Drumming Upstream Season 3: Wrapped?
What the heck happened??
Welcome to the end of Drumming Upstream Season 3. As is my yearly custom, I’d like to take a moment to reflect on how my on-going mission to learn every song I’ve Liked on Spotify on drums went over the last 12 months. Typically these reflections begin with my thoughts on Spotify itself, using their “Wrapped” feature as an occasion to sing a few bars from the anti-streaming hymnal. But c’mon, you don’t need to hear those old saws from me do you? Spotify Wrapped cynicism has made it all the way to the pages of the New Yorker, and the long-awaited Liz Pelly book taking the streaming giant to task should be in stores any day now.
Besides, in the words of a marginal character from a Drumming Upstream entry long past, I’ve got some ‘splaining to do. The numbers will speak for themselves first, and then I’ll chime in with my analysis.
Total Number of Songs: 4
Total Number of Distinct Acts: 3
Total Word Count: 15177
Average Word Count: 3794
Songs with Live Drummers: 3
Songs with Produced Drums: 1
Drumless Songs: 0
Average BPM: 106
Time Signatures Represented (# of Uses): 4/4 (4)
Countries Represented (# of Artists): USA (4)
Genres Represented (# of Songs): Rock (2), Rap (1), Metal (1)
Years of Release (# of songs): 1975, 1978, 1998, 2005
Wow. That’s a pretty steep drop off in production from the first two seasons when I covered 21 and 19 songs respectively (and sometimes disrespectfully). Given that trend I expected that I’d file at least 17 songs this year. But four?? Clearly something happened. In fact five things happened, and I’d like to talk about each of them individually.
What Happened (1) : Newsletter Changes
At the end 2023 I made the decision to switch what writing I made public and what writing I put behind the paywall. My thinking at the time was that since Drumming Upstream took a lot of work it was only right that people paid for it. On the other hand it felt wrong to gatekeep my Listening Diary because I often feature artists that could use the extra publicity. Keep the short and sweet stuff free, entice readers to subscribe for the heavy duty pieces. The problem is that the free weekly letters were too short and not sweet enough. Not only did the data show that reader interest was flagging after a few months of this new arrangement, my personal interest was waning as well. It flat out wasn’t fun to plop five links from the same short list of blogs next to only a handful of sentences. My brain needs to chew on stuff. That’s why I write to begin with. So I started adding more involved introductions to my free letters. By all counts this was a good move. I had more fun! I wrote about some neat topics that I wouldn’t have considered at length otherwise. And, not to brag, the newsletter saw its biggest period of growth ever. We’re not talking hockey sticks, but it’s close.
The problem is that writing those longer intros took time, time that would have otherwise been spent working on Drumming Upstream. Putting Drumming Upstream behind the paywall meant that significantly fewer people read the series, which cut off the feedback loop of interest and communication that sustained my enthusiasm when motivation reserves were low. Even worse, the move behind the paywall cut off potential new readers that had previously been lured in by the songs that I covered. In an ironic twist, the last entry I posted before the paywall demonstrated this dynamic perfectly. I still routinely get clickthroughs from YouTube via my cover of Mitski’s “Once More To See You”. Who knows how many readers I scared off by making that entry unreadable! All of this made me less inclined and less able to devote time to Drumming Upstream.
What Happened (2): Mission Creep
Astute readers could have seen this one just from the numbers. The average word count for an entry of Drumming Upstream went up by nearly 800 words this season. If people had to pay to access the series, I was determined to give them their money’s worth. The more time I spent working on Drumming Upstream the more work I wanted to put in. The series has steadily improved every year, and that trend held true even in its truncated third season. The four entries that I turned in this year are by far the best in the series. Part of that is just a matter of craft. I’ve gotten better at writing the more I write. The other part is increased ambition. My entry on High on Fire’s “Cometh Down Hessian” is practically a summary of Matt Pike’s whole career. Increased ambition brings with it increased standards. I can say with confidence that the next entry of Drumming Upstream will not be quite as good as the last four. The song just doesn’t ask as much of me, but I still feel the drive to wring as much out of it as a I can. Opening up the draft just makes me frustrated, and frustration makes me more likely to do something else. And boy did I have a lot of “something else” to do this year.
What Happened (3): Success
Drumming Upstream worked. I got better at drumming, and I built a portfolio that could demonstrate that to anyone looking for a drummer. I joined a lot of different bands and worked on a bunch of different projects over the last few years. Not only that, but Drumming Upstream went a long way to getting me a real deal job teaching drums at School of Rock. If I could teach myself how to play Iron Maiden songs note-for-note, surely I could teach kids how to do the same for The White Stripes. These gigs took away time that I could spend learning and writing about new songs for Drumming Upstream.
Besides, I also had my own music to worry about.
Thing 4: Lamniformes
2024 was a big year for Lamniformes. Well, as big as any year can be for a project like Lamniformes. What I mean is that after years of hard work, along with tragedies both global and hyper local, I released The Lonely Atom. I don’t say this often enough. I am terrible at promoting myself without the smoke-screen of other people’s music. But I tried my best. I spent a lot of the early part of the year hyping up the release of a full length album. Then with those songs out of my system I spent the second half of the year working on new ones. Drumming Upstream will always take a back seat to Lamniformes, because the whole point of Drumming Upstream and this newsletter in general is to draw more attention to Lamniformes. So allow me to stop this explanation in its tracks to say that you, yes you, should listen to The Lonely Atom. You can find it on your streaming service of choice, but I’d encourage you to instead purchase the album directly from my Bandcamp as either a digital download or a physical cassette. These songs are the best I’ve ever written. The Lonely Atom is better than at least half of the albums on my Best Albums of the Year list, thanks to the contributions of many of my close friends and trusted collaborators. It’s one of the last albums to feature the voice of my friend Montana and also one of the last to appear on the Furious Hooves roster. It describes how I felt and what I cared about during the years 2016-2022 better than anything I could write in words. If you walk away from reading this newsletter in 2024 with anything, let it be a copy of The Lonely Atom.
Thing 5: Life Got In The Way
As I write this I am preparing to move for the third time in the calendar year. Luckily this time I only have to go about a mile instead of a third of the way across the country. I’m not being priced out or having my lease terminated. This move is nothing but good news, as ~*My Girlfriend*~ and I are expanding into a larger apartment with more room and a better layout for the two of us and the dog. Once I finish writing today I’ll head off to one of my two jobs. Tomorrow, when this newsletter arrives in your inbox, I’ll be at the other job. A lot has changed in my life over the last twelve months. It’s only natural that the projects that sustained me during the static years of 2022 and 2023 would take a back seat in 2024. The plan is that 2025 will be more stable though I hope no less productive. I’ve already joined one band in Chicago and have loose arrangements to drum for at least three other projects. I love my jobs and have no intention of scaling back at either of them. I have a Lamniformes EP to finish recording and another full length to finish writing. I have old friends to reconnect with and new friendships to foster. Life will continue to happen, for good and for ill.
So where does that leave Drumming Upstream Season 4? Fret not. I will achieve my goal, no matter how long it takes me. I’ve stocked up on at least another season’s worth of covers and I have a lot to say about them. In the remaining weeks of 2024 I hope to sketch out a more consistent production schedule so that I can balance the requirements of standard weekly letters, paid subscriber bonuses, and special features like Drumming Upstream. Don’t hold me to this, but I’d like to aim for something like this:
Four free letters a month in the “Fives on Friday” format, i.e. The Listening Diary, five Micro Reviews, the Self-Promo Zone, all bolstered by an intro roughly 1,000 words long.
Two subscriber exclusive letters a month, likely split between Playlist Postscripts and “Demo Dumps” or other BTS content.
Two special features a month: either Drumming Upstream entries or other long-form letters in the mold of the Barbenheimer monstrosity from last year1.
Again, no promises, but I think something like this is a realistic roadmap for the newsletter. Until then, thank you for your patience and feel free to revisit the Drumming Upstream archives. I’ve re-edited the whole series for clarity, ease of reading, and format consistency. I’m proud of all the work I’ve done for this series and I can’t wait to add to it in the near future. See you in 2025.
I haven’t forgotten about that comprehensive review of Tár, either. It’s just that my research for that piece ended up inspiring several of the themes central to the next Lamniformes album, which then inspired another round of research and contemplation and so on and so on. I’ll get back to the piece eventually, but only after I disentangle it from a much bigger tapestry of ideas.