2 Drummers Drumming

Phil Collins, Al Murray and 2 Drummers Drumming on Lunch With The Hamiltons

2008-09-14T16:24:00.004+01:00

Phil Collins on TV shock!
Firstly, a big apology for not updating this blog sooner but as the Edinburgh run got into it's stride and we decided not to let the rain dampen our enthusiasm for the festival, attention to blogging seemed to be a minor casualty.
So this is a little update to say that we are and will be keeping the 2 DRUMMERS DRUMMING show and even this blog flying. We are undergoing a redesign on the 2 Drummers drumming website @ www.twodrummers.com but it will up and running and structured to keep the news and debate central.

Unfortunately, due to circumstances beyond our control we had to cancel the very last show of our run on the bank holiday monday August 25th. However the previous day, the 24th August we had a storming last show after our appearance on Lunch With The Hamiltons, where we seemed to go down really well.

Did you see Phil Collins, as a guest on the first in the new series of Al Murray's HAPPY HOUR on Friday?
As you know, we always felt close to having Phil as a guest on the show and it brought a smile to our faces when he ended his slot with Al, with the two of them playing the set of a pub with drum sticks... we like to think that somewhere in the ether, when we ended most performances of 2 Drummers Drumming taking a leaf out of our hero Buddy Rich's book, when he said
"when I play a club I like to PLAY a club"
that that found it's way to the researchers on Al's show. It would have been a true joy to literally, have Phil Collins PLAY.. the Bongo Club at Edinburgh with us. Perhaps next year eh? We'll be in touch.
M&M

Our guests, Toby Litt and is 2 Drummers Drumming - comedy or music?

2008-08-17T12:27:00.004+01:00

Hi there, sorry we've been a bit lax the past couple of days posting here - but that's because this Edinburgh adventure is full on and takes up most of the day, however today we have a rest and make way for the Amused Mouse? comedy awards at The Bongo Club, which also means that Math can scoot off to Scarborough to play a festival with Dodgy.

There's so much going on, where do we start?
Well before we do. Perhaps check out the Podcast in the latest edition of the Three Weeks magazine. Here's a link
THREE WEEKS PODCAST

So perhaps we'll start with the last two days shows, both very different but equally fantastic.
On Friday(15th) we had author Toby Litt as our special guest. Anybody who has seen the show will have heard us introduce ourselves saying "My name is Mathew and I play the drums in a band called Dodgy" and "My name is Maurice and I play the drums in a band called The Love Affair" - ok, it is on our minds but Toby's most recent book is called 'I Play The Drums In A Band Called Okay' .. see what we did there. Any novelist that can make a drummer the central and title character of a proper book has got to be a hero in our book and Toby popped in to say a few words about the book and join in our 2 Drummers Drumming Five Minute Drum Lesson (pt 2). We really like the novel and Toby lived up to all our expectations.

Then yesterday Saturday (16th) we had a near sell-out crowd which totally upped the ante on the show and we were truly amazed at the response.
When we first came to Edinburgh the August 16th show was an enigma from the start. We noticed that tickets appeared to be flying out and this wasn't just the Fringe ticketing system going awol again. No, we were genuinely selling tickets for this show. It turns out that one of the reasons for this was that the best man of a certain Edinburgh drummer called Dan had organised 2 Drummers Drumming to be the first event on his stag night day. When we got the email asking if we could acknowledge him in the audience, we were only too pleased, it's not every show that gets such a nice block booking. The best man sent us some photos of the groom that we duly adapted to the shows theme and hopefully gave him a good time whilst providing a bit of additional entertainment for the rest of the audience.
Quite frankly, even if we say ourselves, this show rocked and we'd like to thank everyone there for making it a good one for us.

We're still fired up about this whole Edinburgh experience and are looking forward to hitting the third week of activities. Because we are spending a lot of time flyering and doing what we can to promote the show it's been hard following up our guest drummers, though it seems everyone who has seen the show so far appreciates the story about Charlie Watts and the lengths we went to to try and get him up to Edinburgh.
We do have a couple of guests lined up next week though. John Otway will be coming onto the show on Monday. John has devised a system of electronic drums attached to his body and he is a great character - we had a great time at John's Edinburgh show with Wild Willy Barrett. We'd recomend it but think that it's run has finished now. We've also got Andrew Paresi coming on the show on Wednesday. Andrew was once Morrissey's drummer and has got a few stories to tell as well as being a very funny man.

Finally, a couple of extra curricular bonus appearances by 2 Drummers. We are particularly excited about being invited onto Lunch With The Hamiltons as guests which will probably be on Sunday August 24th.
This coming Wednesday, 2 Drummers Drumming will be at the Drum Central drum shop on South Clerk Street in Edinburgh, where we will be doing excerpts from the show in the window and chatting to anyone who wants to drop by.
Hopefully if you are in and around Edinburgh and haven't seen the show yet you will be able to pop down next week.

Is 2 Drummers Drumming music or comedy - Where are the reviews?

2008-08-12T19:34:00.003+01:00

This is just a (hopefully) short musing on one of our current dilemmas.
2 Drummers Drumming is going really well but the one thing we have had difficulty doing is getting reviewers down. The main reason for this appears to be our categorisation in the Fringe Programme under the 'Music' category rather than 'Comedy'....
We are really appreciative of the way that we're getting our audiences by genuine word of mouth but obviously some reviews would help. A good review even better and a good review with a couple of positive quotable sentences Fringe olympic gold. But our problem seems to be that we have listed ourselves under 'music'.
We originally, and humbly thought.. well, we have no right to call ourselves 'comedians' because we're not, we're drummers. Though a couple of people at the Fringe Roadshow we attended did say.. oh go on .. place yourselves under comedy regardless. But in the end we struck a compromise, put our listing in Music and our fringe programme advert in the comedy pages. Now this obviously works for punters but for reviews editors we have hit a wall. There are obviously bunches more theatre and comedy reviewers than there are those for music.
We have been really flattered by the amount of people who come up to us after the shows and say things like, they've had more genuine comedy laugh moments at 2 Drummers than they've had at a lot of stand up they've seen and so now we're trying to change our listing to comedy as 2 Drummers is definitely more of an entertainment than a music show.
Once again, next week, we'll be doing what we can to get some reviews.. let's see what happens..
best
M

Our first ever review for 2 Drummers Drumming (Scotsman)

2008-08-07T23:24:00.005+01:00

Think we had a genuine Edinburgh moment today, in fact there might have been more but none so strange as an event that occurred while flyering for 2 Drummers Drumming on the Royal Mile.

It's been a tough two days for 2 Drummers, well probably everyone trying to promote a show on the streets. Now don't get us wrong. We have taken to street publicity like ducks to water. Our homemade sandwich board is a work of art even if we say so ourselves and cost about 5 times to make as it should have .. but it well...works and we have totally enjoyed being able to talk to people and video your 'drummer joke' contributions.... But it would work even better if the weather conditions up here for the last two days hadn't developed into the category of monsoon. We bought three umbrellas and then felt greedy and took pity on some rain drenched urchin trying to hand out soggy remnants of some other show's publicity and gave one away.

However, just for a moment today. It all got too much.
Now in all the hustle and bustle around the street, it is quite likely that things get misheard.. but we had an interaction on the following lines... perhaps for a moment we were staring into space when someone comes up and the voice of an actual show-goer says
"What's up there, you ok?"
we reply, clutching our own paper mache version of the soggy flyers..
"..sorry.. just for the moment I lost the will to live!"
reply:
"oh really? What time are you on?"
perhaps you had to be there

We had another 2 Drummers first today. Our FIRST REVIEW. In the Scotsman. That's the first review of 2 Drummers anywhere. Needless to say after we all nonchalantly dismissed it claiming not to care about reviews, we dissected it with a fine scalpel. Overall our conclusion is positive, helped immensely by the fact that in the same edition Math had managed to get us a nice fat column called SellUsYourShow, with a photo. The review itself was 3/5 .. not at all bad, certainly over half full on the good side and considering these are our first baby steps on the boards, speaking as opposed to banging, a little victory. Our current favourite bit is that the show is "bad news for fans of drum solos, but good news for well adjusted members of society" - Would that work as a quote on future publicity? the reviewer also described 2 Drummers Drumming as "an easy going, ramshackle but endearing hour of music industry anecdotes" if we could have added "that's getting better every day" we would certainly take it.

The reviewer also took the opinion that we hadn't fully developed the concept of our DIPC (Drummer Identification Playing Cards), she might have a point but our biggest current challenge is to fit so much material into our 1 hour slot (we have been able to add 5 mins on our advertised time). If we had time we'd explain how all the Jacks are Juniors, that the Queens are girls but that if you've got Roger Taylor from Queen then he really had to be a queen (see what we did there) and that haven stolen a DIPC 'place' from the girls, it was even hard filling the other 3 places with girls who might conceivably make it to Edinburgh. Meg White has been having anxiety attacks and we probably haven't helped by bombarding her with emails and letters and approaching people around her at every possible opportunity. So the girls just got too hard, so we allocated a card to Karen Carpenter, the thinking behind it being that we had as much chance of getting her to Edinburgh as any of the other girls and if we are going for impossible targets why not have the top impossible target.

Anyway, we're posting this because there's the possibility that we won't be posting for the next couple of days as both of us are off to play festivals here and there. Mathew to do Summer Sundae with Dodgy in Leicester on Saturday, preceded by a benefit gig in Oxford tomorrow night and Maurice who's off to Germany with The Love Affair.
We did our show this afternoon and had a special guest Ken Andrew from Middle Of The Road, what a sport he is. Ken's band Middle of The Road sold millions of copies of the single Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep, impressive indeed and will be playing with Maurice in Germany at the weekend.

We'll miss the hustle and bustle of Edinburgh for a couple of days but not the peculiarly idiosyncratic rain and intend to come back fighting fit for Sunday's show at The Bongo Club at 4.30pm. Hopefully see you there.

The art of Sandwich Board manufacture -John Otway and Wild Willy Barratt - Edward Aczel - Edinburgh Fringe Opening Party

2008-08-05T19:31:00.007+01:00

Well we are slowly getting into the fringe. We have moved from our highland rehearsal rooms into Edinburgh. For the next two weeks we are splashing out on a flat share. What happens after that depends on how well we can do getting people into and interested in the show, if we can afford it we'll be able to keep the flat on... it's a cut throat business this Fringe...

There's something about Edinburgh that brings the bohemian/artisan/randy puppy out of all of us all here at 2 Drummers, but I daren't say who is which but we are seriously considering getting someone in the party spaded.
Christ, he's like King Kong on heat.

Maurice arrived back safely from Germany on Sunday and we swung straight back into the show, which went really well. Not least because we had augmented our flyering efforts with the manufacture of a .... sandwich board on Saturday
And what a sandwich board it is! It's a work of fucking art, and actually cost as much. Ok we obviously aren't the best sourcing team.
Get this:
£20 for 2 pieces of hardboard
£8 for two curtain retainers (used as straps)
£30 for TWO A2 posters

Yes, fifty eight quid for a sandwich board but I must say I think we are seeing a return on our investment. Having sweated over the manufacture of this glorious edifice we treated ourselves to our first Edinburgh show, the 'comedian' - term used loosely Edward Aczel only loosely in the sense that Edward is an exponent of almost (non) comedy. A thin line between genius and crap, which is kind of where you might want your comics to be.

We also went to the Fringe Opening Party. We had a bit of a dilemma, because we are a team of three but it was a strict two persons per show policy. Anyway, our rock and roll experience meant that we have guest list blagging down to an art, though as we say in the show, we are not comics, we are not actors, we are not historians but we ARE drummers and as impersonations of a person from an unknown theatrical troupe goes it worked. Perhaps we shouldn't have bothered, it was a weird ol' doo but perhaps we were just tired.

On Monday night we went to check out the show by John Otway and Wild Willy Barrett - absolutely brilliant 5/5 and thoroughly recommended to anyone interested in music and having a laugh. So impressed were we that we invited John down to be our special guest today - another genius and nutter. Maurice used to play drums for him and was his manager for a while. He was brilliant value - thanks John

Our next guest is booked for Thursday (Aug 7th). Do you remember Chirpy Chirpy Cheap Cheap?

Anyway, speak soon and keep smiling

Math xx

Another 2 Drummers Drumming preview under our belts and Maurice off to Berlin Mathew a Castaway

2008-08-01T13:57:00.003+01:00

Well, we did another preview of 2 Drummers Drumming yesterday and it's really coming together, especially all the multi-media stuff What was really pleasing was to see a young band in the audience, who seemed into it and spoke to us after the show. We were getting a lot of advice before the show on the lines of
"is it going to appeal to the girls?"
"what about young audiences?"
well we've been trying hard to make what we are doing as accessible as possible to everyone and certainly don't want to exclude the ladies or young people interested in our show, so it's great to have a young band saying that they enjoyed it and especially Maurice's stories of being in a young band in the 60's. We find ourselves reminding everyone, that all of the stories in 2 Drummers Drumming are true.

There are no shows on Friday (1st) or Saturday (2nd Aug) this is because Maurice has flown off to Berlin to play a couple of festivals with The Love Affair. Lucky we had news last week that we are as fit as premiership footballers because on Sunday Maurice has a mammoth journey to get to the stage on Sunday at 4.30pm for our last preview before we open on Monday, we place our trust in British Airways and um... Easyjet.

Mathew's suddenly had a load of people coming up to him here (more than usual!) saying
'aren't you the guy from Dodgy? I saw you on tele last night"
This was because the BBC showed a programme called Return To Taransay and featured Dodgy landing on the Castaway reality TV show island during filming. We had cut this story from 2 Drummers Drumming but as a few people obviously caught the programme we might throw the story or clip back in. You can check out the programme on the BBC iPlayer, it's Return To Taransay episode 3.

We are getting new material from the show from all sources - perhaps too much. The first thing is that The Guardian are continue to insist on printing new 'drummer jokes' each day. This is fuel to our producers who then say "learn this" for the show. We've written to The Guardian in the hope that they'll stop printing any more 'drummer jokes' thereby making our job easier until we get more comfortable with this stuff ;-)

We were out and about yesterday getting our first taste of flyering to the masses... wow! it certainly is mental up here. We also set up the video camera to get some of the public's 'drummer jokes' for the show. There are obviously a lot of Guardian readers up here because there are quite a lot of people happy to offer themselves before our camera. The aim was to edit them and get them straight into the show. So we sat down at the computer at 4pm and realised that none of us knew how to operate imovie to put them up. Don't worry, as well as everything else, we are doing a crash self course in iMovie so hopefully we can have some on the screen for Sunday's preview.
If you're in Edinburgh would be great to see you there.
Best
M&M

AND they're OFF! 2 DRUMMERS DRUMMING first preview @ The Fringe

2008-07-30T19:19:00.003+01:00

I'm writing this from the warm glow of the post show comedown from our first preview, sitting upstairs at the Bongo Club. I'm allowing myself a self congratulatory slap on the back but I can't quite reach so I'll have to settle for an encouraging tap on the arm as we were fecking great today and I'd really like to thank the folk that came down and gave us an audience.
We were able to get off to a topical start because there were still 'drummer jokes' on the letters page of todays Guardian after last weeks drummer frenzy in the national press.

We have been rehearsing VERY hard and very intensely for the last few weeks in our Scottish hideaway - it got fractious and frustrating but we've all been working long hours to make it work and I personally felt that, for a first preview, it was ace. Along the way we have discovered new things about ourselves, new talents that we never realised we had - we also realised that the director/producer is a secret Nazi as well as been autistic, therefore I'm faced with the rather difficult problem of whether to call him Goering or Rainman.

The Bongo Club is amazing. The actual place that is.
Their website still has a 2007 Fringe Brochure up and I would like to confirm we are at their new Holyrood Road location NOT the old one in new street that Google throws up.
The people here couldn't be more friendly and helpful, the food is lovely and cheap, they have free wi-fi and there is a constant flow of young, nubile foreign students coming through the doors. Shame. It's certainly a place I feel I am happy to be calling home over the next few weeks

We've now got GODGE on board as our audio-visual guy and needless to say, he is a drummer and he was great today, in fact so good that there was no opportunity to take the piss out of him as we relentlessly did to Rainman when we tried out a range of the show's content at the hotel in the village of Dunning on Sunday. We're really pleased that some of our videos and the multi-media stuff is working so we can relax a little bit...

Now we have the show up and running we're going to be stepping up our efforts to get some good drumming and drummer-related guests onto the show. We got a nice bit of feedback from Cherise, who you might know from Mika's band yesterday. She's got a massive excuse for not making it up to be in Edinburgh with us - the one-off gig of a lifetime but we can't say until she's actually done it.
As you know, communication channels are open with Phil Collins, I actually spoke to him on the phone the other day and what a lovely chap. He genuinely loves the idea for the show and wishes the best of luck, not sure if he'll be able to make it as a guest though as he's taking his annual pilgrimage to the Alamo during August, but bless him. Cheers Phil. You'll be pleased to know that I managed to make it through the whole conversation with him without trying to pun on him not needing a Jacket, or that I must be going or indeed that it's another day in Paradise.

On to our second preview tomorrow. If you are reading this and are in Edinburgh we'll offer any blog readers a two for one deal tomorrow, just send us a text with your name to 07500 548722 and we'll put you on the guest list.
You might even find us out and about looking for 'drummer jokes' and handing out a few flyers before the show. Please don't hesitate in saying 'hello' if you see us.

Speak soon

Onwards

Math and Maurice xx

Two days to go to 2 Drummers Drumming at the Edinburgh Fringe

2008-07-28T15:41:00.003+01:00

Hi there, it's Math from Dodgy and Maurice from The Love Affair. Just a couple of days to go now to our first preview at The Bongo Club in Edinburgh. We'd love to say more but we're just too busy in our Scottish hideaway getting it ready for you.
We went down the local hotel in the village last night and tried out a whole load of the material.. given us a whole load of ideas and a bit of an insight into what is going to work and what might not.
Either way. If you can make it up to Edinburgh we'd love to see you there. Oh, and Phil Collins called AGAIN, the other day, so we're still aiming to get the best possible daily guests for the show.
got to rush
M & M

Word Magazine Podcast, Ken Bruce, Rhys Ifans and did I really co-write the Worst Ever Summer Song

2008-07-19T15:32:00.004+01:00

Hi there, it's Math again.

Our 2 Drummers Drumming 'producer' is telling us that all publicity is good publicity and that's good because we're doing all of the pubicity for the show ourselves and therefore need as much as we can get.
We did investigate the possibility of hiring 'professional PR' but unfortunately, because we've been busy getting the show sorted out, we fell a bit short on our fundraising, £1,500 down at last count and when you're scrabbling around to find the cash for the extortionate price of accomodation in Edinburgh during the festival, extras like PR go out of the window.
We thought we had found an old aquaintance from my early Dodgy days and she offered to 'do us a deal' but we still couldn't afford it...

So it's been a good week for us, with Ken Bruce bigging us up on his Radio 2 show, whilst featuring Maurice's old mucka, Steve Ellis, singer with The Love Affair last week. When mentioning what the other members of The Love Affair were up to, Ken gave us a really good plug, so thanks Ken. He also played the Dodgy track 'Good Enough', which is nice because it means a few extra pounds in the coffers from PRS.
This led us on to being featured in a new Podcast for Word Magazine, you can check it out here.
www.wordmagazine.co.uk/content/two-men-stand-drummers-new-podcast

David Hepworth came round to our rehearsal shed and we had a chat, next thing we know it's online.. they don't hang around those guys.

Now I'm still trying to get over the rather dubious award my band Dodgy were given in the Observer Music monthly this weekend.
It came as a surprise, especially as I was having a good chinwag with the editor a few days before at The Peth (Rhys Ifans band) gig in London - and before you ask, yes a good night was had by all and Kate Moss was there but Pete Doherty was not, actually Carl Barat WAS there but that's another story.
Anyway, imagine my surprise when I got a whole bunch of emails suggesting I look at the Observer monthly, only to discover I was being credited/blamed along with my band mates for Dodgy writing the 'Worst Ever Summer Song' - not just one of the worst songs but there at No.1 .. worse than 'Itsy Bitsy Teenie Weenie Yellow Polka Dot Bikini' at No.2.... come on?.. referee.
When ever people ask me who smokey is, I say
"Maurice is the drummer in The Love Affair, you know "open up your eyes.. da da da da da.. Everlasting Love"
"oh yes" they say, I know. Now, when they talk about me, it will be "oh, isn't he one of them that wrote that worst summer song ever?"
Of course our producer is delighted with his "all publicity is good publicity" rants. Me I'm not so sure.
Check us out on The Word Podcast anyway and I'm doing a couple of acoustic gigs with Dodgy this weekend before we go off to Scotland on Sunday for final preparations and rehearsals.
see you soon

Ronaldo, Clem Burke (the drummer in Blondie) and me

2008-07-07T14:27:00.009+01:00

I'm learning a lot doing this show.. and now I've met a scientist who thinks he can acutally prove that us drummers are probably as fit as..um .. a premiership footballer, when us drummers do a gig. Me and Ronaldo - separated by circumstance, what do you think?

Perhaps I'll ask Phil. Collins that is. Yes, he got back to us. One of the loveliest emails I think I have ever received, can't divulge how discussions are going just yet.

Yes, what DO you think?
One of the aspects of our 2 Drummers Drumming show is fighting back against all those scandalously derisory 'drummer jokes' (see Zane Lowe reference in previous blog). Well to know what we're fighting against, we are putting out a general net for your drummer jokes. our forums are now up and running, so please, launch your drummer jokes here
2 DRUMMERS DRUMMING FORUM
under the topic.. DRUMMER JOKES

Well it's been another hectic weeks, split between working on material for the show, closing in on the guest drummers we are inviting to join us each day on the show and well, drumming with my band and then there's real life to contend with.
A real strange old week, with highs and lows but I think I've come out of it a little wiser.
I mentioned last week that we had a great 2 Drummers team outing to see the uncomparble Lenny Beige, well we followed that up with a long dinner in Camden with his creator Steve Furst, who generously agreed to meet up and pass onto Smokes and me some advice about Edinburgh and performing in general, and considering that the man is a veteran of 12 Edinburghs there was a lot to take in. He divulged some secrets to us, we divulged some to him, you know how it is when drink is involved ;-).

The next day, real life popped in to give a wake up call, I can't go into it now but it put me into a rather peculiar mood going into a run of 3 gigs with DODGY, a couple of warm-ups leading to our set at the GUILFEST on Saturday.
The first was an acoustic affair in London, at Dingwalls in Camden. Acoustic shows are always interesting for drummers. standing there like a bit of a lemon without the protection of a drum kit but then I thought, this is what Edinburgh is going to be like. There were a few disgruntled requests for me to play drums which is fair enough but they really weren’t paying us enough to go into all that trouble – I mean, if you book David Seaman for a personal appearance, he’s not gonna turn up with his own little penalty area and goalposts is he? You see there's definitely a theme running through this blog.
The next day we did a Dodgy warm up show in Portsmouth, in fact the first ever show with our new keyboard player Terry who looks like a Muppet, in fact he looks like a Muppet if he was in the McFly Muppets. Plays like a master though. A big shout out to the people of Portsmouth...

Which brings us on to our big show with Dodgy at Guilfest on the Saturday. Dodgy were supposed to have headlined Guilfest back in 1998 but we went and split up so there was something righteous about our appearance this year. I bumped into a few old faces including Paul, who is the drummer with the THE AUSTRALIAN PINK FLOYD SHOW, lovely chap and as Manc as they come. They couldn’t get away with that in the Olympics.
But I also had another mission for 2 Drummers with one of the kings in our pack of Drummer Identification Playing Cards in my pocket and I didn't even need to play it, because CLEM BURKE, the original, still playing and looking a million dollars, drummer with BLONDIE came up to ME, which was very cool as my missus and my mates were there - good timing Clem, I owe you one

We chatted about my column in RHYTHM mag which he found very funny and then he asked me to meet a friend of his.
Aye aye, I thought, here we go, finally meeting Debbie after all these years of fantasy, stay cool Math...
Turns out it wasn’t Ms Harry but a chap called Marcus Smith who is a professor at the University of Chichester who has been doing an 8 year research project on the physical output involved in rock drumming using Clem as his subject, The Clem Burke Drumming Project.
You can read about it HERE
The scientist reckons that rock drummers are on a par with premiership footballers! Of course we are!

Finally from Guilfest, I must say a big thank you to Paul, the drummer with KULA SHAKER, who graciously lent me some sticks, if you were there then you might have seen me throw these sticks into the crowd at the end of the Dodgy set, or you might not... back to another packed week of 2 Drummers rehearsing and research..
Don't forget to post your drummer jokes up on the FORUM
Math x

Ricky Gervais, Lenny Beige, Zane Lowe and a nice spread in Rhythm Magazine

2008-06-30T14:50:00.012+01:00

Hey there,

Here's another blog and perhaps, even by the wonders of technology I won't even pretend to understand, our first podcast attached ( I believe you just click that little arrow up there pointing at Ricky Gervais in the title?)
Did you listen to the launch of NME Radio last week? One of the flagship opening programmes was Ricky Gervais ( I think you can still download it). Very good it is too but imagine my surprise when Ricky was pointing something out to Karl Pilkington and says
"if I want to find out what the drummer from Dodgy is doing I read the NME" - well, it's nice that you're interested Ricky but I can tell you myself, I'm co-presenting the 2 DRUMMERS DRUMMING show for the Edinburgh Festival this year with Maurice, as well as recording and playing festivals with my band Dodgy, thank you very much.

Last week was another crazy week for the 2 Drummers Team continuing to sculpt this material into something worthy of your attention.
Have you tried putting 2 Drummers Drumming into Google Alerts? Of course you haven't be we did and what a strange collection of results came through - especially if you misspell DRUMMERS. Ouch, it made my hair curl!
Turns out that we are being advertised on a Dutch website and there are '2 Drummer Drumming' playing along to Aerosmith in Denver!! Not us, your honour.

We like our trips out and we took another 2 Drummers outing this week to see the legendary Lenny Beige at the Pigalle Club in London's West End and what a splendid night we had at what is, I must say, a rather swanky joint.
David Arnold, the Bond music guy was there, as was David McAlmont - he of the incredible voice. It was great to see how a professional performs on stage and indeed we are taking Lenny himself out for dinner this week to get some much needed advice from him, I'm trusting Maurice to make sure it's kosher.

We received our first bit of proper press this week, a 3 page spread in RHYTHM magazine, it's issue 153, the august edition. Verdict so far is that we come across quite well.

Finally, I have a few words for Mr. Zane Lowe.
Now I have the utmost respect for Mr. Lowe, his taste and commitment to new music in general.
Unless you live in a cave with no electricity then you won't be reading this and you won't know that it was the Glastonbury Festival this weekend.
Anything with BBC written on it was broadcasting highlights throughout the whole 3 days. A lot of it wasn't bad, I particularly liked Vampire Weekend, The Gossip, The Verve, Eddy Grant, Jimmy Cliff and I thought Jay Z displayed remarkable intelligence and created one of those true Glastonbury moments. Actually I had never doubted that, Noel Gallagher came to our recent Dodgy gig in London and if he had asked me
'Math, what do you think about Jay-Z playing Glastonbury?"
I could have told him. You see Alex from Electric Soft Parade, who I recently played drums for and spent a lot of time in a tour van with, played Jay-Z CONSTANTLY and not only was the music top notch but Alex saw him live and said it was unbelievable and I trust his judgement.
Anyway, on BBC 3 Zane Lowe was at the forefront of all this coverage and for some reason, perhaps something in the Glastonbury water, he decided to pepper his coverage with a constant ream of 'drummer jokes'. Now if you have been following the gestatiion of our show, you will know that half the reason we are doing it, is to reclaim the reputation of the drummer back from these glib frivolities and prove that drummers save the day.
I immediately wrote to Zane and his producer to repost this fighting talk and will be challenging him to come on the show and explain himself... we can't be having 'drummer jokes' on the BBC with no right to reply!

Redditch, Phil Collins and me (by Math)

2008-06-24T14:03:00.008+01:00

Hi Math here..
A funny thing happened on the way back from the recording studio in Redditch....
Quite a catchy title don't you think, up there with Confessions Of... and Carry On.... Anyway, I was at the said studio on Sunday night, myself and Nigel from Dodgy had penned probably one of the best songs we had ever written, so come Monday morning I'm feeling extremely elated, very proud of myself and quite a bit hungover when the phone rings
"Ah yes Mathew hello, this is Joyce (?) Phil Collins' PA, we've got your letter"
Now of course my first instinct is to say "yeah,yeah...bollocks and I'm Madonna's chef!", but thankfully I restrained myself as she sounded incredibly nice, efficient and convincing.
"Phil's in Switzerland but I'm sending this over to him, I know he was a Dodgy fan so I'm sure he'd like to personally respond, what's your email address?"

Of course as soon as she hung up, I was on the interweb to check the price of EasyJet to Geneva, I thought it would look efficient to get the email from Collins and respond straight away with
"Well I'm actually just round the corner Phil, can I pop by?"

Later that day I heard that he actually mentioned Dodgy on the Letterman Show back in the 90's as a current band that he likes, so I immediately returned the compliment by saying I liked Face Value to the Portsmouth Herald who were interviewing me in the afternoon - I think he'd appreciate that. You scratch my back Phil....
NB: Note to Phil and Joyce, my usual email address is messing up a bit at the moment but you can get me on mathew@twodrummers.com
sorry dear readers I digress...

Smokes (Maurice) has been in Canada for the last week visiting his first grandchild, congratulations Gramps. The kid is only a few weeks old but he is already more responsible and has better toilet habits than Smokes.

The rehearsals for the show are getting more intense and frequent now, in fact I'm looking at a 3 day stretch this week. I could have held up a post office in South London and be given less time away from home! But there is a lot of work to do and no-one else is gonna do it for us.

More and more drummers are getting in touch, pledging their support and good wishes, which is very heartening. Keep em coming boys and girls

Since we've been working on this show and blog, I don't know whether it's just us but an important or well-known drummer seem to pop their clogs on an unusually regular basis. So we're going to give a big shout out here to Brian Davison of The Nice (he's the fella pointing in the photo).
Maurice tells me that The Love Affair and The Nice crossed paths a bit in the 60's, probably at the speakeasy, that fruity and notorious band hang out that Maurice talks about in the show. I saw that Brian had died in an obituary in The Guardian last week, a little late as he had headed for that drum stool in the sky on April 15th 2008. Brian deserves special comendation as, as well as being a great drummer and co-writing stuff for The Nice and others he later beat the demon drink and turned up doing lots of teaching and mentoring musicians in schools. So bless yer mate...
I'll let you know how the Collins situation pans out

Until next time

Math x

Fringe Programme, photos and Jamie Oliver

2008-06-16T08:27:00.004+01:00

Well, you might like to hear. Ladies and gentlemen. That we @ 2 DRUMMERS DRUMMING are now focused and the show is coming along swimmingly. The Edinburgh Fringe programme is now out and available and we are definitely there on page 166, so it's all go!
It seems that already our concept has been taken onboard across the world because last week two of ex-Pres Clinton's ex's launched their own website called 'Two Chicks Chatting' (http://genniferandpaula.com), of course, they blow it (sorry for that) on the introductory video and as far as we are concerned, ruin the franchise by saying "Welcome to two chicks talking" - Where's your aliteration girls... anyway, don't bother lingering on them two much, we much prefer the alternative description - Two Bimbos Babbling.

So onto US. Hey, we did our first bit of press last week. A feature no less, for Rhythm Magazine. This involved a photoshoot and we'd like to thank Pro-Percussion in Kentish Town for letting us use their facilities.
There was also a photoshoot for which we would like to thank photographer James. We've got a couple of the shots here (not from the actual session we might stress) but kind of behind the scenes versions to give you an idea.

No, we don't know what we were thinking jumping in the air like that either.

People have asked us if 2 DRUMMER'S DRUMMING is going to be of equal interest to girls and boys and lads and lassies. The answer is a resounding 'Yes'. We are making sure that anyone who comes to our show will leave being able to say that they know exactly what it feels like to be a drummer with the bravest amongst you being able to hold your heads high along Edinburgh High Street and say "Yes, I am a drummer" because we will give you the best first hand advice you can have. There are lots of stories to tell and let us tell you - we are not ashamed to be drummers and we will be telling you why.

As you know, we are producing this show ourselves. It's a bit hairy, as by the end of June we still have to raise our final £2,500 to enable us to put the show on. We are also looking for a production assistant to help us in our Edinburgh adventure, so if you know anyone, please let us know to info@twodrummers.com

OUR DAILY GUESTS - UPDATE
For those that have been following our quest to have a different guest drummer for each performance. We certainly put a lot of effort in last week to researching and approaching these. A great bit of news is that Jamie Oliver (www.jamieoliver.com) will actually be in Edinburgh, just for one day, during the run. For those that didn't know, yes, Jamie is also a drummer. At the moment, getting along to join us on the show between 4.30 and 5.30pm might be pushing his schedule but we are now in touch with his very helpful people and if it is possilbe hopefully he'll come on down. There will certainly be a cooking theme to that day's show.
We also spoke to Zak Starkey last week, who is not going to be sitting on the Oasis stool as they launch their new album but will be doing some stuff with The Who. He's not yet sure what he's doing in August but it's unlikely at this stage that he will end up being one of our guests, though we hope he'll be sending us a message of support.
We've already mentioned in our blog here, that Al Murray pub landlord is a drummer. Well Al has a new TV sketch show he's working on so won't be up in Edinburgh this year but he did get in touch and said that he might be bumping into Roger Taylor from Queen and would pass on our invitation to him as well.
We'll let you know how it goes ;-)

Phil Collins and Kenny Jones

2008-05-04T09:29:00.003+01:00

We made another little step this week and now have our website up and running at www.twodrummers.com
We are doing all this stuff ourselves and though we pressed the button and launched the website our Forum immediately sunk - we are doing everything we can to refloat it but are particularly pleased at the way in which we have managed to integrate our blog here into the site.

We also learnt recently that Phil Collins has let slip in an interview with The Times (Times Online) that he is announcing his retirement. This is surely a damaging broadside to our efforts to get Phil to be one of our special guests during the Edinburgh run. We haven't given up hope totally, perhaps retirement means that moments of reflection and assessment, like appearing with us on 2 DRUMMERS DRUMMING, might be deemed outside the guidelines of retirement.
From the Times interview it appears that Phil will continue song writing and concentrate on nurturing his collection of memorabilia relating to the Battle of the Alamo. Well we consider 2 Drummers a broad church and would be more than pleased if we could lure Phil over from Switzerland to tell us first hand about his collection.

As usual while we were reading about Phil another strange case of synchronicity happened. Kenny Jones of The Faces and The Who etc is also one of our main drummer targets and we have been trying to contact him with an invitation this week. Kenny is involved with the Hurtwood Park Polo Club, he regularly holds charity events for his Small Faces Charity there and Mathew has attended one of these (of course).
Anyway this Saturday patrons were able to enjoy the music of Los Endos who are advertised as playing "the music of Genesis from the Gabriel and Hackett era in the '70s. The greatest decade in the history of rock music". No doubt we'll be examining that proposition in the show
see you soon....

Photos? Us?

2008-04-11T16:24:00.002+01:00

well it was an important day yesterday as we had to get the photies taken for the promo for the show, but because our fat controller is off stoking Thomas's tender then the job was left up to Smokes and me (so if they're crap then blame that sodding Tank Engine). Well obviously not JUST me and Mo, we also had world famous photographer Pat Pope to help us also. Pat and I go way back, not just a good friend but he also came on one of Dodgy's mental journies to Bosnia, I think we told him we were going to Italy, to this day I'm not sure he's twigged.

Anyway Pat had his work cut out for him because, being drummers, we were never the focal point of photos, 'just stand at the back and look like you want to be there' were the instructions most of the time, and to tell you the truth, that's the best place to be as photo shoots can be tedious things after you've done as many as us, which reminds me of that classic Charlie Watts quote

"so Charlie, 25 years in the music business, any thoughts?"

"yeah, 5 years playing and 20 years hanging about"

But Pat made it relatively harmless (apart from his knees!) in fact we rather enjoyed it and as long as he sticks to the remit - make sure the pic doesn't scare young children, then we should be fine.

Onwards

Math x

Oh Ringo... come on the show

2008-04-10T20:45:00.002+01:00

Poor Ringo... he's still not Top Of The Pops in Liverpool... now they've gone and chopped his head off in proper 19th century fashion...
read the story in the Liverpool Post HERE

Ringo, surely it's time to stand up and tell your side of the story?
Don't worry people , Ringo is one of our Drummer Personality Identification Playing Card Aces and we'll be doing everything we can to get him sharing a stage with us and telling a few stories.. anyone got Ringo's number...?

Also, we noted today that there's a rumour that Razorlight drummer Andy Burrows has a solo album coming out and we'll also be inviting him to come and promote that and talk about stuff during the Edinburgh Run... we're hotting up on our guest drummer invites now, so you have any suggestions or contacts with top famous drummers that you think might want to appear as a guest on our show during the Edinburgh run... please check out our FORUM and let us know...

Al Murray, Roger Taylor, Queen and a video featuring Charlie Watts

2008-04-05T08:45:00.007+01:00

We got two of our target drummers for one on the TV last night, on Al Murray, Pub Landlord's HAPPY HOUR

For those that don't know Al Murray is a bone fide drummer, so he's on our list (listed on our Drummer Personality Identification playing cards as a 'Joker'). On his chat show last night not only did he have Denise Van Outen, who used to step out with Mathew's band mate from Dodgy Andy Miller but he also had Queen featuring Paul Rogers... pretty massive band for an ITV Friday night chat show.
QUEEN actually rocked and apparently have a new album out in September and a tour in October.. Paul Rogers seemed to be in particularly fine voice and condition... anyway, this means that Roger Taylor is going to be wanting to do some promotion before the album release, so Edinburgh in August might be attractive to him.... we'll let you know how it goes ;-)

In the meantime, CHARLIE WATTS was back in town for the UK premiere of The Rolling Stones concert film 'Shine A Light' this week. OK, we tried to blag in again but couldn't wangle an invite. Anyway, we'd like to thank David, for pointing us to this You Tube video of Charlie guiding us through the 'art' "I like rock and roll because it's dance music" - Charlie is our ACE OF SPADES

2 Drummers Drumming confirmed for Edinburgh Fringe

2008-04-03T10:16:00.006+01:00

We're calling last Monday, 31st March - MANIC MONDAY. On account of it being deadline day for our participation on the Edinburgh Fringe.
Before the weekend we weren't 100% sure our venture would still be on track but gave it one final push on Monday.
Our task being to confirm some of our finance for the project, secure our slot at a venue, pay our registration fees for the Fringe programme, think of 40 words to describe our show and hopefully also get an advert booked in the Fringe Programme.

After we had marched each other to the cashpoints on Monday morning we had £1,000 ... but we needed more to get our feet firmly on the bass drum pedal.
The turning point came just before lunchtime... we might have failed to tell you, that our main producer had left us to our own devices a couple of weeks ago to take up a job on a touring production of Thomas The Tank Engine. Uncanily, the show is called 'Thomas Saves The Day' and it looks like he might because our producer's employers made us a further offer of £1,000 seed money towards a venue deposit.

THE VENUE: Now, we must admit, we have been keeping our cards pretty close to our chest as far as potential venues goes. The fact is, that the very first time we set about investigating our participation on The Fringe we searched the database of venues, putting in our criteria for facilities. Pressed the search button and just one potential venue came up initially...THE BONGO CLUB ;-) ..
how's that for synchronicity? 2 DRUMMERS DRUMMING AT THE BONGO CLUB... it doesn't really get much better than that.. and do you know what.. it didn't. We carried on looking and went to a Fringe Roadshow, where we met a whole bunch of nice people but nothing inspired us as much as TWO DRUMMERS DRUMMING AT THE BONGO CLUB ... so that .. friends is where will be... and have secured the 4.30 - 5.30pm slot.

Once we had this pinned downed, we then had to go online and fill out the multitude of pages that constitute Fringe Registration. Suddenly we had to decide how much our ticket price would be and if we would allow students and old people to get in cheaper - you will be pleased to know... we will.,. and.. it will be cheaper to see us if you come during the week rather than at weekends. We are also doing some previews for a fiver.
The first weekend, 1st and 2nd of August... The Love Affair are playing some festivals in Germany so, with Maurice away, we won't be performing then.
At one point it looked like Maurice would be stepping off a plane and entering The Bongo Club for the first time (ever) 5 minutes before the show starts... he wouldn't even know where the fire door was if he wanted to do a runner!.. so now we have arranged some previews on 30th/31st July and also the show on August 3rd will be designated a preview as we don't know what state Maurice will be in.. but that's all part of the fun of the show.. eh peeps?
We also spent an age emailing backwards and forwards, how to describe our show in exactly 40 words... 40 words that has to include the title and the website address.. which leaves 36 in our case. We also had to work out how to present ourselves... Maurice and Mathew.. Math and Mo? ... would people know who we were... in the end we have proposed the full monty which is Mathew Priest from Dodgy and Maurice Bacon from The Love Affair - a bit long winded but it gets extra words on the page and explains exactly who we are.

So it's all systems go on the Edinburgh Fringe
TWO DRUMMERS DRUMMING @ THE BONGO CLUB
Previews: 30th/31st July/ 3rd August 4.30pm (55mins)
Show run: 4th - 24th August (specific info later) 4.30pm (55mins)

Dodgy amazing @ Shepherds bush - practice kit here I come

2008-04-01T16:30:00.004+01:00

Our actual rehearsals for Two Drummers Drumming had been put on hold for a couple of weeks while Matt has been out and about touring with DODGY.

When I play with The Love Affair these days, it's usually at weekends but after 10 years Mathew and his ol' muckers... decided to do a proper tour. Which meant him attending band rehearsals doing warm up gigs and onto the tour bus.
So like a lot of people, when I went to see DODGY last week, it was for the first time in quite a few years and come to think of it, I hadn't actually seen Mathew play drums for years either, somewhat surprising since we have been working on the show for a couple of months now.
Someone pointed at me as if they recognised me but then I realised I was standing infront of Noel Gallagher... the return of Dodgy had certainly brought out the great and good, it was only a couple of weeks ago that Mathew and me were here watching the Zombies with the likes of Robert Plant and Paul Weller, so Shepherd's Bush is certainly the place to be.
Well what a revelation Matt was.... I am not always going to go on about drummers but bugger me, he was amazing. Every now and again, as a drummer, you get a band that brings something magical out in your playing and Dodgy certainly do that for Mathew.

As we both prepare to step out onstage as part of 2 Drummers Drumming, I have been quite comfortable with the thought of sharing the same stage as Mathew, with the banter, talking and swapping stories .. but I was suddenly filled with an unusual fear at any thought of us actually playing drums on the same stage during the show...
his playing and the show were truly monumental...
I had no thought of staying for the aftershow party... no more ligging, it was straight home to the practice kit... there's work to be done...

Edinburgh - Ronnie Vannucci Jnr

2008-03-31T17:52:00.003+01:00

WELL IT'S just been announced that The Killers are going to be headlining the Reading and Leeds festivals in August
Read the NME news piece HERE

This is good news for us, because it means that one of our grade A, drummer identification playing card targets Ronnie Vannucci Jnr is going to be in town.. well, ... on UK soil so that's a start...
As a kid, Vannucci claims to have banged every object in his parents' house, even the vacuum cleaner. At age 6, he became the youngest musician to perform in a Las Vegas band; he played drums for "Play That Funky Music White Boy" at a lounge in Ceasars Palace... what a guest he would be.
So Mr. Vannucci here's your invitation, please come up to the great city of Edinburgh and be a guest on our show... be sure we will be doing everything we can to lure him towards the castle

Fringe Deadlines.... deadlines ... deadlines

2008-03-31T13:31:00.002+01:00

Well with Math's storming comeback gigs with the original members of Dodgy last week,.
Click HERE to read a great review in The Guardian Today..
our eyes were slightly off the ball with the impending deadlines for our participation in the Edinburgh Fringe.. in fact.. THEY ARE TODAY!

So we have just the hours left in the last day of March to confirm our financing we need to register for the Fringe and secure our venue..... angels... are you out there?
We'll let you know how this goes... if we don't do this right today, there will be NO Edinburgh show, at least for this year... hold onto your hats....

TWO DRUMMERS found in Bath together shocker

2008-03-09T17:11:00.011Z

In the first of our 2Drummers outings this week, the team went to Bath to see the editor of Rhythm magazine , we want to have just one drum magazine allied to this production and naturally they are at the top of our list ....

oh, hang on, right, u read the title of this blog and thought that Mo and me were actually IN a bath together?

He he ha, no, it was just a bit of gentle wordplay there, a pun on the word 'bath' to be specific, in the same way I could have generated some slight mirth by punning on the word 'outings' in the first sentence by pretending that we went to Bath to expose a prominent local celebrity as a secret homosexual.

NOT GUILTY on both counts there, your honour. I didn't actually pun on 'outings' and I didn't 'out' anyone in the wonderful city of Bath.. or even.. The bath.

RHYTHM is the UK's best selling magazine for drummers and is probably the only title on the shelves with no vowels, apart from DVD but that's an acronym so doesn't count. I have been a contributor to Rhythm mag now for a few years. My column has mostly been concerned with reviewing demos that get sent in, though I was awarded my own page for a few years that took in the reviews as well as allowing me to talk absolute bollocks about anything music related for 1500 words. Wonderful it was. I could rant against so called 'musicians' as much as I wanted.

I was first lured to work for Rhythm by the then editor Louise. The editor changed and my expansive column was chopped and I was back to reviewing demos. I'm surprised it lasted that long but a lot of people still come up to me and say that they desperately miss my page as it was the funniest thing in the mag. My answer is always that the magazine was not meant to be funny, it's meant to be about drums, so stop smiling!

Anyway, you'll be pleased to know that the meeting went well. We met The Editor (the new one, that cut my column, the bastard!) and was lovely and enthusiastic. Damn, don't you just hate that?

Anyway, our trip was also combined with one of our sessions to swap stories and mine material for the show. The best moment of the day happened when I was asking Smokes about the 60's, about how things happened for the first time in that era, such as teenage hysteria for bands.

"I mean, where did all the screaming girls come from?" I asked

Mo smiled "Where did they go?" was his response..

Made me laugh for a good few minutes that and made me realise that .. perhaps, between us, maybe we could be funny for a short period. Like an hour onstage. That would be good.

anyway, the sharpest amongst you would have noticed earlier that I mentioned that the Bath trip was the first of two 'outings' this week involving 2 Drummers. Well done.

oh, great.. you still sniggering about 'outings'.. go on.. get it out.. well the other is that we have blagged guest list to see The Zombies for the final performance of their sold out stint in London tonight.

"Why The Zombies?" we hear you cry.. well they made their magnum opus 'Odessey And Oracle' around the time that Maurice hit fame and fortune and it's influence has remained until the here and now, when I have been in many a new bands tour bus and they have said "have you heard this?"... it is a kind of lost masterpiece because the original band split up before they could promote it.. anyways.. we'll let you know how it goes...

Math x

Drummer BUDDY MILES RIP

2008-03-04T09:44:00.003Z

As we keep you up to date on our own journey, we'll also be posting any drummerly news we think might be relevent and we were saddened last week by the loss of Buddy Miles.

Buddy is most famously known as the drummer in Jimi Hendrix's Band of Gypsys, he was a great drummer and also founding member of the band Electric Flag. He had a colourful life and as well as drumming he was widely heard as the lead voice of the California Raisins in television commercials.

Also as our show is very much grown from the roots of Maurice's experience as a chart band in the 60's, we should also mention Mike Smith, singer with the Dave Clark Five, who also passed away last week. He had been preparing to travel to New York to be inducted into the American Rock'n'Roll Hall of Fame with his band mates on March 10.

Drummer personality Identification Playing Cards

2008-02-22T10:43:00.011Z

In the 2003 invasion of Iraq by a United States-led coalition, the U.S. military developed a set of playing cards to help troops identify the most-wanted members of President Saddam Hussein's government, mostly high-ranking Baath Party members or members of the Revolutionary Command Council.

The cards were officially named the "personality identification playing cards" - just add 'drummer' to the front of that and that's the system we are going to use to categorise and target the potential guest drummers for our Edinburgh show. Perhaps we should apologise at this point for the amount of military jargon we are employing, the producers of this show continue to label Maurice and Mathew the FNGs - another military term used to describe raw, untrained recruits... the Fucking New Guys...FNGs.. so at this point, yes a disclaimer from the team, we under no circumstances support or condone the US military or it's activities in Iraq, yep, we were on the march.. well, some of us anyway.

And so onto Drummer Personality Identification Playing Cards.
We have approximately 20 shows to find guests for, so we decided to make a chart using 10s to Aces with five jokers to act as wild cards.. that's looking to highlight the list of our 25 most-wanted guest drummers.
So we set about debating the issue of who should go where, who are the Aces and who are the 10s?.. and who might be offended not being placed higher up the scale. Remembering all the time, that were going to make every effort possible to try and persuade our targets to appear on the show.
From the off, Charlie Watts is our Ace Of Hearts... he had to be, cuddly Charlie and Mathew already took the card when he tracked down Charlie in Berlin at the premiere of the new Stones film 'Shine A Light' when it opened the Berlin Film Festival a couple of weeks back... Charlie, target No.1 Ace Of Hearts...

The rest of the debate was interesting, at some times heated and lasted well into the night, from beer to coffee and back again... some interesting inflections were added to the concept.. after a couple of hours, Jacks had become synonymous with jr.s .. sons of.. and there steadfastly holding their ground were Larry Mullen Jr... Zak Starkey (Ringo jnr.) and um a certain Danny Bacon... son of Maurice, the thinking there being, perhaps it might be easier to persuade him onto the stage than Larry or Zak.. but hey.. at this point we're not giving up on anyone...
The Queens attracted a lot of interest... a whole train of debate went on female drummers but it was a no-brainer that Meg White should be the Queen Of Hearts... Meg, if you're reading this and can see yourself on stage at Edinburgh.. contact us before we contact you.. because contact you we will...
Somehow, Animal (from The Muppet Show) also made it to the tens, now you might suspect that we are NOT going to get Animal onto the show, now that may be so but we will certainly be considering showing the clip below:
.

The there's Roger Taylor.. of Queen.. surely a shoe in for the Queen Of Clubs....
yes, Roger's there as well... and so it went on and now.. we have our final set of Drummer Personality Identification Playing Cards.. that's the easy bit.. now, we have to find ways to persuade them to come and appear with us at Edinburgh.. anyone got contact details for Phil Collins?

PS. There will be a twodrummers.com website forum at some point so people can suggest potential guest drummers and offer hints for helping us getting touch with our more elusive targets...

Edinburgh Fringe Roadshow - London

2008-02-22T09:44:00.005Z

We want to participate and get as much of the Edinburgh Fringe experience as we can, so we attended the February Fringe Roadshow in London. The Fringe holds these roadshows at the beginning of the year not only in the UK but also New York and Australia - it truly is an international event.

We went, to put our toe in the water as it were, pick up a few tips and see if we could meet some useful people to help us on our way. It was held at a theatre in north London and was packed to the rafters with prospective performers and a bunch of venue and promoter representatives. The first course was a panel of Fringe 'experts'; their press officer, their leader, a representative from a theatre company that has been taking stuff to the fringe for the past few years, a venue promoter and a lady that sorts out 'connections' at the festival for opportunities for places to take your show after the fringe. Presuming, that is, you achieve some level of success.
The general theme of the panel is 'don't expect to come to Edinburgh and make money'.... in fact, in answer to one persistent questioner was, probably... expect to lose your shirt. This rattles us slightly as on our venture we are not really in a position to put our shirts on the line to lose. The festival regular suggests a kind of five year plan, lose money the first year, get to know the festival and then you will be in a position to find success. For us though, our venture this year is all or nothing, we are determined to make it a success despite the odds. Are we foolish or inspired? We'll just have to wait and see.
After the panel do their stuff and a short question and answer session. A line of venue promoters then comes up on the stage, given a two minute pitch slot to tell us about their venue(s). Then we are invited to join them in the theatre bars where they each have a table - rather like a mini trade fair. As this is held in the bar, first instinct is to dive in and buy a beer. Then beer in hand head for the tables with the thought that perhaps the bottle doesn't necessarily exude the professionalism we wish. Never mind - the first venue we approach we try and get the lay of the land. Are we selling them our show or are they selling us their venue?

Coming from the music business we kind of feel we should be telling them about our show and in response they offer us 5 star accommodation and a prime slot. We actually meet some nice promoters. The Edinburgh Fringe is obviously a BIG year-round occupation for some promoters. We also tell people about Two Drummers Drumming and try to get a few vox pops on whether we should be presenting/listing it under either the 'music' or 'comedy' categories. The resounding answer is Comedy with a capital 'C'. We are told in no uncertain terms, whatever it is put comedy in front of it - if you're doing 'King Lear' - comedy - Sarah Kane's 'Blasted' - comedy. At Edinburgh, comedy sells.
We have actually had some flyers done for the roadshow and luckily and presumptiously we described our show as 'hilarious' even though there was a spelling typo. The overall reaction to the idea of our show was unanimously positive though, some people actually having heard of our drummers, though some of the bigger venues were asking for a DVD of the show or a script. Needless to say we don't have either of those yet, though the idea of a 'script' certainly focuses us.
So the Fringe Roadshow - overall, not a waste of a Saturday afternoon and we certainly feel a bit more part of the whole experience but deadlines are looming and we need to make some solid progress over the next month and at least get our venue confirmed.