Dresden
by Tommy
The sunlight was so brilliant that day, you could’ve cut it with a butter-knife. It was June, and I was in the car with John, driving home from a weekend with my cousins. We had just left when John turned on the radio, switching it to CD mode. “I made a new one” he called over the roar of the air passing outside the open windows. Without looking down, he adjusted the volume so that it could be heard. I wasn’t sure what to expect, having recently been introduced to The Blizzards, and not liking them.
Piano playing filled the car, but I quickly realized that this wasn’t a Debussy concert. Before long, drums entered with thunderous energy. The female’s vocals seemed jumpy and restless, but I was sold. The diehard drumming monkey inside of me loved this. The drums weren’t some refined background noise – this band (whoever they were) brought percussion to the forefront. From what I could make out, there were two people in the band – a woman and a man – drums and piano. Their style was incomparable to anything I’d heard before – they certainly weren’t gonna draw any ‘pff, Foo Fighters, Coldplay, Green Day.. they all sound the same’ complaints from my corner. As I write this, over a year and a half later, I still can’t equate them to any band I know, and my music tastes would be a lot broader in 2010 than June, 2008. Then again, how many bands do you know whose genre (as I found out later) was ‘punk cabaret’?.
As we drove through Nenagh — stopping in Dromineer for icecream and a rare good look at Lough Derg — we played through the CD. While each song was different, an underlying style could be felt (rather than heard) throughout the album. Each one shared common elements that you only subconsciously registered. All through the journey, John refused to tell me who they were. I was dying to know – dying to get home, get onto my drums and try and accompany this drumming legend through some of the simpler songs — I could tell even without being near a pair of sticks that this was some of the most impressive drumming I’d ever heard. I made a desperate attempt upon getting into the car in Dromineer to find out the name of this mystery band that would have worked if John hadn’t threatened not to put any of the songs onto my laptop. A grievous threat, and one that made me withdraw my finger from the trigger (uh, CD eject button).
When we arrived home (which took longer than usual because we took the scenic route (for once, not a euphemism for getting lost) back from Dromineer), I badgered John until he copied some songs into my iTunes library. I found out that the band who had received my unrestricted love for the past two hours were none other than The Dresden Dolls.
I quickly set to work on learning the drums. I credit the band for being the single biggest influence on my style and also the one that’s taught me the most. Tommy’s Dresden Dolls addiction became fodder for family slagging (I ate, slept and breathed them) but in an ironic twist of fate, I’m the only one out of myself, John and Patrick never to have seen them perform live.
As with most of my obsessions, it fizzled out in the end — although it did last for a good 8 months. Through Spotify, I’ve become reacquainted with them over the last week or so, and they continue to bring forth fond memories from the depths of my subconscious. If you ever meet me and I seem to have a vacant smile on my face, I’m probably thinking about that afternoon in June, 2008.
Dresden Dolls Day, anyone?