The greatness that was Keith Moon

I stumbled across a fun New Yorker magazine podcast from late last year (thanks to a tip from another fun podcast from the great folks at The Word magazine) that does a terrific job of celebrating the true greatness of Who drummer Keith Moon.

Yeah, yeah, everyone knows Moon was a great drummer up to his untimely -- yet unsurprising -- death at age 32 in 1978. His manic playing inspired legions of fans and musicians, and helped power some of the greatest music ever made. 

The New Yorker podcast features writer James Wood, who wrote an accompanying feature on Moon for the magazine (here's a link to an abstract; you have to pay to read the complete article, which is something like 5,000 words). 

There are two things that make this 14-minute podcast worth your time:

1) Woods' impressive display of finger drumming; this man could power a band with his hands alone. Woods uses his talents to show the difference between how Ringo Starr and Moon would approach the same song.

2) Hearing an isolated drum track from a "Quarophenia song called "The Dirty Jobs" that shows just how complex and unorthodox some of Moon's playing really was. As Woods says, Moon was different in that he often never repeated any fills as he drove through a song. 

My favorite Moon track is "I Can See for Miles," a 1967 psych-pop classic that features manic drumming from the get-go, building to a long, amazing snare roll crescendo accented by crashing cymbals. Back in the day I tried many times to play that long fill, let alone the entire song, and was left exhausted and humbled and nowhere close to the real thing. I keep thinking they had to multi-track his parts, in order for him to have been able to pull off such magic.

But even if the band is miming in the video above, check out Moon's 40-second barrage that begins at 3:18. It's a recorded performance for the ages, and one that packs a wallop more than 40 years later.