Radiohead doesn't have any parade beats

(x-post) We didn't really have parade beats in pep rallies at my high school -- I was in the percussion section for a few years, and it was mostly oom-pah stuff. Not all parades have parade beats.

Please name a really famous song with a parade beat so I/we have some kind of frame of reference against which to measure yr comments, Jesse!

(thinks: does he mean those beats right at the end of Doves' otherwise dull-as "There Goes The Fear", perhaps?)

All the classic New Orleans stuff (Professor Longhair especially, but Champion Jack Dupree and Fats Domino and Dr. John too) relies on second-line beats, modified for the era (the trapset replacing the drumline, with some things lost but some things gained).

But parade beats in general derive from the interplay between the bass drum and snare drum lines (with polyrhythmic accents provided by the toms and cymbals). The backbeat is the tension between the 1-3 bass and the 2-4 snare, the BOOM-chicka-Boom, etc. But there's a crucial looseness to second-line beats that's basically impossible to annotate or quantify, a sense that the underbeat or backbeat is always in danger of either lagging too far behind the beat proper or running it right the fuck over. You have to think about beats as ongoing conversations between different people, "we're gonna put this here," "oh yeah well we're gonna put this over here", "oh yeah? well" boom-ba-boom-boom, etc. The invention of the trapset limited the conversation somewhat, turned it into a dialogue between one indivdual's different limbs rather than between individuals, but the tension between the beat and backbeat was preserved. I remember seeing an interview with Al Jackson, Booker T.'s drummer, where he talked about hanging on the beat, delaying the 2-4 snare crack just a hair, to create space within the music. That's what parade beats do -- they set the tempo, sure, but they also open up all the huge gaping spaces between beats, which is where the swing happens. At least, that's what the good ones do.

I'm sorry. None of that is nearly clear enough, and I'm not a scholar, just a hack drummer. But that Beyonce/Jay-Z single relies heavily on parade beats (you can even hear the drum marshal's whistle blowing), and so does the new Missy/Tim thing (although that's more specifically step beats, which are different but directly related, feet and hands rather than drums proper but following the same patterns -- see also, Nina Simone's "See-Line Woman").

I did some Googling on this and was kind of amazed to find a dearth of historical/contextual information on parade/second-line beats. If anyone can find anything, I'd love to read it. I mean, this is the rhythmic basis of a lot of 20th century music and there isn't even a Web page for it. Surely some Loyola kid has written a thesis on all this.

But anyway, those beats on on Tago Mago are very second-line (the drum solo toward the end of the album sounds almost exactly like a marching band drum cadence). And the Radiohead ribbing might be unfair, they probably don't even want parade beats. But they sure ain't got 'em.

1 + 2 + 3 + 4 +
kick drum X X X X
snare drum X X

But you have to swing it a little, or you get "We Will Rock You." Actually, if you swing it a little, instead of "We Will Rock You," you get "In Da Club."

I play in brass bands, second line beats are my thing, so you'd think I'd have something to say about this, but meh. Radiohead can be funky enough when they want to. Hip-hop needs more parade beats if anything (and it gets it with Soul Rebels Brass Band and Rebirth Brass Band).

Does the Neptunes-produced Gwen Stefani "Hollaback Girl" count?

PS, I am not Jesse-affiliated, although a devoted fan. Kiss-kiss.

Yay! I mean, that's recognition of some kind.

I don't know, I'd forgotten about this. I think I was just free associating when I started it. But without going back and rereading it all, I stand by whatever it was I said. Coincidentally, "Pinch" came on my iPod last night while I was waiting for a train, and I was struck all over again by how loosely funky Jaki Liebezeit was, what an amazing drummer. I think what I was getting at or trying to was a vague sense that Radiohead, particularly Kid A and beyond, are somehow symptomatic or emblematic to me of a strain of listless, disconnected liberalism. I could go into how the gap between Hail to the Thief and "Crazy In Love" is important in understanding the aimlessness of the Democratic Party but, I'll, uh, refrain.

one newish thing that uses parade beat well is kinda unlikely--Laura Cantrell's "Old Downtown" from her latest album "Humming by the Flowered Vine." Very cool, and the song even drops some beats.

Anyway.

xpost: Aw jaymc, you missed me! But I've been here all along...

see: explosions in the sky, godspeed, all that drivel

This thread made me think of this legendary thread.

--Marching beats, i.e. European-stylee, not swung, lots of sixteenth notes on the snare. I think that's what Cutty's talking about.

--New Orleans/second-line influenced stuff, i.e. some swing (but not going all the way to triplet-based swing) and based on some specific claves.

--Southern marching band beats which are kind of a blend of the above two mixed with straight-up, sledgehammer hip-hop beats (like all that shit on the new Missy album, Hollaback Girl, Lose My Breath, etc.)

BECAUSE CAN DOES NOT HAVE PARADE BEATS.

"Mushroom" has totally got a second-line thing going. And it might be a "technical term," whatever that means, but "parade beats" is used alla time in talking about second-line rhythms. Get one G00gle.