Hi folks!
What is the drum that Charlie plays on "moon is up"??? The booklet says "mystery drum" I know... Someone said it's some sort of a garbage can but dunno... I've been wondering that since I first heard it!

Sami

Garbage cans - I've heard

Sami Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> Hi folks!
> What is the drum that Charlie plays on "moon is
> up"??? The booklet says "mystery drum" I know...
> Someone said it's some sort of a garbage can but
> dunno... I've been wondering that since I first
> heard it!
>
They put the drum in a housefloor, so that the sound would somehow sound different, like playing in normal studio.
Charly told this in an "the making of Vl" interview.
He said that it was very funny recording MIU.

Thanks!!

Sami

from [www.timeisonourside.com] (and now i'm struggling to remember which number it is that Keith plays bicycle spokes on - someone here can help, i'm sure!):

[Moon Is Up] had been around since Ireland, and everybody was fascinated with it. The song was suddenly there, you know, and what are we going to do with it? To me, it was all tied in with Charlie. If Charlie Watts is willing to experiment in the studio, then I'm the happiest man in the world. It so happened that as we were trying this track out in different configurations, I put an acoustic guitar through a Leslie cabinet, Ronnie was playing pedal steel through some tiny little amplifier, and Mick was singing through the harp mike. The drums were the only thing that sounded unreal, because they were real. So we fished around for a bit, and I said, Well, what about playing on a suitcase outside? And before I know it, Charlie Watts is out there in the stairwell with a garbage can and brushes, and that's the sound. After that, it was very hard to keep him out of the stairwell.
- Keith Richards, 1994

I play a trash can in the stairwell on Moon Is Up. It's a 4-flight stairwell, and I started off at the top, which is Moon Is Up, and I ended up at the bottom playing You Got Me Rocking and Thru and Thru...
- Charlie Watts, 1994

We've often done things like that, in loos (bathrooms) or corridors. It's easier to do that than to do it with echo chambers, you know? It's sometimes not so good for an engineer, 'cause you've got this sound and you can't get rid of it. Whereas if you record it dry you can always add things. But this was good.
- Charlie Watts, 1994


"What do you want - what?!"
- Keith

I think he played the bicycle bell (or maybe it was spokes) on either 'Almost Hear You Sigh' or 'Continental Drift'.

It was spokes, it was Keith and it was Continental Drift

thanks - i was pretty sure it was Continental Drift, so ...
so have some popcorn. :E

The term "mystery drum" is just another Stones joke as they've always been done, e.g. on Love You Live: Bill Wyman, bass and dancing ;-)

Meise Wrote:
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> The term "mystery drum" is just another Stones
> joke as they've always been done, e.g. on Love You
> Live: Bill Wyman, bass and dancing ;-)
>
> ________________________________________
>
> I can't imagine a world without the Rolling
> Stones! (A. Erthegun)


A bit like that famous session player "Amyl Nitrate" who handled marimbas on "Sweet Black Angel?"

Something about "Moon Is Up" always seemed special to me...

Loved Jagger's super-distorted harp, Woody's pedal steel, the "mystery drum" (garbage cans played at the base of a stairwell?).The lyrics and singing (with Keith coming up a little at the end) are so great, as well.

That track doesn't sound like anything else (as opposed to so many of "Voodoo's" obvious nods to the past). It's a great moment for the Stones in the 1990's.

They must have felt something for it, as well. They revived it five years after the album for a one-time-only (to date) performance at Shepherd's Bush in 1999.

Does anyone have a recording to share?

"Does anyone have a recording to share?"

Yep, gimme a few minutes...

Here it is: [s26.yousendit.com]

Recorded at The Shepherds Bush Empire, London, June 8th 1999
From the boot "Cow Skins And Pig Shoes" (Dandelion 117/18)

mr edward:

aaaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhhhh...

Sounds great to my ears. I knew it existed somewhere, but had never actually heard it.

One of my absolute favorites from the 1990's. Glad they dug it out for the stage in '99--would love to hear the story of that mini-revival.

Many thanks for posting it.

the Shepherds Bush DVD is well worth tracking down too.
it's audience-shot, with all the wobbliness and so on that entails,
but on this one the performance is so fine that the wobblies don't even matter -
especially Moon Is Up. ~*beautiful!*~ :E


"What do you want - what?!"
- Keith

Yeah, sounds nice, doesn't it? Keith playes very loudly, heavy drums and Micks harp is always great. I wonder why they dug it out, it was one of the tracks I thought would never be performed live.
The only one who misses out on the action is Ronnie. I'm not sure what he's doing with his guitar. He's not playing it, but torturing it.

Sounded great live--thanks for that treat.

There's something so textured and intimate about the way it sounds on "VL." Woodsy, almost. I can imagine them standing in a circle in a cottage in Ireland playing it...

It's stuff like "Moon Is Up" and so much of "Bridges" that seems so great and gives me so much respect for the Stones' latter-day creativity. I wish that they could find a way to put themselves in situations where that kind of experimentation was supported.

My feeling is that playing the 20,000-60,000 seaters keeps them locked into a very one-dimensional notion of what Stones music is--"Brown Sugar" or "Got Me Rockin'" or "It Won't Take Long," etc. A lot of the new record seems geared to that...even if they have become gun-shy about actually performing the material.

I mean, I like the "big event" sense of a Stones show, too. But a steady diet of that seems to have sapped them.

Rev. Robert well-worded I agree with ya. That is an intersting take.

I remember an interview about Voodoo Lounge where I read or heard that on one song they put the foldable training drum kit in the bottom of the starcase, and that on another song Charly actually drummed on the seat of a wooden chair.

Watts played the drums at the bottom of the staircase for "Suck On The Jugular", if I'm not mistaking. Never heard the wooden chair story.



Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 2005-12-08 02:39 by mr edward.

Moon is Up? Should have been left off of VL.

I think it was bicycle spokes on "Continental Drift". Or was it the bicycle bell at the end of Pet Sounds. Ooops! Wrong band.

for some reason this cuts out after a minute or two.can you help?...