Party In Simon's Pants

RMS is a kewl cd.

For those in the SoCal area, Simon, Luke, Jeff Babko (killer keys, crazy time) and Melvin Davis play around under the name "Doves Of Fire" after the crazy Birds of Fire tune, which they cover! It's a fun, wacky, jaw dropping time. Oh, and Simon uses a "minimal" kit on these gigs: two kicks, 3 rack toms, 3 floor toms, one snare, 7 cybmals and hats. :-)

Danny

Great band indeed. I have a few boots of them.

I have watched SImon Phillips returns about a thousand times. I find new thingsevery time I watch it, it's one of my fave instr. tapes.

Most of the tape seems to me to be focused on grooves in odd times. I like the 6/8 playing he does. It certainly can be applied to a small kit. He's not Mike Portnoy after all, with all his "stax" stuff and what not.

And he gets a KILLER tom sound. His snare sounds great too.

Simon's website (one of the better ones around---are you listening, Vinnie?) shows pictures of him on a small kit with Vantage Point, only one bass drum and no double kick pedal. Haven't heard that project but I'm sure Simon could play with one stick and scare you.

Does Doves of Fire have a CD available? Live or studio?

Clint, Party in Simon's Pants sounds like it's in 9/8 (to me) but you say 17/8 (and I'm not disagreeing.) How are you counting that?

I have heard Simon is mixing a live Doves of Fire cd, right now all that exists is bootleg cds of the band. Of which I have 2.

Theres a classic zappa mention in this Interview by simon.
HERE!

Great interview with Phillips, Me2. If the Zappa incident occurred in 1979 that means Simon replaced Vinnie on a track that Vinnie couldn't hang with. Hmmmmmmm! Knew there was a reason Simon is currently my favorite. He's like Bozzio, Colaiuta and Donati all in one.

Wow........I'd say it's stretching it a bit to say that it was a situation where Vinnie couldn't hang. Perhaps it was someone else?

There was an MD feature (Bozzio on......) where he said that Vinnie was the best player alive today, and the best drummer that Frank had.

In the interview he is talking about recording the L Shankar cd, I don't think Vinnie had anything to do with that record before Simon cam ein, might have been a London studio cat.
Simon once said during the recording of that record he must have done 100's of takes just on 1 tune. Zappa was very scrutinizing.