digit as a ‘flashing colon’, to which he immediately realised the innuendo and said: “A flashing colon – now that’s an image!” Again, raucous laughter. But back to meter discussion, he said he was constantly amazed by how much beat and rhythm there is in the sounds around us in everyday life. He made a special mention of the crosswalk ‘green man’ sounds in the city of Melbourne, and said that, depending on the crossing or how you heard it, it could sound either like a little blast-beat, or even like the looped intro to the song ‘Cowboys From Hell’. I’ll never hear that sound in the same way again, LOL!
Well, he was starting to get the wind-up from the organisers so he thanked everyone for coming down, promised to eventually release his DVD, and then ripped into the last 60 seconds of ‘Zen’ to finish off. There were horns in the air when he finished that one, I can assure you
So that was the end of his drum clinic. We all went downstairs and got shit signed and pictures taken etc. He was a little pushed for time though because he had to go and do a radio interview for JJJ, but like the trooper he is, he hung back and met every one of us. He was fucking tired though, you could see it – owing to the jetlag, the schedule, and two consecutive nights of drumming mayhem, with several more to go in other states around the country! I had so many things I wanted to say and ask, but I chose one thing to say to him when we met. I said this: “Gene, it would really be an amazing thing if you could think about talking to SYL about the possibility of re-recording HAARHT one day.” It was cheeky of me, I know, but I couldn’t help it. I would kill for that to happen. Surprisingly, he turned to me and said it was a good idea and “something which has actually been discussed before”. Wow. Imagine. I shook his hand and said “that would be incredible and thanks again for coming down.”
What a fucking legend Gene is. A really nice bloke, very witty, very funny, humble and un-pretentious, available to his fans, and an A-Class drummer (as we all know).
$20 for ticket? I feel like I ripped him off!
\m/
What I'm putting below is exactly what the title of this topic says. But I must warn you, I got a little indulgent while I was writing it, so it's a little long (3 pages in Microsoft Word). But there's some pretty interesting shit in there which you might be interested to read about. I've also included a pic I took with him with the Drum Clinic ticket stitched to it in Photoshop. I hope you guys enjoy it!
A reflection on Gene Hoglan’s Drum Clinic held at Allan’s Music Store, Melbourne, Tuesday, 20th May, 2008.
As you can imagine, this was a fantastic night. Well worth the conservative $20 it cost to get a ticket. Between the hours of 7pm and 9pm, Gene Hoglan dazzled us all with his sharp, humorous wit, his interesting anecdotes and recollections from a life in Metal, and blew us all away with his ‘Atomic clock’ drumming.
The evening began in a rather surreal and unexpected way. When we were all seated, a girl named Peyton of about 11 years of age, assumed the stage and proceeded to introduce the man we had all come to see. She reminded us of some of his major achievements and even tried to crack a few jokes. It was kinda cute and amusing, but I think most of us were scratching our heads about this – she was hardly a ‘metal chic’. And her connection to the whole thing was never actually explained!
But then Mr. Hoglan assumed the stage. There was a rowdy applause followed by the customary ‘audience gaze of wonder’ that happens when Gene walks in the room. He’s always bigger than you remember him and his presence is so Metal it reeks with a history rich with both live and studio performances that confound the minds of most aspiring drummers and metal enthusiasts alike. In short, he’s an awesome presence in the true sense of the word.
We waited in anticipation as he climbed behind the kit, sat down and grabbed a microphone. At this point it is worth mentioning that the kit had his name and image on the outer skin of both the double-bass drums. A sexy fucking kit, to say the least.
With mic in hand, he talked about why he was here, what to expect tonight, invited us to ask anything at any time and then… started playing the tubs. What followed was a performance that went for about 15 minutes. He started out playing something really cool on the ride for a while, and gradually it spread out across the other cymbals, across to the toms, and finally the snare and double-bass. It built in intensity, complexity and speed into something extraordinary – and this was his warm-up! I could tell that after a few minutes he had completely disappeared into the Zone. In fact it was entrancing to everyone in the room – I think we all got pulled into his zone after a while. This was something that he went on to discuss later actually; he talked about how when you’re playing your fastest, heaviest, most insane shit, it’s usually when you’re the most relaxed, Zen-like even. I’m not a drummer myself, but I could totally understand what he was saying. I think the same sort of thing happens to certain athletes (swimmers and runners for example); once they reach a certain point of physical duress, something happens in their mind and body that is not what one might expect. A state of calm and peace. Wow, this night was amazing already.
After a short break and a few questions and jokes, he decided to show us some new stuff he’s been doing with a Canadian band called ‘Mechanism’. We were lucky enough that he had the guitar/bass/vox tracks playing out the PA while he jammed with it on drums live. Heavy shit for sure! Unfortunately we couldn’t hear the rest of the ‘band’ very well on the PA, but we were there to see Gene anyway, and what he was doing was sick, so it didn’t concern us too much I don’t think. Looking forward to hearing it on CD though!
The inevitable question came up about the Devin Townsend experience. What was it like working with the guy all those years? Gene spoke glowingly about Devin and the whole decade of working with him. He made it very clear that Devin is in a very different place now compared to where he was when SYL began. He said he was by no means the angry, crazy young man that started that band. But in the same breath, he said that SYL has not ‘broken up’ in the official sense of the term, even though they were on a sort of ‘permanent hiatus’. His feeling is that anything could happen down the track – even maybe another SYL record if they’re all in the zone for it! This brought on a few cheers as you’d imagine. But let me make it clear, these were Gene’s thoughts about a possible future, and I certainly don’t think this is something that has been discussed outright with Dev, so please don’t consider that gospel. But the impression he gave was that those guys (all of SYL) are a really tight group of metal comrades and friends that will always have an incredibly strong connection. Hence, when the drummer on the latest Zimmer’s Hole album suddenly couldn’t record when they had the studio space booked, Byron picked up the phone and called Gene, said: “Dude, we’ve got a problem. Do you reckon you might be able to come down and record the drums for this album?” to which Gene replied “Sure”, and the rest is history.
At this point Gene started talking about the fact that he simply never has time to rehearse or practice his chops in his own time, that he usually gets the songs he’s recording drums for about a day before he goes into the studio, or even sometimes when he gets to the studio, as has happened with the Dethklok experience. He then revealed the extraordinary fact that the drums for ‘City’ were recorded in a grand total of 6 hours, and the drums for ‘Alien’ were recorded at the more leisurely pace of 8 hours. Do you realise what I am saying? Every song on ‘Alien’, as far as the drums were concerned, was recorded in 8 hours. I found myself wondering, if the drums for ‘Alien’ were recorded in 8 hours, how long would it take Lars to learn and then play the same drum parts if, on average, it takes him over 12 months to play and record the drums for an album like the Black Album? These Gene-statistics continue to boggle my mind and defy my logic even as I write this 24 hours later…
He talked a little bit about his early days when he was drum-tech for Slayer on the ‘Show No Mercy’ tour. He humbly admitted that, even though he was only 15, he provided Dave Lombardo with some coaching on effective double-bass kick drumming because he just wasn’t quite getting it! At that time, Dave was using only one kick-drum and one foot to do it all. Gene opened his eyes to the notion of using, wait for it… 2 feet! And… 2 bass drums! LOL. So that’s the story of how Slayer discovered the double-bass drum, hehe.
He mentioned that he is in fact ambidextrous, which explained his rather unique drumming style, and which also meant that he could “crank it with either hand”. That comment received raucous laughter, to which he put his head in his hands and said “O, Lord, I am so going to Hell, aren’t I?” Don’t forget, Peyton, the 11-year old girl, was sitting in the front row. LOL! She was loving every minute of this though.
More drum requests came from the audience. He ripped out some tunes from his Death and Dark Angel days (‘Crystal Mountain’ & ‘Thunderhorse’ I think it was called), he played ‘Love?’ in its entirety and the majority of ‘Almost Again’. He admitted that songs like ‘Oh My Fucking God’ are as hard as they sound to play – really fucking taxing, even for him. He also described the strange phenomena of actually forgetting how to play a lot of songs. He acknowledged that this was a ‘strange, but true’ situation; there have been many songs that he has played only for the album recording and then simply never played again. ‘Almost Again’ was an example of this. In effect, he has only ever played this song once, and that’s what we hear on the album. The song was recorded in March 2006, and thus, towards the end of last night’s performance of it, he completely forgot how to play it and just gave up! LOL! It was all a bit of a hoot really, and made the night a lot more fun.
There was a bit more talk about drum technique. He discussed how ankle weights were really important for drummers trying to get their double-bass kicking speed up there at blistering pace. He also talked about getting your ‘meter’ right simply by finding interesting ways to keep a beat or rhythm of some kind going in your everyday activities. In his case, one game that he plays in hotel rooms late at night (no bullshit), is to watch the clock change from one minute to the next, and at that second, shut his eyes and count to 60 with some kind of accompanying beat, open his eyes and watch the next minute tick over at the exact right second, and then keep going till he goes to sleep. He ripped out a great joke here too when he described the 2 digital dots on the clock between the hour digit and the minute digit as a ‘flashing colon’, to which he immediately realised the innuendo and said: “A flashing colon – now that’s an image!” Again, raucous laughter. But back to meter discussion, he said he was constantly amazed by how much beat and rhythm there is in the sounds around us in everyday life. He made a special mention of the crosswalk ‘green man’ sounds in the city of Melbourne, and said that, depending on the crossing or how you heard it, it could sound either like a little blast-beat, or even like the looped intro to the song ‘Cowboys From Hell’. I’ll never hear that sound in the same way again, LOL!
Well, he was starting to get the wind-up from the organisers so he thanked everyone for coming down, promised to eventually release his DVD, and then ripped into the last 60 seconds of ‘Zen’ to finish off. There were horns in the air when he finished that one, I can assure you
So that was the end of his drum clinic. We all went downstairs and got shit signed and pictures taken etc. He was a little pushed for time though because he had to go and do a radio interview for JJJ, but like the trooper he is, he hung back and met every one of us. He was fucking tired though, you could see it – owing to the jetlag, the schedule, and two consecutive nights of drumming mayhem, with several more to go in other states around the country! I had so many things I wanted to say and ask, but I chose one thing to say to him when we met. I said this: “Gene, it would really be an amazing thing if you could think about talking to SYL about the possibility of re-recording HAARHT one day.” It was cheeky of me, I know, but I couldn’t help it. I would kill for that to happen. Surprisingly, he turned to me and said it was a good idea and “something which has actually been discussed before”. Wow. Imagine. I shook his hand and said “that would be incredible and thanks again for coming down.”
What a fucking legend Gene is. A really nice bloke, very witty, very funny, humble and un-pretentious, available to his fans, and an A-Class drummer (as we all know).
$20 for ticket? I feel like I ripped him off!
\m/
"Can we sack Phil?"
J. Hetfield
J. Hetfield
