Rushing to Conclusions: What Rock Fans Don't Understand About Philo Tsoungui's "Limelight" Cover

Fives on Friday: 7/19/2024

Happy Friday!

This is a Sabian Paragon crash cymbal. I bought this cymbal in college at the Guitar Center in the Atlantic Mall in Brooklyn. The clerk suggested it after asking me what kind of music I played. I told him that I wanted something durable for my heavy music gigs, but with a tone that wouldn’t overpower my softer gigs. I have always favored flexibility and modularity in my gear. I like the Paragon because the crash isn’t too shrill and it is thick enough to use as an alternative ride. It also has a bigger/louder bell than most other crashes I’ve tried.

At no point in the process of buying the cymbal did I think about the Canadian prog rock band Rush. It wasn’t until months later, after hitting the cymbal hundreds of times, that I learned that the Paragon crash belonged to Rush drummer Neil Peart’s signature cymbal line. This knowledge did not impress me. If anything I felt a little embarrassed. Though I went to music school and listened to plenty of progressive rock, I thought Rush were cornballs. My first drum teacher was a jazz guy and I’d inherited his opinion that Peart was a stiff-playing hack who couldn’t swing his way out of a paper-bag. I liked plenty of drummers that had clearly learned some chops from Rush (Mike Portnoy & Danny Carey in particular), but my personal pantheon was full of jazz, metal, and hardcore drummers who’s excellence had nothing to do with Rush’s legacy. Why bother with “YYZ” when I could listen to “Vital Transformation”, “A Love Supreme”, or heck, “No Heroes” instead?

It wasn’t until Peart passed away in January 2020 that my heart softened and I gave Rush a serious chance. Gotta admit, they’ve got some killer tunes. “Subdivisions” rules. They’re still cornballs, but so are plenty of my favorite bands. My teacher was right that Peart was stiff, but if you’ve heard Peart talk you’d know that it’d be weird if he weren’t. Stiffness was part of his musical personality. It’s how he sounded like himself. I think it’s cool that Peart tried to revamp his technique in his middle age. I like that one bell pattern he loved to throw into a bunch of his drum parts. I must tip my hat to any drummer that also writes lyrics, even if many of Peart’s lyrics were wack as hell. I’d put Peart leagues above Carl Palmer (a true hack) but below Bill Bruford and Phil Collins in the 70s prog drummer pecking order. Still, I prefer the drummers from 21st century prog bands like Porcupine Tree and The Mars Volta, which brings us to the subject of today’s letter.

Have you heard of Drumeo? They’re a drumming edu-tainment company based in Vancouver, Canada that offers master-classes and online lesson programs, often with highly regarded drummers from a wide range of genres. To promote these classes they make slick video content that does crazy numbers on YouTube and social media at large. One of their most popular formats is getting visiting drummers to write their own parts to famous songs that they, the drummers, have never heard before. Usually there’s an odd couple element to the pairing, like getting the guy from Megadeth to play a Paramore song or Billy Joel’s drummer to play Deftones. This series is a marketing home-run. The format, and catchy headlines, entice fans of the drummer and fans of the song covered to see what happens when world’s collide. Invariably the drummers are humble and complimentary to the original tracks. The staff are good-natured in a typically Canadian way. It’s all good, wholesome, low stakes fun.

At least until Rush got involved.

On July 5th Drumeo posted a video in which Philo Tsoungui, the current touring drummer for The Mars Volta, writes a drum part from scratch to Rush’s 1981 single “Limelight”. The Canadian hosts are stunned that Tsoungui, a Cameroonian-German, has never heard the song before. After trying to count out the song’s shifting meters, Tsoungui decides to wing it play by feel alone. A few takes later and she’s got a killer part. Tsoungui’s version has a few major differences from Peart’s. She favors a half-time groove for much of the first half of the song, even in the spots where Peart played a rocker’s disco chug instead. Her take on the song’s guitar solo is completely off the map, a great demonstration by comparison if you want to know what my drum teacher meant by calling Peart “stiff”. However, every once and while she makes a choice eerily similar to the original track, like the shift to a crashing double time half way through the second chorus.

Some viewers thought the similarity was too eerie. At the time of writing the top comment on the video says “I’m still trying to wrap my head around a drummer who hasn’t heard of Limelight”. The comment has received 213 replies. Many are reasonable attempts to aid in the head-wrapping. Many others share the OP’s incredulity. A quick survey across Instagram comments and Reddit threads turns up more of the same sentiment. Some commenters call Tsoungui a liar and claim that the whole Drumeo situation is staged. Others accuse Tsoungui of being derelict in her duties as a professional drummer for not having studied Rush, and while drumming for The Mars Volta no less! That Tsoungui is by sheer coincidence playing with a pair of Peart’s signature drum sticks is presented as the smoking gun.¹

These commenters misunderstand a great deal about professional musicians, about The Mars Volta, and about the world of music at large. I’d like to dispel some of these misunderstandings one by one.

Let’s start with the sticks. If they’re not being paid to use specific gear, pros will always favor the most pragmatic option. They care about how the sticks feel in their hands, not what name is written on the sides. I’ve been caught in public playing Jack DeJohnette’s signature line, but if you asked me to name his top five tracks I’d draw a blank. I just like having a light pair on hand every now and then if I have to play a low volume gig.

Here’s another thing the comment section misunderstands about musicians: you don’t necessarily need to listen to every great drummer in order to be a great drummer. A lot of the best musicians I know have huge musical blindspots. They’re not wasting time listening to every record ever released. Sure, they listen widely, but they spend more time playing music than they do ingesting it. Most of the people I know that listen to literally everything are music writers or music fans first and musicians second. You need a certain degree of tunnel vision to get good enough to play at Tsoungui’s level. It’s more important for drummers at that level to study the material relevant to their field deeply than to meticulously cover every musical base. That’s why Tsoungui’s out on the road with The Mars Volta and omnivores like me are home writing damn newsletters.

Philo Tsoungui’s comes from a classical conservatory background. In my experience classically trained percussionists aren’t ever drilled on how well they can play “La Villa Strangiato”. My buddy (and Lamniformes collaborator) Adam Holmes is also a classical percussionist. He’s put me onto all sorts of heady, complex percussion pieces but had never heard Deftones until a few summers ago. It simply isn’t relevant to know that much about rock music if you’re playing Steve Reich pieces. The same is true for the pop and rap artists that Tsoungui’s played with since. “But what about The Mars Volta,” the legion of “Limelight” truthers ask, “surely you’d need to know your Rush to play with them??” Not necessarily. To put it bluntly, the only thing you need to know how to play to get the Mars Volta gig are Mars Volta songs. To quote Tsoungui’s own Instagram stories, it’s not like they quizzed her on the history of progressive rock before offering her the job. If anything, history suggests that The Mars Volta don’t want someone who’s coming from a strictly rock background. Their former drummers include a guy who made his name playing Gospel, a decorated Latin Jazz player, and whatever the hell Deantoni Parks is. None of those guys sound anything like Peart. Having seen Tsoungui play with The Mars Volta, I’d say that a working knowledge of funk, free jazz, and salsa would be more practical to the demands of that set than an in-depth knowledge of 70s hard rock.

This brings us to the final and most important point. The constellation of music is vast, and it does not revolve around rock and roll. Even rock itself is vast enough to contain more music than anyone reading will ever have time to engage with. You could construct a compelling list of the top 10 prog albums of all time without including a single band singing in English, let alone a Rush album. It wouldn’t be my top 10, but it might be someone’s. You could just as easily write a list of the 100 greatest drummers without including Peart, so long as you drew from a pool containing more than just rock drummers from North America. The idea that a professional drummer must have encountered Rush as a matter of course is rooted in cultural arrogance. Could these commenters name the best drummers in salsa, in high life, or in free jazz? Do these commenters believe that only Peart could show younger drummers the path to odd time signatures, polyrhythms, and elaborate solos? Such a belief could only stem from ignorance of musical traditions outside of rock music.

This is a typical problem for rock fans of a certain stripe (metalheads, I’m also looking at you). They want simultaneously to believe that they’re listening to the Good Stuff instead of the slush of pop music, and yet can’t accept that their favorite music is then by definition not that popular. This frustration is most acute when rock music is overlooked by classical or jazz artists. If rock can’t be popular, its best representatives must at least be prestigious, right? When Rush fans of this stripe see a drummer as clearly accomplished, blessed with a gig that any drummer would kill for, and self-evidently able to play Rush’s music all without flattering their sense of self-importance, they are confronted with the uncomfortable truth that the limelight of relevance has long passed them by.

# # # # # The Self Promo Zone # # # # #

• In August I’ll be playing with Bellows on a quick tour opening for our buddy Terror Pigeon. You can find a full list of the shows on Terror Pigeon’s bonkers, 00s as hell website. Hope to see you on the road!

• It’s my birthday tomorrow! Last year I celebrated by dropping a music video for my song “Prayer of the Open Plain”. This year I’m going to take it easy and spend time with ~*my girlfriend*~ and her adorable dog. We might go see High & Low at the Music Box in Chicago if I can convince her that Akira Kurosawa isn’t too “boy-movie” coded. Wish me luck! If you’d like to do something nice for my b-day, you can either leave me a supportive comment or buy something from my Bandcamp. Personally, I’d recommend checking out The Lonely Atom, but the other records are cool too.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ Listening Diary ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Here are five songs that I enjoyed listening to recently! You can find a Spotify playlist with all of this year’s tracks here.

“The Flute Tune” by The Invisible Man (Lost Paradise: Blissed Out Breakbeat Hardcore 1991-94)

I’m not enough of a electronic music expert to tell you why this is breakbeat hardcore and not Drum’n’Bass, but however you categorize it this track jams. I guess it’s too slow to be truly drum’n’bass? But then why is it “hardcore”? Nothing humbles me as a metalhead than seeing how byzantine dance music subgenres get. Anyway, Shouts out to Wolf Rambitz for sharing this in his mid-year round up. This makes me want to bust out the ol’ PS1 and chase after low polygon apes.

“Uncanny” by Hands of Goro (Hands of Goro, 2024)

Hands of Goro feature my friend and former Invisible Oranges colleague Avinash Mittar on drums. I wonder what Avinash thinks of Neil Peart? The band name is appropriate, not just because it evokes the late 80s/early 90s milieu of both Mortal Kombat and righteous progressive metal, but also because you need four hands to play all of this band’s sick harmonized leads. You only need two feet to play groovy mid-tempo double bass though, and Avinash has that shit on lock. Great work dude! Really fun throwback metal that doesn’t sound like pastiche.

“Palaces” by Lupe Fiasco (Samurai, 2024)

I felt compelled to check out the latest album from Lupe Fiasco after skipping out on his last few. Many, many moons ago Lupe was probably my favorite rapper but I had a hard time following where he was going after the Lasers debacle. He’s always been an undeniably nasty rapper, but his penchant for elaborate concepts and (let’s be blunt) sub-par beats made it hard to appreciate those gifts. Well, if Samurai is any indication I have some back-filling to take care of. This record is great! You can tell’s matured a lot, there’s a real appreciation for the fragility and ephemerality of making art.

“Magmatique” by Goran Kajfeš Tropiques (Tell Us, 2024)

Yet another Wolf Rambitz pick. Look, I only follow so many blogs and he’s been posting a lot of good stuff lately. This tune is a gnarly 5/8 workout that mixes acoustic piano, lots of synths, and an athletic performance on drums. This track doesn’t so much go places as it does burrow into itself, flipping the central figure over and over to find new curious angles and nuances in each go-through.

“Scorched Vision” by Scarcity (The Promise of Rain, 2024)

Speaking of former IO writers making dope music, this new Scarcity record SLAPS. I caught Scarcity live just before this record dropped. When I told Doug Moore and Brendon Randall-Myers that “Scorched Vision” was my favorite track on the record, they said that their label had initially suggested that they release it as a single. They pushed back on that idea because they wanted to save it for the full album experience. Well, now that the album has been out for a week I have no issue sharing this one individually. Because it rules. More than any other song on the record this tune shows the benefit of writing songs as a group. It’s driven forward as much by physical momentum as compositional intrigue. I mean, you could legit MOSH to this one instead of just furrowing your brow and stroking your beard off. Cool to hear a band this challenging have fun.

\ \ \ \ \ Micro Reviews / / / / /

Here are five micro reviews from my high school and college CD collection. Long time Lamniformes Instagram followers will recognize these from my stories back in late 2020, however they’ve been re-edited and spruced up with links so that you can actually hear the music instead of just taking my word for it.

The Devil You Know by Heaven & Hell (2009) - Heavy Metal

The final Did Sabbath album, following their reunion tour and shortly before Dio passed. Another entry into the “old dude’s still got it” heavy metal canon. Not a lot of variation, and this won’t go down as the best work in anyone involved’s career, but this is waaaaay better than you’d expect from a band of 70 y/o dudes with nothing to prove. The drop on “Bible Black” gave me chills, and Iommi sounds incredible throughout. I miss Dio :(.

Octohedron by The Mars Volta (2009) - Progressive Rock

The ultimate “be careful what you wish for” record. After four albums of absolutely nutso maximalism, The Mars Volta finally chilled out and let the songs breathe a bit. Only problem is that they might have gotten too chill. The fact of the matter is that having zero chill is what made The Mars Volta good. When they try to make laid back rock tunes they end up sounding bored and disinterested. A few cool moments, but overall a big step down.

Declaration by Bleeding Through (2008) - Metalcore

Bleeding Through’s turn to work with Devin Townsend, fueled this time by rage at their record label instead of rage at their ex. These factors alone make it easily their best. Heavy as all get out, relentlessly paced, with huge breakdowns and a goth ambience that I wish they had leaned into more in their career. The mix is too loud and blown out for me to spin this frequently, but it’s a very solid heavy record.

Fortress by Protest The Hero (2008) - Progressive Metal

This album converted me to Protest The Hero, in part because their label promoted the hell out of it, bankrolling 5 (!) music videos. Conceptually this thing is all over the place, trying to make a point about how history has transitioned from the divine feminine to patriarchal religions to scientific rationality, or something to that effect. It’s very confusing. Musically though? A total blast. Nonstop action for the whole runtime and some of the nastiest shredding this genre has ever seen. If you check out any Protest the Hero album, let it be this one.

Enemy of God by Kreator (2005) - Thrash Metal

Fans of the Netflix show Dark might know this band from the song that used/referenced in the 80s plot line in season two. This was their return-to-thrash record in 2005, a common move from older bands in the 00s. They also picked up a lot of tricks from the Swedish sound, as was the style at the time. It’s pretty good! Definitely too long but with no obvious cuts. The title track fucking slaps, some great tempo changes in the second half. From what I’ve heard they continued to improve on the records they’ve dropped after this one too (I have found some evidence to the contrary since writing this review).

1. For what it’s worth, while I haven’t seen anyone cross the line into outright bigotry it’s hard to say that there isn’t a racial/gender element to the backlash. This video, and a number of other Drumeo videos like it, exist in the context of a larger genre of video where white rock fans have their taste validated by black people reacting to their favorite music. It’s a topic too big to address fully in this letter, but I think if Tsoungui had been more visibly effusive in her praise for the song some of the haters would have cooled off. Of course a German saying a song is “pretty cool” with no qualifications is actually a pretty high compliment, but we’re not talking about a set of the commentariat worldly enough to know that.