Monkey Business
Drummer, November 2005
“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro." - Hunter S. Thompson
Gorillaz drummer Russel Hobbs has been through the mill in recent times. As Drummer sits down for a chat with this absolute monster of a man, the band are busy working on a major live tour after preparing for a series of dates at the Manchester International Festival. As if that’s not enough, they have also been shooting some footage for thelr next single from their incredibly popular second album Demon Days, which at the time of writing Is sitting high In the UK album charts. But, while this all sounds very happy and Jolly, the ring of positivity has not been echoing in the ears of the sticksman, who Joined the Gorillaz after fleelng his native Brooklyn following a drive-by shooting, In the shooting. Hobbs’ close friend Del was killed. And as upsetting and distressing as that may be, what makes the whole situation bizarre is the fact that Del's spirit then took up residence Inside Russel’s body. Until recently Del remained there, doing quest raps on the band’s self-titled debut release Gorillaz. But between that album and this one, something bizarre happened...
LOSING A FRIEND...
“The Grim Reaper turned up, just a 9ft figure with this immense black swirling cloak, made out of ravens," explains Hobbs, clearly still aghast at the whole thing. "Oh, and the scythe, This was out in broad daylight on a sidewalk in LA," he continues, “He turned and pointed his long bony finger at me and I, I just felt this ripping from inside me.” “There was a colossal tearing sound and there in front of me lay this big, shuddering lump of ectoplasm. Which turned out to be the spirit of my friend Del”
...AND HIS MARBLES
After having Del exorcised from his body, Russel's life took a sharp downward turn until he reached a point where he was described by band mates as a “barefoot, bearded, kaftan-wearing head job". And Russel believes his mental breakdown is all down to the trauma of losing Del. “It's difficult. Del was, in a very real way, my soulmate for so long.” “Having him removed from me like that, by the Grim Reaper ~ It took me a long while to find out just who the real Russel Hobbs was after that. I think that's when things started going from bad to weird.” Although now a mountain of medication sees him in a state of relative mental stability, Russel admits he still has slightly psychotic tendencies. "Well you're never really over it [the breakdown], So to speak, It's always going to be a part of your personality, and your history. But it’s a lot better now. Although I still see the pink trumpet-playing elephants a fair bit." And the whole experience has taken its toll on his playing. “Well my timing was a little, er, eccentric from time to time,” he explains. "On tracks like ‘White Light’ you can hear that my medication had worn off a little. I just had too much energy bursting out of me on that one. That's why the rhythm on that track’s so fast." With or without giant, musical, tusked animals from the Serengeti occupying his mind, life in the Gorlllaz never has been - and probably never will be - what you'd consider normal. Especially when you take into account the recruitment process.
BECOMING A GORILLA
Before taking the throne behind the Gorillaz, Hobbs was working In a record shop. And it was here that he first met Murdoc, who had tracked him down following his arrival in the UK. The bassist then went on to ‘convince’ Russel to join the band, much like the mafia might convince you that you ‘didn’t see nothin’. Russel explains: “My first encounter with him (Murdoc) really was when the bag went over my head. He asked me for some obscure 50s record and er, I turned around to look for it. I had my back turned to him for just a moment and that’s when he slipped the sack over my head and bundled me out of the shop. It wasn’t until it came off that I found myself at Kong Studios and that Murdoc was my assailant. But the music he played me was good enough to keep me there.”
HOPPING THE POND
According to Russel, what really works for the Gorillaz and indeed helps to create their unique sound Is the diversity of where the musicians come trom. As a Brooklyn lad, he obviously had something else the others - two of which are from England (bassist Murdoc and singer 2D) and the other is from Japan (ten-year-old guitarist, Noodle) - couldn't offer. "The pace of New York was far faster than what goes down in Essex," Russel says. “But musically it helped me put so much into Gorillaz, just being able to put a lot of the New York soul into our sound. English writers are so great at melody but sometimes lack the heaviness, or the rhythm of the States. So with Gorillaz the blend works real well.”
LEARNING TO PLAY
Russel's style though wasn’t developed by sticking strictly to Brooklyn. He always has his mind, his ears (and judging by his waistline, his mouth, too) wide open. “I taught myself (to play drums), just kinda playing along to records, or getting people to jam along with. I was into programming beats and sampling breakbeat records from an early age, and that just grew into me wanting to sample my own rhythms. So I put together a little drum kit and went from there.” "I first copied licks off Earl Palmer, a man who has played on a million and one hits, from ‘La Bamba’, ‘Tutti Frutti’ to TV hits like The Odd Couple and The Brady Bunch. Clyde Stubblefield and Bernard ‘Pretty’ Purdie were also massive in my palette; the foundations of hip hop, Likewise ‘Zigaboo’ Modeliste from the Meters.” “My dad used to play a lot of jazz around the house so that went in. Philly Joe Jones who played with Miles Davis and John Coltrane had an incredible feel. Also I used to pick up a lot of drum styles from cartoon shows,” “I'd say the very first drummer to inspire me would probably be Harry Stinson who played on the Pink Panther Theme by Henry Mancini, I mean that’s a drum roll you'll never forget!" "So I was never formally taught, I just used to listen to records and watch TV and soak it all up.”
INFLUENCES
“For the more dub stuff I'm a big fan of Carlton Barrett, who played with Augustus Pablo, Bob Marley and King Tubby, Then there's Sly Dunbar who's played with everyone from Peter Tosh and Horace Andy to The Upsetters and even lan Dury. I love the sound of Jaki Liebezeit who held it down Krautrock-style for Can. But at the same time you have to give it up for people like Joey Kramer from Aerosmith, Without his beat, Run DMC would have been singing a cappella,” “Then after that you have to get into the whole area of programming breaks and loops which stretches from Public Enemy, Timbaland, and Dre.” “But there's also fantastic rhythms to be heard from scratchers like Premier and DJ Shadow. I was a big fan of Chris Frantz from Talking Heads. And I learned most of my hi- hat work from Stewart Copeland. For rock I've gotta say Zak Starkey’s the best in the world at the moment. His work with The Who is incredible. He makes the rolls that Keith Moon used to do sound controlled, but still explosive.”
LIVING TOGETHER
On the world stage, Hobbs’ drumming is not to be sniffed at. After all, he does drive along a world-famous band, which has sold millions of records worldwide. Oddly, for a band that has had so much success, Hobbs and co still live together at Kong Studios in Essex, as they have since the day the band came together. This may sound claustrophobic and, I admit, I was hoping to hear stories of massive brawls between band members. Though the experience of living in such a place is apparently quite different. “Well, the thing about Kong Studios is it’s a pretty big place,” Hobbs considers. “In fact, the place seems like it’s got a mind of its own, Like the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. There's so many rooms you can keep out of each other's way for days on end, and never see another soul.” And this helps to keep the peace, despite egotistical bassist Murdoc’s violent temperament. "No-one really falls out,” Russel says. “We're so used to Murdoc’s Caligula-type behaviour, now the worst it gets is just a long spell of silence. He can get pretty nuts at times, especially when he's been hitting the ether. Once, he tried to kick himself out and get his horse to play bass.” Despite having an extremely fragile mental state, Russel insists that Kong Studios has another little twist to it. “I'm a whole cocktail of medication at the moment. If you shake me I rattle like a maraca,” he admits. “Thing is, despite my psychosis, Kong Studios actually is filled with zombies.”
SOLO PROJECTS
Hobbs is, for all you might gauge from his appearance and what has been said so far, actually a very well-spoken individual who seems to take his craft very seriously. And so between albums he devoted a lot of time to not only going insane and then becoming sane again, but also to some solo work. He explains: "It was my hip-hop vision of Pet Sounds, but it turned into something else! It was called the Seventh Heaven Hip Hop And Harmony Album. It was meant to be so full of good vibrations, warm harmonies, and great sounds that the whole world would just come together in a mutual sense of love and universal respect for each other. But... it... it... took an odd turn.” He continues: “It all went bad. Evil. It just ended up with a life of its own. And there was a sickly gloop coming out of the speakers. I could tell the album had gone sour, You could hear people laughing in the background. It sounded like some wonky David Koresh tape. All panpipes and meditation chants, but it was like the sound was trying to lull you into a dreamlike state, so it could eat your soul. Really spooky. Like a children's nursery rhyme from some horror film." “I got the impression that everything that was going wrong in the world was down to this dark energy that was coming out of this record. I didn't trust the album anymore, so I buried the tapes.” He pauses, clearly distraught. “I could still hear them pounding away for months afterwards. I... I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” But that isn’t the end of his solo work. Indeed, he is still working on an extremely ambitious solo project. “I'm still yet to complete the work on Drumacropolis. On it I play every drum and rhythm style through the history of drums, from the dawn of time to the present day. Then I’m gonna to sample it, and compress it into a single snare sound, It will be the entire history of drums in one snare beat.”
DEMON DAYS
His fresh and creative approach comes across in the band's latest album Demon Days, which is a darker and more sinister-sounding album than the previous record. But why the change? “With great power comes great responsibility,” he muses. “The first album everything was just so fresh and new. We were like kids in a playground. But by the time of the second album we had changed, the world had changed and you just instinctively reflect that in the music. But I think the second album is just deeper and richer. It’s a much more satisfying record to listen to.” “It's a cross between live drums and programmed beats. it's impossible to really prepare because once I hear the track, all the references I've ever heard just pour out. I play along, then chop up some of the beats, add some digital cuts in there. Along the way you may lose all drum patterns until the correct rhythm reveals itself, You know when it’s there, instinctively. You can hear everything sitting together.”
DOES FAME MAKE YOU MORE ATTRACTIVE?
The tried and, now, tested formula the Gorillaz use is one that seems to work very well indeed. So much so that immense popularity has come very quickly for the band. After initially rocketing to fame, bass player Murdoc went to Mexico where he spent an extensive amount of time in brothels. And he wasn't there to fix the fridge... or maybe he was, depending on your way of thinking. For Russel, though, the obvious handicap of being able to crush an entire village if he was to trip over, his luck with the ladies didn’t exactly go out of control once the band hit the
big time, “Murdoc says that the only girls that are into me are ‘Chubby Chasers’, he says. “I think he’s just being size-ist. He can’t see beyond the layers of bulk, muscle and fat to the real inner me, I've got a very big soul, I think girls can see that. But fame will only change what was there in you already. With Murdoc he got into his hedonism even more, but for me fame gave me the opportunity to work with some fantastic musicians, It's because of the first record that we got the chance to work with De La Soul, Dangermouse, Dennis Hopper, Roots Manuva - all these great artists. Fame, tor me, is a good thing.”
BETWEEN ALBUMS...
Aside from his solo work, the time spent between albums was also the chance for him to take up a new hobby. One, which seems a bit weird to me, but then, so does Russel, “I got really into taxidermy while the band had a break,” the big guy enthuses, “But I'm kinda more creative than most taxidermists. I vary the animals I stuff. Sometimes I mix half a hog with Zebra legs, maybe sometimes a yak's body with a lizard's. It’s like music. I mix up the styles to keep the whole thing fresh, you know?”
BIG MAN
The weight of Hobbs is something which couldn't really go unmentioned in our interview, given that he is built like a tank made of jelly. He tips the scales at forty stone and the thought of him sitting on you, despite being disturbing, is also one which would strike fear into anyone who values their ability to breathe. But Hobbs' attitude to weight is one that differs from that of most, but he maintains the attitude of many a famous person: attention to detail is essential. “I have to give a lot of attention to my diet,” he says. “Just to keep my weight up to scratch I've gotta eat a massive amount. Carbs, proteins, minerals, vitamins, leather - I find most of these things in a Maccy D's with a big tub of Hagen Das. Chinese food is also good for my metabolism. Pizza gives me the energy I need for those long drum rolls. So I have to get the combination just right.” And to him, being a bit of a chunky fella is actually a benefit as a drummer. "I think a heavy drummer can sit real heavy on the beat. Like Al Green's drummer, just a good solid sound. Big drummers swing better. Look at Prince’s ex-guy - he's built like a fridge!”
A HASTY EXIT
At this point Hobbs’ stomach grumbles in a somewhat aggressive fashion, It must have been all this talk of food! Before the situation becomes risky, I hastily begin to round up the interview.
"One more question, Russel,” I say, beginning to panic as his stomach rumbles again and Hobbs shifts in his seat. I couldn't, in good conscience have left without asking: "Are you annoyed your parents gave you same name as a kettle?" He laughs. “I'm not sure which came first, me or the kettle, Having said that, It is better than my friend's name. He's called Armitage Shanks." And it's a good point. But I'd much rather be called Armitage Shanks than hang around with a hungry forty-stone drummer that hallucinates. What if he thinks I'm a burger?
Gorillaz drummer Russel Hobbs has been through the mill in recent times. As Drummer sits down for a chat with this absolute monster of a man, the band are busy working on a major live tour after preparing for a series of dates at the Manchester International Festival. As if that’s not enough, they have also been shooting some footage for thelr next single from their incredibly popular second album Demon Days, which at the time of writing Is sitting high In the UK album charts. But, while this all sounds very happy and Jolly, the ring of positivity has not been echoing in the ears of the sticksman, who Joined the Gorillaz after fleelng his native Brooklyn following a drive-by shooting, In the shooting. Hobbs’ close friend Del was killed. And as upsetting and distressing as that may be, what makes the whole situation bizarre is the fact that Del's spirit then took up residence Inside Russel’s body. Until recently Del remained there, doing quest raps on the band’s self-titled debut release Gorillaz. But between that album and this one, something bizarre happened...
LOSING A FRIEND...
“The Grim Reaper turned up, just a 9ft figure with this immense black swirling cloak, made out of ravens," explains Hobbs, clearly still aghast at the whole thing. "Oh, and the scythe, This was out in broad daylight on a sidewalk in LA," he continues, “He turned and pointed his long bony finger at me and I, I just felt this ripping from inside me.” “There was a colossal tearing sound and there in front of me lay this big, shuddering lump of ectoplasm. Which turned out to be the spirit of my friend Del”
...AND HIS MARBLES
After having Del exorcised from his body, Russel's life took a sharp downward turn until he reached a point where he was described by band mates as a “barefoot, bearded, kaftan-wearing head job". And Russel believes his mental breakdown is all down to the trauma of losing Del. “It's difficult. Del was, in a very real way, my soulmate for so long.” “Having him removed from me like that, by the Grim Reaper ~ It took me a long while to find out just who the real Russel Hobbs was after that. I think that's when things started going from bad to weird.” Although now a mountain of medication sees him in a state of relative mental stability, Russel admits he still has slightly psychotic tendencies. "Well you're never really over it [the breakdown], So to speak, It's always going to be a part of your personality, and your history. But it’s a lot better now. Although I still see the pink trumpet-playing elephants a fair bit." And the whole experience has taken its toll on his playing. “Well my timing was a little, er, eccentric from time to time,” he explains. "On tracks like ‘White Light’ you can hear that my medication had worn off a little. I just had too much energy bursting out of me on that one. That's why the rhythm on that track’s so fast." With or without giant, musical, tusked animals from the Serengeti occupying his mind, life in the Gorlllaz never has been - and probably never will be - what you'd consider normal. Especially when you take into account the recruitment process.
BECOMING A GORILLA
Before taking the throne behind the Gorillaz, Hobbs was working In a record shop. And it was here that he first met Murdoc, who had tracked him down following his arrival in the UK. The bassist then went on to ‘convince’ Russel to join the band, much like the mafia might convince you that you ‘didn’t see nothin’. Russel explains: “My first encounter with him (Murdoc) really was when the bag went over my head. He asked me for some obscure 50s record and er, I turned around to look for it. I had my back turned to him for just a moment and that’s when he slipped the sack over my head and bundled me out of the shop. It wasn’t until it came off that I found myself at Kong Studios and that Murdoc was my assailant. But the music he played me was good enough to keep me there.”
HOPPING THE POND
According to Russel, what really works for the Gorillaz and indeed helps to create their unique sound Is the diversity of where the musicians come trom. As a Brooklyn lad, he obviously had something else the others - two of which are from England (bassist Murdoc and singer 2D) and the other is from Japan (ten-year-old guitarist, Noodle) - couldn't offer. "The pace of New York was far faster than what goes down in Essex," Russel says. “But musically it helped me put so much into Gorillaz, just being able to put a lot of the New York soul into our sound. English writers are so great at melody but sometimes lack the heaviness, or the rhythm of the States. So with Gorillaz the blend works real well.”
LEARNING TO PLAY
Russel's style though wasn’t developed by sticking strictly to Brooklyn. He always has his mind, his ears (and judging by his waistline, his mouth, too) wide open. “I taught myself (to play drums), just kinda playing along to records, or getting people to jam along with. I was into programming beats and sampling breakbeat records from an early age, and that just grew into me wanting to sample my own rhythms. So I put together a little drum kit and went from there.” "I first copied licks off Earl Palmer, a man who has played on a million and one hits, from ‘La Bamba’, ‘Tutti Frutti’ to TV hits like The Odd Couple and The Brady Bunch. Clyde Stubblefield and Bernard ‘Pretty’ Purdie were also massive in my palette; the foundations of hip hop, Likewise ‘Zigaboo’ Modeliste from the Meters.” “My dad used to play a lot of jazz around the house so that went in. Philly Joe Jones who played with Miles Davis and John Coltrane had an incredible feel. Also I used to pick up a lot of drum styles from cartoon shows,” “I'd say the very first drummer to inspire me would probably be Harry Stinson who played on the Pink Panther Theme by Henry Mancini, I mean that’s a drum roll you'll never forget!" "So I was never formally taught, I just used to listen to records and watch TV and soak it all up.”
INFLUENCES
“For the more dub stuff I'm a big fan of Carlton Barrett, who played with Augustus Pablo, Bob Marley and King Tubby, Then there's Sly Dunbar who's played with everyone from Peter Tosh and Horace Andy to The Upsetters and even lan Dury. I love the sound of Jaki Liebezeit who held it down Krautrock-style for Can. But at the same time you have to give it up for people like Joey Kramer from Aerosmith, Without his beat, Run DMC would have been singing a cappella,” “Then after that you have to get into the whole area of programming breaks and loops which stretches from Public Enemy, Timbaland, and Dre.” “But there's also fantastic rhythms to be heard from scratchers like Premier and DJ Shadow. I was a big fan of Chris Frantz from Talking Heads. And I learned most of my hi- hat work from Stewart Copeland. For rock I've gotta say Zak Starkey’s the best in the world at the moment. His work with The Who is incredible. He makes the rolls that Keith Moon used to do sound controlled, but still explosive.”
LIVING TOGETHER
On the world stage, Hobbs’ drumming is not to be sniffed at. After all, he does drive along a world-famous band, which has sold millions of records worldwide. Oddly, for a band that has had so much success, Hobbs and co still live together at Kong Studios in Essex, as they have since the day the band came together. This may sound claustrophobic and, I admit, I was hoping to hear stories of massive brawls between band members. Though the experience of living in such a place is apparently quite different. “Well, the thing about Kong Studios is it’s a pretty big place,” Hobbs considers. “In fact, the place seems like it’s got a mind of its own, Like the Overlook Hotel in The Shining. There's so many rooms you can keep out of each other's way for days on end, and never see another soul.” And this helps to keep the peace, despite egotistical bassist Murdoc’s violent temperament. "No-one really falls out,” Russel says. “We're so used to Murdoc’s Caligula-type behaviour, now the worst it gets is just a long spell of silence. He can get pretty nuts at times, especially when he's been hitting the ether. Once, he tried to kick himself out and get his horse to play bass.” Despite having an extremely fragile mental state, Russel insists that Kong Studios has another little twist to it. “I'm a whole cocktail of medication at the moment. If you shake me I rattle like a maraca,” he admits. “Thing is, despite my psychosis, Kong Studios actually is filled with zombies.”
SOLO PROJECTS
Hobbs is, for all you might gauge from his appearance and what has been said so far, actually a very well-spoken individual who seems to take his craft very seriously. And so between albums he devoted a lot of time to not only going insane and then becoming sane again, but also to some solo work. He explains: "It was my hip-hop vision of Pet Sounds, but it turned into something else! It was called the Seventh Heaven Hip Hop And Harmony Album. It was meant to be so full of good vibrations, warm harmonies, and great sounds that the whole world would just come together in a mutual sense of love and universal respect for each other. But... it... it... took an odd turn.” He continues: “It all went bad. Evil. It just ended up with a life of its own. And there was a sickly gloop coming out of the speakers. I could tell the album had gone sour, You could hear people laughing in the background. It sounded like some wonky David Koresh tape. All panpipes and meditation chants, but it was like the sound was trying to lull you into a dreamlike state, so it could eat your soul. Really spooky. Like a children's nursery rhyme from some horror film." “I got the impression that everything that was going wrong in the world was down to this dark energy that was coming out of this record. I didn't trust the album anymore, so I buried the tapes.” He pauses, clearly distraught. “I could still hear them pounding away for months afterwards. I... I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” But that isn’t the end of his solo work. Indeed, he is still working on an extremely ambitious solo project. “I'm still yet to complete the work on Drumacropolis. On it I play every drum and rhythm style through the history of drums, from the dawn of time to the present day. Then I’m gonna to sample it, and compress it into a single snare sound, It will be the entire history of drums in one snare beat.”
DEMON DAYS
His fresh and creative approach comes across in the band's latest album Demon Days, which is a darker and more sinister-sounding album than the previous record. But why the change? “With great power comes great responsibility,” he muses. “The first album everything was just so fresh and new. We were like kids in a playground. But by the time of the second album we had changed, the world had changed and you just instinctively reflect that in the music. But I think the second album is just deeper and richer. It’s a much more satisfying record to listen to.” “It's a cross between live drums and programmed beats. it's impossible to really prepare because once I hear the track, all the references I've ever heard just pour out. I play along, then chop up some of the beats, add some digital cuts in there. Along the way you may lose all drum patterns until the correct rhythm reveals itself, You know when it’s there, instinctively. You can hear everything sitting together.”
DOES FAME MAKE YOU MORE ATTRACTIVE?
The tried and, now, tested formula the Gorillaz use is one that seems to work very well indeed. So much so that immense popularity has come very quickly for the band. After initially rocketing to fame, bass player Murdoc went to Mexico where he spent an extensive amount of time in brothels. And he wasn't there to fix the fridge... or maybe he was, depending on your way of thinking. For Russel, though, the obvious handicap of being able to crush an entire village if he was to trip over, his luck with the ladies didn’t exactly go out of control once the band hit the
big time, “Murdoc says that the only girls that are into me are ‘Chubby Chasers’, he says. “I think he’s just being size-ist. He can’t see beyond the layers of bulk, muscle and fat to the real inner me, I've got a very big soul, I think girls can see that. But fame will only change what was there in you already. With Murdoc he got into his hedonism even more, but for me fame gave me the opportunity to work with some fantastic musicians, It's because of the first record that we got the chance to work with De La Soul, Dangermouse, Dennis Hopper, Roots Manuva - all these great artists. Fame, tor me, is a good thing.”
BETWEEN ALBUMS...
Aside from his solo work, the time spent between albums was also the chance for him to take up a new hobby. One, which seems a bit weird to me, but then, so does Russel, “I got really into taxidermy while the band had a break,” the big guy enthuses, “But I'm kinda more creative than most taxidermists. I vary the animals I stuff. Sometimes I mix half a hog with Zebra legs, maybe sometimes a yak's body with a lizard's. It’s like music. I mix up the styles to keep the whole thing fresh, you know?”
BIG MAN
The weight of Hobbs is something which couldn't really go unmentioned in our interview, given that he is built like a tank made of jelly. He tips the scales at forty stone and the thought of him sitting on you, despite being disturbing, is also one which would strike fear into anyone who values their ability to breathe. But Hobbs' attitude to weight is one that differs from that of most, but he maintains the attitude of many a famous person: attention to detail is essential. “I have to give a lot of attention to my diet,” he says. “Just to keep my weight up to scratch I've gotta eat a massive amount. Carbs, proteins, minerals, vitamins, leather - I find most of these things in a Maccy D's with a big tub of Hagen Das. Chinese food is also good for my metabolism. Pizza gives me the energy I need for those long drum rolls. So I have to get the combination just right.” And to him, being a bit of a chunky fella is actually a benefit as a drummer. "I think a heavy drummer can sit real heavy on the beat. Like Al Green's drummer, just a good solid sound. Big drummers swing better. Look at Prince’s ex-guy - he's built like a fridge!”
A HASTY EXIT
At this point Hobbs’ stomach grumbles in a somewhat aggressive fashion, It must have been all this talk of food! Before the situation becomes risky, I hastily begin to round up the interview.
"One more question, Russel,” I say, beginning to panic as his stomach rumbles again and Hobbs shifts in his seat. I couldn't, in good conscience have left without asking: "Are you annoyed your parents gave you same name as a kettle?" He laughs. “I'm not sure which came first, me or the kettle, Having said that, It is better than my friend's name. He's called Armitage Shanks." And it's a good point. But I'd much rather be called Armitage Shanks than hang around with a hungry forty-stone drummer that hallucinates. What if he thinks I'm a burger?