Wall of Mouths

For ‘high profile’ read ‘second rate tat’.

From T? to Snow Patrol. Talk about your downward spiral.

How’s he going to make their dull, lifeless rubbish fit in with his drumming sensibilities?

The mind boggles.

Title: Christ, I’m old!

Mine was in ‘92 at the Junction in Cambridge.

If I remember rightly, they had Cornershop supporting them (before Fatboy remixed their one and only) and it was in support of Nurse.

Brilliant experience from the minute my mate’s dad picked us up to the moment we were dropped off again.

The best part was I got to shake the hand of my drumming idol, Mr Ewing.

Of course I froze, shat myself and could only say ‘well drummed, mate’.

He looked at me bizarely and scuttled away with several tins of Red Stripe in tow!

15 years ago. T? have been with me for half my life!

Cornershop, needless to say, haven’t :D

Title: Quality stuff..

..and Manson totally blows the rest out of the water.

The only downside is the snap of Fyfe near the end in the video. Brought a tear to my eye :(

Still, I thought Mr Cooper did a great job.

Well done all round.

Fyfe used to trigger the samples, hence the reason there is a severe derth of them from Semi-Detached onwards.

He used a Drumkat or something. Watch the video from the Brixton Academy gig - you can see him triggering the vocal sample and the dentist’s drill, too.

That other drummer looked a lot like Matt Cameron from Soundgarden / Pearl Jam.

As for the ‘who’s the best drummer’ debate, I’m going to stay well away from this one this time, suffice to say I’m firmly and unmoveably planted in the Fyfe camp.

The man is the drummer I aspire to be half as good as.

I remember that Noisy Mothers video too - I’ve got it kicking around somewhere along with a performance from some festival or other (to give you an idea of when, Stone Temple Pilots, Bad Brains, Bad Religion and The Gigalo Aunts were included on it as well!).

Happy days indeed.

Title: On the strength of this thread…

.. I listened to IL in full for the first time in a long while last night.

It was a joy to behold, subject matter aside :D !

Title: Cheers Alan…

.. I’m glad you’ve soothed my paranoid mind!

Title: With regard to the best drum riffs…

.. both Teethgrinder and Hypermania are not dificult to perfect the way Fyfe played them. They just require a good level of dexterity.

Also, I find Meat Abstract dead easy. In general, I find I can play note for note with most of Fyfe’s beats.

Either I’m doing them wrong or I’m a better drummer than I give myself credit for! And I’m begging to think it may be the latter.

To be fair though, I did play along with Babyteeth, Pleasure Death and Nurse incessantly when I was younger, so that may have something to do with it!

NB: Please don’t think I’m an arrogant arse, coz I’m not. Thankyou very much.

Title: Apparently…

.. Unbeliever was written when T? were touring the US with Helmet, and they used to downtune their guitars to take the mick out of Paige and the boys during soundchecks.

hey thought it sounded good, so they wrote a song in which they downtuned and got Paige on board fo the solo.

Title: You have to admit that most of us would be able to empathise with…

.. “Fuck, you waste my time…” and “fucking you got boring when it didn’t feel so wrong…” at some point in your life.

If you haven’t, you’re very fortunate.

I have, and these songs mirrored by mental state and my anger towards the girl in question.

IL was a kind of concept album, with the David Holmes musical skits weaving the songs together seamlessly.

I love the way the ‘disease’ lyric from Me Vs You fades out before Holmes’ bridging sample, and then the positivity of Loose kicks in.

I also think the battles sounds before Misery kicks in are very clever, mimicking the battleground of love.

In my opinion, T? have done better albums, but not many.

Oh yeah, one other thing about IL.

Someone may be able to correct me, but I thought the lyrics to Loose were changed, too; I seem to remember a radio session before IL was released (or maybe I heard it live(?), I can’t remember), and there was a totally different tone to the song.

Mayb I’m imagining it, I don’t know.

Title: Dr Bigjoint…

.. like I said, I don’t know how legal the site was.

Thanks for the info.

Title: Question for drum enthusiasts

I’m thinking about part-exing my old Sonor kit for a Sonor Force 3005 kit in Sunburst high gloss.

I’ve been having a search on the internet, but I can’t find any reviews of this kit.

I love my old kit’s sound, and want to keep with Sonor, so has anyone heard anything about these kits, good or bad?

I know they’re made in China, but apparently they have all maple shells now, so it can’t be all bad in the sweatshop over there!

Cheers in advance.

Title: This site has some

http://www.mp3search.ru

You have to put $30 US into an account, but all downloads are then just $0.10, and albums are about $1.10.

I think they’ve got a fair bit of T? stuff available. Unfortunately, I’m not sure how legal this is.

http://www.mp3search.ru/artist.html?id=5677

Title: That’s be great!

“Surprise, cockfags!” (massive drum intro, crunching guitars, pounding bassline)

Title: “Here I Am Muthafuckers…” in Nausea…

..is quoted by Nick Cave, but it’s from a film called Ghosts Of The Civil Dead.

As correctly quoted, “Wake up… Time to die!” is from Bladerunner, and is said by the character Leon (I think) when he’s wrestling with Decker on a car bonnet.

Title: Well, I like to try and help…

.. but I’m sure there are others here who can give you a beter run down of Fyfe’s influences on T? than me.

I’m just a shade obsessed with his drumming style!

Title: Too right

Innocent X is a dance song performed by a rock/metal band.

Listen to the fill in the middle, and it turns into some kind of marching band, but then Fyfe delivers a dance style build up once more.

Meat Abstract, DLC and Dancin’ With Manson (in parts) showcase a dancier tinged element to T?’s earlier stuff, only able to be performed because of Fyfe’s style.

But there’s not only this to consider; look at Loser Cop (my favourtie T? track of all time).

Fyfe (like Graham and Neil) had the abilty to switch to a jazz style with ultimate ease; but what sets Fyfe apart was the ability to slip back into the dance influenced stuff and build the song up again till the sample kicks in and all hell breaks loose.

That one song highlights just what Fyfe Ewing gave to T? as a band, and also gives a reason for his departure.

I couldn’t imagine T? writing a song like that today, not only because the band has moved on musically, but because they don’t have the same muscians they had then.

Title: One thing that astounds me…

.. is the number of drummers amongst T? fans.

Can it be something to do with the fact they’ve had 3 fairly inventive drummers behind the sticks?

Anyhow, I’ll list my kit just for the hell of it.

Sonor Force 2000 in black with a white Force 2000 snare.

Shamefully,I don’t know my bass drum dimensions, but I know I’ve got a 14” rack mounted tom and an 18” floor tom, with bog standard Sonor hardware and a left hand side mounted quarter tom to get that ‘Teethgrinder’ sound.

I have 14” Z custom hats, 16” and 18” Z custom rock crashes, 17” A custom projection crash, 18” Z custom china, and a 20” Z power rock ride.

My heads are all Remo (coated Ambassador batter, tightened beyond what’s good for it by a combination of drum key, screwdriver and pliers (don’t ask) on the snare, pinstripe on toms and bass) and my sticks are Vic Firth American Classic Rock.

Unless I became left handed, I don’t think I could Fyfe my kit up any more :)

Title: Fyfe was an awesome drummer…

.. mysterious and famously dismissive of fame.

He had all the rudiments you need to be a top drummer, but he’d then go off on a tangent with some crazy happy hardcore inspired fill or riff (witness Teethgrinder and Hypermania and latterly Isolation).

I’ve never seen anyone command the kit as well as he could. It’s a shame he decided to leave, for whatever reason, but in my opinion Therapy? were looking at changing their style, which was evident in the Suicide Pact… and Shameless era.

This was more dirty rock ‘n’ roll than their earlier stuff (I assume most of Semi Detached was conceived when Fyfe was still in the band, as Graeme offered an entirely different direction after this album, whereas SD is similar to Troublegum with the catchy choruses and singles potential had A&M done their job properly) and I don’t believe it fitted in with Fyfe’s outlook or style.

Fyfe was an industrial/punk style drummer, not pure rock ‘n’ roll. I’m not saying he couldn’t do that, because he undoubtedly could; it just wasn’t on his radar.

Anyway, I digress. Fyfe was the man who has influenced my style more than anyone, so much so that I bought the same drums and cymbals as him in a vain effort to get that distinctive sound.

I was having look on the Sonor website the other day (Fyfe used Sonor and Zildjian in T?, but apparently switched to Pearl drums when he was in Divers), and in the endorsements section, he’s listed now as being in a band called The Score.

I cannot find any links to this particular band, nor does anything come up with a search using ‘Fyfe Ewing’ as a keyword.

I’m still mystified as to why he appears to have given up on mainstream drumming, because when you hear the crap drummers in bands today, it makes you realise just how different and inventive he was.

The list below is alphabetised.

http://sonor-world.com/cgi-sys/Sonor_FE/sonor/english/endorser.ht … 8a8624a4fc

Title: Teethgrinder was once played by…

Steve Macdonald in Coronation Street!

Title: My choice would have to be…

..

01. Loser Cop
02. Dancin’ With Manson
03. Prison Breaker
04. Disgracelands
05. Hypermania
06. Knives
07. Brainsaw
08. Misery
09. Me vs You
10. Tightrope Walker
11. Safe
14. Jam Jar Jail
15. I Am The Money
16. Hey Statan - You Rock!
17. Stand In Line
18. If It Kills Me

PLUS a bonus B-sides disc with:

01. Auto Surgery
02. Evil Elvis (The Lost Demo)
03. Summer Of Hate
04. Opal Mantra

Title: I would have to say to the good Reverend…

.. the mere fact that Fyfe was an instinctive drummer was much more in keeping with Therapy?’s sound as a band than that of Graham’s drumming.

To me, T? have always been an instinctive band. If you listen to the guitar riffs, they’re so simple, and I’m sure Andy wouldn’t profess to be the best technical guitarist in the world. And because of that, Graham’s more measured and technically correct approach didn’t seem to fit.

When Graham came on board, he brought all the technical bits with him, a background in jazz (as he told me when I interviwed him), and he introduced patterns and off-beat rhythms which Fyfe didn’t.

Thealbum he displayed a style closest to Fyfe’s is without doubt Semi Detached - after that, T?’s style altered and personally, I think the fact Fyfe left (whether that was orchestrated or natural progression) meant that T? were able to go in a new direction which Fyfe’s drumming wouldn’t allow.

T? are more rock ‘n’ roll now, whereas with Fyfe, there was clear evidence that his love of dance music, which translated into his drumming technique, influenced the band as a whole, including the guitars and bass. The sample lead songs were testament to this.

Fyfe’s drumming, because he probably was less rigid in as much as his fills weren’t technically perfect, was far more inventive than Graham’s. He had less rules to follow, and therefore he created his own drumming style.

With Graham, the fact he was more structured, to me, makes him bland in comparison.

I don’t think, in all the years I’ve been listening to T?, that Graham Hopkins, or for that matter Neil Cooper, has ever come up with a Teethgrinder, a Hypermania, an Innocent X, a Meat Abstract or a Dancin’ With Manson.

Fyfe was the man who inspired me to play drums because he thought outside of the box. That is what makes him an integeral part of T? and why they’ve possibly never filled his shoes, so to speak.

Title: Part of the problem has been the line-up changes

When Fyfe left, it was a complete shock, because that was when they were just really breaking it big.

Andy has gone on record as saying he doesn’t really like Infernal Love, and you could construe that as an admission that they did make the wrong album after Troublegum.

Having said that, Fyfe could easily have drummed Semi Detached, but after that, when their style changed from power pop to the full on metal assault of SP - YF, I doubt whether the original line up could have continued; therefore Graeme came in and gave them a different dimension, allowed them to come up with different time structures and segways in their music which didn’t exist when Fyfe was in the band and altered their perception.

They started to play the ‘fuck you’ music of SP - YF through to Shameless, which were much less commercially acceptable, but a full on rock ‘n’ roll albums.

Now, on High Anxiety, yoiu can hear a slight return to the earlier days, with If It Kills Me, Stand In Line, and Hey Satan! You Rock, for example, proving that they’ve had their darker period, and now they want to go back to the slightly more fun, typical Therapy? style - awesome lyrics, great versus and kick ass choruses.

To me, that’s what T? have always been about, from Punishment Kiss, Dancin’ With Manson and Potato Junkie through the singles laden Troublegum, right up to now.

Even the so called darker albums had their single potential moments - Jam Jar JaiI and I Am The Money for example - and if the music industry wasn’t as fucked up as it is, these would have enjoyed massive airplay because they’re awesome and unlike all other music out there.

Title: Re: Re: OK, do your worst!

White Psycho wrote:

I’ve no idea where they are! My geography is terrible, but hi anyway!

Altrincham’s near Manchester, Peterborough’s in Cambridgeshire. And it sucks.

In case you’re interested in increasing your geographical knowledge!

:rolleyes:

Title: Best track from the album, but…

.. whatever happened to Fatal?

Maybe someone should investigate! :D

Title: OK, do your worst!

Morning guys!

Just a quickie as I’m at work and should really be concerned with today’s editorial deadline as opposed to a T? website, but what the hell, eh?

Been a T? fan for ever, Caucasion Psychosis was the soundtrack to my life for many a year (got me through some tough times), favourite track ever by T? is Loser Cop (yet I’ve never seen them play it live :( ) and I had the pleasure of interviewing Graham Hopkins for my newspaper when T? toured the UK in 2001. Oh, and at the same gig , Andy thought I was a security guard and asked me to let him into the venue!

Best ever T? moment?

Meeting the greatest drummer who ever lived, Mr Fyfe Ewing, albeit far too briefly.

I too am from the North (Altrincham for those who are interested), but I’m exiled in the armpit of hell which masquerades as Peterborough. Eugh.

Tara for now.

“All we represent to them, man, is someone who needs a haircut”