Archive for the ‘CD/DVD’ Category

Genesis Live At Wembley 1987

Friday, May 21st, 2010

I am definetely not the biggest Genesis/Phil Collins fan. Still I cannot deny that they have regularly reached leading chart positions over the decades. Generally in order to get one of the rare Simmons video documents I got my hands on their DVD “Live At Wembley 1987”

While Phil Collins mainly uses SDSV pads and brain (apart from his Gretsch and a little SDS7 gear), Chester Thompson plays a Pearl kit which triggers an MTM plus some SDS7 pads. The MTM is connected to some Roland and EMU machines via midi. Specially within the song “The Brazilian” you get a close up view of Phil’s and Chester’s Simmons work.

This 5 people band really made a bombastic sound. Recommended…

Bill Bruford and the beat

Friday, April 9th, 2010

When I remember right, consumer VCRs conquered the world at the beginning of the eighties. One of the first drummers who released drum videos was Bill Bruford, who recently announced his (hardly believable) retirement. The title of this video tape was “Bill Bruford and the beat”.

It has been produced in 1982 in Baltimore, Maryland. The intention of this video is not learning drum techniques but Bill Bruford reports about his philosophy of drumming. And of course he demonstrates his playing, his style and his sound which still appears pretty advanced:

I accidently noticed that this video tape has been released on DVD in 2009 so I did not hasitate a second to get myself a copy.
It is NOT remastered, so don’t expect brilliant sound and video but still better than the Youtube fragments. You get an awsome documentary of Bill Brufords work at a reasonable price.

As we know Bill Bruford was one of the first (and one of the last) Simmons drummers. This particular setup features a set of very early SDSV pads beside a bunch of more or less exotic acoustic gear.

Simmons still good enough for chart productions

Tuesday, October 20th, 2009

Did the Simmons sounds become silent after the company collapsed in 1995? No, they didn’t. Ronnie Vannucci, drummer of the chart breaking US rock band The Killers just stated in an interview that the drum sound on their hit single “Human” is a result of mixing his natural drum sounds with the output of a vintage analog Simmons SDSV console.

Good choice, Ronnie! You really picked my favourite for this purpose…