“New Music Drums to Raise Eyebrows and Move Hearts.” Archived from Musician Magazine.

Imagine you’re taking a ‘new music’ blindfold test, and that today we’re talking drums. On our first selection, “Confuse Did,” by David Thomas & the Pedestrians, a variety of percussive instruments creates a waltz-like feel, as the snare reinforces Thomas’ distinct vocal phrasing—until the guitar solo,
when the drum kit kicks in behind guitarist Richard Thompson’s wild slide ride.

Next, follow the Feelies’ “Raised Eyebrows.” Here scattershot toms create a nearly palpable tension through three verses, released only at song’s climax by a series of ferocious rolls and crashes.

Now contrast that with the straightahead, albeit thunderous beat on the Golden Palomino’s “ID.” And finally, follow the drum kit as it navigates the currents of Daniel Ponce’s Cuban percussion and Adrian Belew’s treble-happy guitar squeals on “Sharkey’s Day,” a track from Laurie Anderson’s new LP.

Having heard these four pieces, you might say the new music genre has produced some very inventive drummers. You’d be right, but you’d also be wrong. All those tracks feature Anton Fier, a
Cleveland native who has been living and working in New York for the past five years.

To call Fier eclectic is not to claim he becomes a different person with each new gig. Certain attributes remain constant: his snare sound, among the strongest and most individual in rock (and one he claims not to have noticed); a sense of propulsion and momentum, no matter how intricate the rhythm; and
a lively taste for the unpredictable. Most important is his economy and grace. At his best, Fier never makes you say, “Wow, what technique!” so much as he actually moves you—he makes sense
musically and emotionally. Fier terms his own style a combination of “instinct, knowledge-and curiosity.”

Although most of Pier’s recorded work has been within rock’s avant-garde, he aggressively objects to being pigeonholed, and remains refreshingly free of musical snobbery. “If you looked at my records you’d see a lot of stuff that people consider schlock; but music has different functions, and it depends on what
you want out of it. It’s all valid. Who’s to say what the proper function of music is? Then you get into fascism.”

Fier’s approach remains rooted to the basic tenet of drumming: “It’s all about hitting. I hit things. I rarely analyze things technically before I play. Only when I’m having trouble feeling it do I analyze it.”
The quality of his drums on the Feelies’ “Raised Eyebrows,” he says, “came about from looking at the drum part as a guitar or vocal line. What I’m playing on the toms is almost a melodic line, while
the guitar holds down the rhythm.” Improvised in the studio, it was just what writers Glenn Mercer and Bill Million wanted, so Fier had to transcribe the improvisation in order to learn it for live shows. Fier left the Feelies in 1980 but has recently rejoined, citing the “incredible physicality” of the band: “I’m playing
so fast and so intensely, it’s as if I could just die right on the stage.”

Following his first tour of duty with the Feelies and the Lounge Lizards (a band he helped form in 1980 and which continues today without him) Fier was asked in ’81 to play on ex-Pere Ubu vocalist David Thomas’ first album, Sound Of The Sand. This seemingly disparate group of musicians (including ex-Fairport Convention guitarist Thompson and ex-Boney M trumpet player Ernie Thornton) established an immediate rapport and produced music of consistently brilliant invention. Fier points to his composition “Confuse Did” with pride; its tight structure and careful layering of instruments are obvious antecedents of the ideas and methods Fier would later expand on with the Golden Palominos’ LP. “It was all written out rhythmically. The first tracks I laid down were slit drum and castanets. On the slit drum I play
sixteenth-note triplets with a 4/4 feel, while the castanets are superimposed over that with a 3/4 feel.” This line is maintained through almost the entire song; while on top Fier hammers piano strings, the bass follows his patterns and the snare drum accents the vocals. The guitar solo, meanwhile, was recorded
with the standard bass and drum kit rhythm section and later spliced into the song. The total effect is dizzying; a deranged merry-go-round about to blast out of this world.

“I intended to make a rock ‘n’ roll record using non-rock ‘n’ roll elements. Bill and I are the biggest rock elements, and I wanted to use musicians like Moss and Zorn in a way they’ve never been used before, and for people to hear them in different ways.”

Since the David Thomas LP, the project closest to Fier’s heart has been the Golden Palominos—a unique hybrid of funk, rock and avant garde. Their debut LP (composed and co-produced by
Fier), features vocalist/guitarist Arto Lindsay (ex-DNA, Lounge Lizards), bassists Bill Laswell and Jamaaladeen Tacuma, horn player and noisemaker John Zorn and percussionist David Moss. Though one might be tempted to call them Soho’s idea of a supergroup, the Palominos managetoavoidthe pon¬
derousness and pretense which have plagued other bands radiating such a panoply of talent. Instead, the record is distinguished by its bouyancy and brightness. From the exuberant squeal of Zorn’s game call that kicks off the fun on “Clean Plate” to the minor-key violins fading on “Two Sided Fist,” the Palominos constantly challenge, yet never alienate.

“I intended to make a rock ‘n’ roll record using non-rock ‘n’ roll elements. Bill and I are the biggest rock elements, and I wanted to use musicians like Moss and Zorn in a way they’ve never been used before, and for people to hear them in different ways,” explains Fier. Nor does he use the record as a star turn;
rather, he conceived his rhythmic input as a catalyst and a focus for all the other music activity surrounding it. In composing the songs—or, rather, building a structure for them—he concentrated on
coming up with rhythms that would supply the most durable foundations for everything he wanted to put on record. “I wrote on a Tascam 3340 four-track, using drums, bass and rhythm machines—an Oberheim DMX, LinnDrum, a Roland TR808 and the Boss Doctor rhythm. It was really weird, having Bill and Jamaaladeen—two of the greatest bass players in the world—playing these ultra-simple bass parts. Of course, they added a lot to them.

Of special importance to Fier was ensuring that the vocals fit the rhythmic structure. That involved going over each lyric line by line. Fier called that “the most complicated process” regarding his interaction with other musicians. In some cases though, Bill Laswell for example, the musicians “automatically heard what was necessary and played it.”

“I definitely need to play different styles of music. No one band I’ve ever played in has played all the different kinds of music that I want to learn and play.”

In order to achieve that pile-driverbeat on “ID,” Fier used equally unorthodox techniques, both as drummer and producer: “The first track laid down was the bass drum and snare drum. We added a Lexicon digital delay to that. So I actually play only half as many beats as you hear—the others are from the delay. Then we made a tape loop of that track, and I played live a surdo (an African bass drum) over the tape loop. And then I overdubbed the tubular bell. So the whole percussion track was done in different stages: none of it was done with the band in the studio. I did it that way for power and precision; also I like the live feeling of the surdo.”

Fier describes the frenetic “Cookout” as his only “indulgence” on the record; it was done entirely with a drum machine. To do it, he wrote out the rhythms he wanted, then spent twelve hours straight with a DMX figuring how and where to put them together. He finds the machine a useful tool, and doesn’t feel at all threatened by it. “They’re interesting in that they open up possibilities. You can do things on them that you’d never think of doing on a real kit, and they haven’t got the physical limitations. But they don’t do what I do. You’re never going to get a drum machine to sound the way I sound.”

Laurie Anderson, a long-time admirer of Fier’s, sought him out to play on “Sharkey’s Day” because she liked what she calls the “metallic” sound of some of Fier’s playing on the Palominos’ LP. On “Sharkey’s Day”—an unusual cut for Anderson in that it uses “all the instruments I swore I’d never use—electric
guitar, bass, etc.”—Anderson brought in Fier to augment Daniel Ponce’s shikare and bells with a “harder” sound. “Anton really listened to what was going on, and he was very inventive; he was really wonderful.”

If any other drummer immersed himself in such increasingly diverse projects, he’d be spreading himself thin. Even now, though, Fier is eager to do more. He does appear on David Thomas’ new Variations On A Theme, and plays with Arto Lindsay’s new band, the Ambitious Lovers. The Naked Shakespeare is the name of Peter Blegvad’s new EP; Fier calls it “definitely the best record I’ve ever played on” but unfortunately it was unavailable for extended discussion at press time.

“I definitely need to play different styles of music,” he explains. “No one band I’ve ever played in has played all the different kinds of music that I want to learn and play.

“The most comfortable time of day for me is when I’m sitting behind my drums; then my life makes sense. It’s not like a choice I made, to be a musician; it’s just that from a very early age, that’s the only
thing I had any interest in. I do have other interests—I read books, do other things. But my main motivating force in life is music. And it’s hard to imagine anything else.”

---

This article was originally published in 1984 in Musician Magazine.