Tico torres biography graphic organizer
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Bon jovi
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During the Decade of Decadence, mainstream hard rock, fueled by power chords, sex, and a fair amount of booze, weed, and cocaine, fanned the cult of youth and espoused a party hearty world where teens refused to get old or bow down to authority. Many of these ’80s bands may have been legitimate bad boys offstage, but most of their tunes served up rebellion in a seemingly dangerous but ultimately safe package.
While Sunset Strip glam rockers like Ratt and Mötley Crüe had charged out of the gate with hard-rocking records, they soon softened their looks and hooks to seduce growing legions of female followers. Other than Def Leppard with the guitar-heavy Pyromania, no one had achieved monster success with the formula.
Until Bon Jovi came along.
1986 was a year of dichotomy in the rock world. The first wave of debauched hair bands was colliding with the thrash metal ascension, which countered decadent bliss with an antidote of reality during the politically callous era of the Reagan-Bush administration. Bands like Metallica and Anthrax delved into darker realms and broached topics like the ugliness of social inequality and the looming specter of nuclear war. It was the unsexy antithesis to the late Robbin Crosby’s “Pussy Party Paycheck” ethos espoused
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Drummers are the foundation of modern rock music, but let’s face it; a good drummer rarely if ever carries a middling band.
Televised network “talent” shows never feature standalone drummers because (almost) nobody wants to hear two minutes of drums and nothing but drums. Neil Peart wouldn’t make it past the second round of American Idol – not that anybody is suggesting he should.
My favorite drummer joke goes like this.
Q: How many drummers does it take to change a light bulb?
A: Five. One to change the bulb, and four to stand around and talk about how much better Neil Peart would have done it.
If you think of music briefly as a structure, there’s usually nothing fancy about the foundation of a building. It needs to be solid, serviceable, and enduring. There are plenty of shitty-to-decent bands with utilitarian-to-fantastic drummers; for example, Bad Company, perhaps the most plodding and mediocre of all platinum classic rock bands that rarely if ever played anything faster than 120 beats per minute.
Is There Such a Thing as a Great Band with a Terrible Drummer?
Bad Co.’s Simon Kirke was a solid drummer. He got the job done and didn’t leave a flyer in your mailbox or a business card wedged under a windshield wiper.
Furthermore, AC/DC’s Phil Rudd never played