Struck To The Soul (By John Bonham's Big Bass Drum)

Scott Smith

Welcome, everybody to this brand new segment of the Electric Secrets variety podcast.

My name is Scott.I am your host.

We're calling this, Struck to the Soul, because I believe that every artist needs to communicate with other artists just about art, about the things that inspire you, about random things that struck you in your soul and that you kept for a long time, maybe from the time that you were a kid. And with me, I hold on to those things. I use those things as precedent for the work I'm doing at the moment. So, if I feel down on myself or if I feel doubtful about what I'm doing or I'm needing some kind of inspiration, I remember those precedents that were set for me maybe a long time ago. Just little random bits of wisdom or random things that happened that taught me something about art and about self-expression. The best way to explore those things is to have a conversation. So, my media guru and I, Abbey Kanellakis, whom you will remember from other segments in the podcast and from the No Small Parts podcast that I do for the Bucyrus Little Theater. We have a conversation in a place where you have conversations. In this particular episode, we're going to be at the Bucyrus Tap House. 

Now, I apologize for the poor quality of the audio. I think I got way too excited and ended up blowing out my lavalier a lot during our conversation. So I apologize for that. I promise I will fix that for the next episode. So as you're listening, just pretend you're listening through an FBI wiretap. Because that's kind of what it sounds like. But in this episode, we actually talk about the character of sound. So maybe the substandard quality of the audio is adding some character to this episode. Who knows?

And the purpose of this is just to talk things out, to see where the conversation goes, to see if you can learn something about yourself as an artist. Or just as a creative person. Remember the segments in this podcast are dedicated toward the development of the creative self. Acting, Shakespeare, voice, even the comedy and small business segments. Because all of those things are about being creative and finding ways to do that in our wonderful digital world.

The conversation that Abbey and I have is unfiltered and unedited. So I hope you enjoy this very first episode of Struck to the Soul.

Scott

Alright, so I think I was about 12 years old when we helped my brother move into his very first apartment. 

Abbey

In Columbus? 

Scott

In Wapoc. No, not Wapoc. New Philadelphia, Ohio. 

Abbey

Oh yeah. New Philadelphia. Yeah, the company used to work for it was in New Philly.

Scott

So it was his first job right out of college. And I remember you were helping him move in and I had a Walkman. And I was listening to the cassette of Poison's Look What The Cat Dragged In. And he asked me what I was listening to. And I told him and he said, he motioned me over to what he had, one of the first CD players.

Abbey

Oh.

Scott

They look like a Blu-ray player. Because, you know, it was big and bulky. 

Abbey

Reminds me of that scene from The Wedding Singer where they bring it in and they're like, “You want to play your record?”

Scott

This was old tech, but it was new tech then. And he puts headphones on me and he says, “Listen to this.” And he hit play, and it was Led Zeppelin’s IV.

So I had never heard anything like that. And it stuck with me all these years because it was something where it sort of gave me, it showed me a precedent that things could have a different sound. If I listened to more hair metal, you know, it was kind of overproduced. And I think, actually, if you listen to the drums, the snare drums, it was very muted and kind of processed. Well, there was a whole lot of musicality to it.

Abbey

Well there wasn’t a whole lot of musicality to it. 

Scott

And as I got older, I started finding out that all those hair bands were basing their music off of Led Zeppelin. They're singing like Robert Plant.

Abbey

Led Zeppelin diluted.

Scott

Yeah, exactly. And I just remember the thing that galvanized me when I listened to that album for the first time was John Bonham's drums. And it was just like, how in the hell did they get such a full sound? There was his bass drum. There was just boom, boom, boom, especially on “When The Levee Breaks.”

Abbey

Oh my God.

Scott

It just makes you want to...

Abbey

Just resonates. It hits you right in the gut.

Scott

Absolutely. And the sound of it is so different. And it's been talked about so much that it's the mysticalness of the album and this and that. 

Abbey

But it's timeless. 

Scott

And it's timeless because I can listen to that album. I have heard it probably a thousand times, and I can listen to it and hear something different every single time because I've changed and I know it by heart, but there's still bits of it that'll jump out at me and it'll just make it new. Any of that other stuff that came out in the 80s, the hair band stuff, and even getting into the later 90s, it started to become just so overproduced and looking for some sort of perfect recording or some perfect sound. And I discovered, as I got older and, you know, Led Zeppelin was that first band that made me want to buy everything that they ever did. And each album has a different sound to it. 

Abbey

But yet, very Led Zeppelin. It doesn't matter. It's Page. It’s Plant. It’s Bonham.

Scott

Exactly. You come to expect, even though they talk about how the third album wasn't well received, because they kind of changed things. But then, yeah, the third album is great. But maybe later on it was like, okay, Led Zeppelin's Led Zeppelin. Stairway to Heaven was coming. Physical Graffiti was coming. All of these albums that have a very unique sound to them but are still that hard rock, the basis of hard rock and heavy metal. And it's yeah, it was just John Bonham's bass drum that just stuck with me. It taught me. 

Abbey

It became your pulse.

Scott

It became my pulse, and it taught me a lesson that you can capture something unique. And once you've got that, don't mess with it too much. I mean, this was before I was 12 years old. I didn't know anything about recording music. But I knew there was a difference. So there's a difference in the way this is recorded than what, Look What The Cat Drag In, was recorded. You know, the commercialized sound of heavy metal, because that's what, and. … Another thing about it is you start learning about how music is produced from the 60s to the 70s to the 80s to the 90s. And you hear artists talking about in the 80s, how everybody was on coke. And you know, I said, okay, well, the druncher on influenced your music. So you know, of course, 70s and 60s and 70s, oh, marijuana, all that stuff. 

Abbey

LSD, and you can get the trippy and the vibes. You know, you listen with your eyes almost.

Scott

Absolutely. And to me, it's, I don't, that music led Zeppelin, especially Led Zeppelin’s IV, it guided me toward stuff that has a unique sound. So I, all of those albums that are must-have albums, like Sgt. Pepper, Dark Side of the Moon, The Wall, all of those, they're must-haves to me because they have that unique quality of sound to them. They captured something even though The Wall is a little bit more produced than, but when Dark Side of the Moon, of course, is produced, but it is produced in a way that's experimental. So it's, they're trying to capture something different, a character. 

Abbey

You see that in The Who …

Scott

Absolutely. Absolutely.

Abbey

I consider myself very lucky, very fortunate that I grew up with parents who love good music, and my daughters to this day say that I have a middle-aged dad music taste, which is hilarious to me, but I'm like, it's classic rock all the way. 

When I was listening to Led Zeppelin’s IV, I think I was eight, nine, and I was just in my room for the entire summer, just listening to that, nothing but that. And then my bio-dad actually passed away a couple years ago and didn't have much. And, you know, he was kind of a, you know, off doing his own thing. But one thing that I did get from him, I inherited his record collection. So it’s gold. Let me tell you what. 

Scott

You've got the vinyl experience all wrapped up.

Abbey

All wrapped up.

Scott

With me and vinyl, it was always, I can't take care of things. When CDs came out, I was like, okay, this is, this is my thing now. As long as I don't, you know, grab, grab it, you know, a certain way and keep it clean.

I used to get so mad when I went to college, when my college roommate would borrow, he borrowed Wish You Were Here one time just to take it somewhere with him. And he came back, and I swear to God that that CD was filthy. It's like he had it on the floor of his car or something. It's just like, “What are you doing!?” And it's just like, and that, that, that, you know, he was high all the time. You know, so that sort of poisoned me against, it's like, okay, get high if you want. Just don't mess my shit up.

Abbey

Exactly.

Scott

I like my stuff.

Abbey

Yeah.

Scott

It's like, but we had no clue, especially me being that age of what vinyl was and growing, you know, I have memories of listening, you know, my uncle or my, you know, my brother listening to vinyl, listening to Sergeant Pepper and Abba and The Who and, you know, listening to Tommy on vinyl. And I remember sitting outside his bedroom, listening to that stuff. And all I heard was the music.

Abbey

Yes.

Scott

I didn't hear the sound.

Abbey

Right.

Scott

So, to me, hearing Led Zeppelin IV for the first time was when I was introduced to the quality and character of sound.

Abbey

Yeah. And the immersive experience that you, you know, the headphones on, you were, you know, you know, no background noise. It was just you and the music. That's a whole different essence. 

Scott

And I have to say, even though I probably didn't know it at the time, it was introducing me to the idea that you can write rock and roll, not in four-four time. Because “Black Dog” is not four times. It's in a weird sense. Oh, but no, this is like, I know it does. It has that drive, but it's, it's, it's a unique rhythm. And that, you know, I remember in junior high school or, or even high school when you'd walk by the band room, you would hear somebody trying to play it and they would screw it up every time.

Abbey

Yes.

Scott

And then you'd hear the rock and roll snare drum intro where it's this, they go on the high hat.

Abbey

Yes.

Scott

Like, no, he's tapping on the snare.

Abbey

Right.

Scott

If you listen close, it's like, oh my God, it's not the high hat. It's the snare. You discover that. You discover how he did it.

And you can listen to that music and you can pick apart so many, like today's music, like you said, 80s with it being over-produced. It's like, is that a center? Is that, you know, a legit? And with some of that classic, especially with Zeppelin, you can really pick out which instrument is playing what, you can follow the driving force of each instrument, what the story is being pulled in each lick.

Abbey

It's great.

Scott

And I guess with 80s stuff, I think even with the overproduction, I think the 80s, I was drawn more toward pop because that was was where the good song right. 

Abbey

We built this city on rock and roll …

Scott 

Well, maybe not that one. Simple Minds, you know, YouTube and INXS.  And, but I mean, yeah, taking that sound, that 80s sound and the songwriting was so good. So I was like, okay, my, the uniqueness of this that I'm drawn to is the songwriting, the great song, the Eurythmics.Oh my God. And, and I'm forgetting eight million bands. But yeah, it's for me, that was the moment where I discovered I am drawn to the unique character of sound. So if something, if I'm listening to a band and their next album sounds exactly the same as their first album, I start getting bored. Or if I'm listening to an album and the first, the second song has the same sort of sound quality as the first song. Even if it's a different rhythm or a different timbre of the instruments, I start to go, okay. … A lot of times, like in the late 90s, my friends would be into stuff. I got to remember early 90s, it was like, if you, if you said you didn't like Hootie and the Blowfish, you'd have a fight on your hands. You get your ass kicked. And I listened to the Cracked Rearview, I'm like, this just, this just bores me. It's boring.

Abbey

Exactly.

Scott

Because it just all went out of line. It was all. It was kind of the same through line of studio style.

Abbey

You could, that's what they were selling. It was, they found something that was making money at the time, and then they just rushed to replicate, replicate. And kind of sat, I mean, because there was a lot of potential, if you listen to some of those songs, some of the stories that they're telling are really great, but it, just the way that they presented them, it does nothing. Which is why, and a lot of times, I like listening to the covers, like the modern covers of some of those '90s songs that were just, eh, but … 

Scott

But they do interesting things with them.

Abbey

Exactly.

Scott

And then the 80s and 90s, early 2000s, they were, I can't stand to hear anybody cover a Beatles song or a Zeppelin song. Well, you know, I should say, Ann Wilson and Nancy Wilson, that's kind of the center playing “Stairway to Heaven,” I mean, that's different. That's a, that's, that's a rare thing to actually hear somebody do a Led Zeppelin song and do it well. But I think the only thing that I can do is to cover a Beatles song. I'm like, I'd rather, I'd rather listen to “Yesterday,” from Help, you know, I'd rather just listen to that.

But yeah, I mean, and I think that's sort of what drew me away from hair metal to grunge for a time. I kind of got out of grunge, but the first time I heard Nirvana, I remember exactly where I was when I heard “Smells Like Teen Spirit” on the radio. We were coming back from losing a football game. Our first playoff game for Bucyrus against Mansfield. They kicked our ass. 50 to something. I don't remember. But, you know, my friends and I had made this giant tomahawk. And we're riding back in my buddy's van, and this song comes on the radio. And my friend in the passenger seat went, “What is this crap?” And I can remember just kind of sitting back and walking. This actually sounds really interesting. And I think the sound of this. 

Abbey

Completely different.

Scott

Yeah, completely different than what came before and avoided it pissed the hair bands off because then everybody started listening to grunge and like, my career's over. Yeah. It's like, yeah, go figure it by the year in the music business.

Abbey

Exactly. Now you're going to do reality shows on VH1.

Scott

You're not going to make the same album over and over again. You'll live off of stripper money.

Abbey

“Every rose has its thorn, buddy.”

Scott

But yeah, but then in the 90s, you know, that's when I started going to college, you know, I was listening to, you know, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam, all these unique sounding bands. And then it just started getting more cookie-cutter as the 90s went on, even with metal and rock and roll. Never mind the boy bands and Britney Spears and all that. It just got to the point where I was just like, I'm bored by this. This is boring. 

Abbey

And about that time I turned to Nine Inch Nails and, you know, I did a little bit of that.

Scott

Yeah. Yeah. I didn't get into Garbage. I like Nine Inch Nails because my girlfriend liked Nine Inch Nails.How much music are we sort of forced to like because we're peer pressure into it? Like the Hootie and the Blowfish screen.

Abbey

That's a great question.

Scott

Yeah. I remember being a child in kindergarten when Michael Jackson's Thriller came out. And I had never really heard it, you know, but everyone, everyone was coming with the red jacket. I don't know what this is, you know.

Abbey

You're a lot older than me. So I didn't get that, but you're right. It's like, absolutely right. 

Scott

Okay. I guess I better listen to this or I'm going to be ostracized by my peers.

Abbey

For me, it was Backstreet Boys and INSYNC.  Yeah. Exactly.

Scott

I'm six years old. 

Abbey

Yeah. You got to pick a side man. Oh, man.

Scott

That spoke to me, too. It's like going back to Led Zeppelin IV. It's just like the first, when I first heard them, I'd seen T-shirts, right? I'd seen people wearing T-shirts, you know, the same T-shirt you're wearing. When I was in junior high, I'm like, okay, Led Zeppelin, whatever. I don't know what that is. I hear it for the first time and that's, it speaks to me, right? It speaks to me. Not that there's, I'm not saying that they're singing to me, but the sound spoke to me.

Abbey

And, and, and, you felt something.

Scott

I felt something and it's, and it stuck. It “struck my soul.” The title of this segment, which I'll try not to do every single, every single segment. It's a catchy thing. It struck me to my soul and it stayed there. And it is something that I use as precedent when I'm feeling like, like what I'm doing is not worthwhile or if I feel like people are giving me pushback on an idea that I think is really good or if people are just really perfectionists about something doing it over and over so much that they're trying to get it absolutely perfect and they, they just drill it into the ground and ruin it. You can ruin something by rehearsing it too much.

Abbey

Absolutely. And, and that's what you, I love so much about those classic, I'm going to hit Janet, not Janet Jackson, who was also amazing. But, no, Janice Joplin. And just her voice and how iconic and how raw and how not perfect.

Scott

Yes. And she did. She did everything you're not supposed to do to your voice. Drank, smoked, did drugs, and screamed. And man, not live very long. But.

Abbey

It’s a trade-off.

Scott

And that's the sad thing too, is that there is.And I think about, as I read more about Led Zeppelin and learned more about them, I learned that they had this freedom because of their manager. Their manager was a straight-up gangster. He was a gangster.

Abbey

I had not read much about that. I love that.

Scott

And, and yeah, because that was such a period of freedom in music. I mean, they came in right at the end of it, 1969. And went, and then the Rolling Stones concert happened where the Hell's Angels beat up those kids and killed one of them. And then the hippie era was over. But then it's just, even with the whole hippie, free love, you know. I love George Harrison's story about him and his friends going to visit Haight-Ashbury. During the “Summer of Love.” And he talks about it. It was just a bunch of whacked-out kids on drugs. It's just like somebody finally said it. Yeah. He smoked his share and he did his share of drugs, but it was just like, okay, they knew how to handle it. And they were still geniuses. It wasn't the drugs that were writing the song. He's, George Harrison is still a genius. And then the guys were those maybe not Ringo.

Abbey

But one of the things we should dig into the conspiracy of Haight-Ashbury and some of the drugs that they were doing and the Charles Manson highs and you know …

Scott

I saw that documentary. I thought it was that I was looking at. Okay, so the CIA guy was in Haight-Ashbury in a clinic at the same time, Charles Manson was. Okay.

Abbey

One of these days will dig into it and I will blow your mind. Let me tell you what.

Scott

Now do we have to start a conspiracy theory?

Abbey

You might have to. This is your game. This is your game.

Scott

All right. Well, so yeah, taking that forward. That's just something I use with my students all the time. That isn't the first thing that's perfect or what you think is perfect. It's going to be perfect. You look for those things that are so unique. And that's what you stick with. That's what's telling the story. That's what's making the sound, giving the sound its own character or giving your character their own character.

Abbey

So to be a little introspective here, because I think that that's a lesson that I continue to struggle with, personally, while I'm trying to evolve in the creative space. So as a singer or an actress, like you see all of these, you know, everybody, you're always judging yourself and stacking yourself against other people. And so, you know, on the one hand, it's like, well, I don't sound like that person. And I, to this day, it's like, I know, I mean, I have a unique sound. It's very different. It's very throaty. It's whatever. Like I’m the next Janice Joplin, I don't know. But it's still like I come down on myself hard, but then you have to go back to those originals, those, you know, Joplin’s. And you have to say, they take the ass and they were so unique. And then you have to have this little bit of self-love, you know, to kind of snap back into reality. But yeah, it is something I struggle with. And it's like the musicians that really resonate with us, they're not like everybody else. They are different. And it's okay to be different.

Scott

Absolutely. And they were fortunate enough to live in a time when the music industry was embracing uniqueness and experimental stuff. Hendrix, I mean, even though Janice Joplin was just singing the blues, I mean, it wasn't the blues of, you know, the 30s and 40s. It was, you know, it was the cultural appropriation blues. But I mean, but yeah, I mean, they were fortunate enough to have a music industry behind them that wasn't trying to make them sound a certain way. They were trying to capture what they said, which is what the music industry started out as. They were looking for people. And they were, you know, what you see in the Ray Charles movie, how they would say, you sound too much like Nat King Cole. You sound too much like that. You've got to find your own sound. You got to find who you are.

But now it's more what's packageable and what's commercial and the uniqueness, the Florence and the Machine and all of those bands. They just get overshadowed so much by the commercialism and, of course, you know, TikTok and YouTube and social media. The quote-unquote stars.

Abbey

So also talking about like length and packaging, you know, I think everybody who is listening to this and probably walked on the street, and almost anybody would know, Stairway To Heaven.  That ain't no three-minute song. That's not in a package right there.

It's, you know, I remember my dad was saying, you know, he would go to a high school dance and they'd start out slow dancing and then they'd be like, jamming out to the end of it? It doesn't fit in any kind of package. 

But it's iconic and everyone knows it.

Scott

And it makes you wonder about the industry itself, why it changes certain ways when things that worked in the 60s and 70s in the 80s are, oh, you can't have a song that's longer than four minutes because we have to be able to play it on the radio because that's where the money's coming from and this and that. And it's just like, so now you're putting creativity in a box. But then, if you didn't have that happening, you wouldn’t have Simple Minds and the Eurythmics. And INXS and Depeche Mode and all of that are using the commercialism and playing around within it. So I think the lesson there is, okay, these are the rules. I'm going to stand out within these rules.

Abbey

And you know, being able to know when to, you know, thumb your nose at their rules. I think that was very important. And you know, even with The Beatles and you know, they did the exact same thing. It's like you at some point, you just got to stand on a rooftop and sing because that’s what you want to do.

Scott 

Yeah. I agree.

Abbey

We concur a whole lot.

Scott

We do.

I'm telling you guys, this segment is going to be a lot of fun because Abbey and I can talk for hours about this stuff, and I do sincerely hope you enjoyed listening to our conversation and that you'll check out the other segments in the podcast. 

Dedicated to the Craft is the acting segment. 

Rustic Shakespeare is the classical theater segment. 

The Unforgettable Voice is a segment about vocal performance.

And then we have BizVox, the small business segment. 

If you are an artist, you are a small business.

And of course, my favorite segment, The Albatross Cafe, which is a mock podcast where I perform all of the characters. It's my favorite segment because it gives me an opportunity just to be ridiculous and to improvise these characters, so you can hear an artist just having fun and exploring a world with very few parameters.

So I hope you'll check those out and start having conversations about your art, about your creative self, about the things that inspire you, or that you carry with you that help you be a more creative person.

I'm Scott. Thanks a lot for listening, and I'll see you next time.

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