Drum Covers?

It was an interesting question that arose today… Pro-Mark drumsticks (a company whose products are amazing, by the way) asked on all of their social media channels… “Tell us about your latest drum covers”.

If you are not part of the weird word of drumming, even the question may be somewhat of a alien use of words. Well, drum covers are typically young drummers playing their drums along to their favourite songs.

Travis Barker was an early user of the medium and this spawned a glut of young players doing the same.

Cobus Potgeiter (a man that I know personally and I have a huge amount of respect for) has circa 2 MILLION YouTube views for his Skrillex – Equinox cover and in excess of 100 Million total views for all of his videos. A great achievement. And he is a lovely bloke and good player in his own right.

But what shocked me was that all of the drummers that replied to Pro-Mark only seemed to aspire to make these covers! Not to play in a band… not to work with others… not to write music! How sterile is that? Lars Ulrich has plenty of critics, but he pushed the envelope for creative drum parts and song writing from 1984 to 1989. Tremendous creativity! People seem to criticise Lars on his accuracy in recreating his compositions in a live situation… but they miss the point! He fucking WROTE those parts! If it was easy to write like that, then all of these bedroom critics of his would be playing stadiums year in year out and flying in private jets between shows.

I feel like young drummers are loosing their way. It’s not to say I wouldn’t ever do a drum cover video… just it has to be balanced with other aspects, otherwise music will lose all creativity.