Music of the Day, 26 January 2024

fighting drums with drums

Two days ago,

MK Piatkowski

unwittingly unleashed a powerful earworm of mine: “Bang Your Drum” by Scottish indie band Dead Man Fall, covered by Craig Ferguson as the opener to his final The Late Late Show (TLLS). I didn’t watch TLLS back when he was the host, primarily because we didn’t own a television and I hadn’t heard of him. I don’t recall who told me about him—or perhaps I discovered him on my own via one of his standup performances on Netflix—but I was very happy to do so. Ferguson’s off-the-wall style of humor paired with incisive commentary is close to perfect for me, and I trawled YouTube, watching all TLLS episodes I could find. I was gutted when a performance in the Washington town we were living in was canceled; as Ferguson has moved back to Scotland, I doubt that I’ll ever see him perform live.

His cover of “Bang Your Drum” renders me verklempt every time I hear it, because it’s a powerfully uplifting song and his take on it is masterful.¹ It’s been in my mind since I read MK’s Song of the Day featuring it—hell, I woke up at 4 a.m. today with it reverberating. Much as I appreciate its motivating qualities for me, I can’t do much work with it looping through my head. So I’m seeing MK’s Scottish drums and raising with bagpipes:

Unfortunately, I’m unable to share any of my favorites from either album, as YouTube doesn’t seem to have any of those cuts. The only version I found was this live performance of “Child of the Drum,” which isn’t great but will give you a taste of the music I’ve been listening to for years now.

Like so many bands in my music library, I’ve no idea where I acquired Clann an Drumma’s second and third studio albums: Keep It Tribal (2002); and Tribal Eyes (2004). I was instantly enchanted on first listen, as I adore bagpipes and good percussion.² I see via Wikipedia that Clann an Drumma (which means “children of the drum” in Scots Gaelic) is still together (albeit with a lot of personnel changes); some of their CDs are available via BandCamp.

As “Bang Your Drum” is still pushing through intermittently, I’ll be listening to all the Clann an Drumma songs I currently own while doing a deep clean of the kitchen later today. That might be sufficient to supplant it.

1. Craig Ferguson got his show-business start as a drummer for a few punk bands, including one with Peter Capaldi (also the twelfth doctor in Dr. Who) as lead vocalist. Ferguson sang TLLS’ theme song and did a fine job with it

2. It may be in my blood: I’ve a lot of Scandi on my mom’s side, and perhaps on my dad’s as well, as his roots are broader, and are fairly deep and wide in the British Isles, best as my desultory genealogical researches have shown