My Top 30 Drummers

Ian Worrall

Amazon Digital Services, Inc.

This Kindle Single shows the blessing and curse of anyone being allowed to publish now. Good on Ian Worrall – a drummer, a keen student – for wanting to share his favourite drummers with the world and Amazon Digital Services now provides a great platform for that. But Worrall’s writing is less than prosaic – and his idea of “research” is cribbing from Wikipedia. He admits this in a short introduction – but it really is, pardon any percussive pun, rudimentary at best.

It’s riddled with typos and poor grammar/odd sentence structure; lacking, too, in punctuation. So it’s a disaster writing-wise.

And then there’s the selection. Whilst it’s a personal list and I applaud a few names being mentioned that perhaps wouldn’t ordinarily get the nod (and probably deserve to more often) like Richie Hayward of Little Feat and the clinician Dom Famularo – it leans and then lurches toward the inevitable prog-rock sadness. Yes, Neil Peart at number one. That might tell you all you need to know about Worrall – well that and the fact that Mike Portnoy rates highly on his list too. If there’s one thing worse than worshipping Peart it’s worshiping Portnoy. Oh, and Mike Mangini makes the list too.

Hey, sure, these guys can play – it would be churlish to suggest otherwise. But they cannot groove.

The only thing I liked about this very light read is that it shows anyone can do it. And so as I plan my own Kindle Single ideas I think too of my list of favourite drummers. A few names were mentioned as part of Worrall’s list (Stewart Copeland for example). But it wasn’t so much the names chosen as the poor level of information about them and a lack of context – why were they on the list? What was/is so great about them?

Kudos though for mentioning both Sheila E. and Cindy Blackman – it might seem like a couple of token-female names were added but this is where Worrall does his best to make a case for them as great players in their own right. And, hey, even at least they were included. Sheila E. would certainly be on my list. Blackman quite possibly too.