[Nancy Guppy] Up next, author and musician Steve Louden talks
about his new book on punk rock drumming. [S.W.
Lauden] It's like a lot of people, I grew up listening to music,
and I was really lucky to have two older brothers
who would play me records and took me to concerts.
So I got to see Aerosmith and Dio and Def Leppard.
But when I was twelve, some neighborhood high school kids played the Dead
Kennedys record "In God We Trust Inc.." For
me, it scared the heck out of me.
It was so fast. The vocals were so crazy.
The words that I understood
were a little bit frightening when he was singing about.
But at the same time, the energy of it, specifically the drumming....
and I was just kind of starting to toy with the idea of becoming a drummer
and punk rock kind of gave me permission , right?
Because listening to classic rock, it almost seems like you have to be at this
like expert level before you can even start to play.
But with punk, it was like buy a drum set and start a band the next day.
♪ Punk music plays ♪
Punk rock was really important to me
personally, just because of one, the age at which I discovered it.
It really felt like something that I could own myself
and help define myself in a really important time in my life.
But it also was during this period of my life
where my mind was kind of getting blown every 15 minutes.
You know, maybe that's like synapses connecting or puberty
or I don't know what, but punk rock
hit me around the same time as literature.
And so the two of always kind of gone hand-in-hand for me.
Around the same time that I discovered punk rock, I discovered
Kurt Vonnegut, or Charles Bukowski, John Fante, Jack Kerouac.
And so it makes perfect sense in my mind that I would make a book eventually
that married those two things.
♪ Punk music plays ♪
"Forbidden Beet: Perspectives on Punk
Drumming" is a collection of essays, interviews and top five lists
where drummers get to talk about their five favorite influences.
I made this more as a celebration.
It's a total labor of love.
But I read a lot of musical nonfiction, and there's just not a lot of spotlight
put on drummers, specifically when you read punk books.
Which is why when I read "Stranded in the Jungle" by Curt Weiss, his book
about Jerry Nolan from the New York Dolls, he was one of the first person I asked
to be in the book because it was so well written and I could sense his passion.
[Curt Weiss] You know, if you want something
energetic and aggressive, you know a punk rock is really it.
You want something you could stomp to and with like
primal scream and primal beat, and there's nothing more primal than the drums.
♪ Punk music plays ♪
Those first few raw Ramones records are perfect.
There's nothing to change about them.
You know? Like those songs are a minute and 48 seconds some of them,
and the lyrics are just this bursts of screaming about 'let's have fun
and my whole family are mentally challenged
and let's have a party.'
I really liked writing the piece about Jerry.
I could just concentrate on him as a player and the impact
his playing had on the music and the music that came a few years after, like,
you know, being able to write about the Psychedelic Furs
and the Replacements and two completely different bands
who didn't sound anything like the New York Dolls,
who got a lot from the Dolls and it got a lot from Jerry.
Punks are non traditionalist, you could argue,
but there was something about the tradition lives,
and I get to be a part of letting people know that tradition lives on.
[S.W. Lauden] I think a lot of people automatically when they hear drummer book,
they think that it's going to
be a technical manual that's basically going to teach you how to play drums.
And so I had to like kind of refine my pitch for people
and explain to them that this isn't a technical manual
that will teach you how to play punk rock drums.
All you got to do to play punk rock drums is get some drums or some trash cans...
And congratulations, you're a punk rock drummer.
But this is more about the stories of people's journeys
to how they became the punk rock drummers that they are, and the kinds of drummers
and musicians and bands that influenced them along that journey.
[Nancy Guppy] "Forbidden Beat:
Perspectives on Punk Drumming" is available in bookstores and online.
Steve and Curt will take part in a virtual book event at Third Place
Books on Tuesday, April 5th.
And catch Art Zone Friday nights
at 8 and anytime online at seattlechannel.org/artzone.