"Muting" Drums

It's really only in the last few years that I've really paid attention to the actual tone per se of drums as opposed to their role in songs and particular drum performances. And in all honesty, I don't think the sounds of drums have gotten better or worse. Going right back to jazz and swing, through rock'n'roll, passing through Britpop, psychedelia and soul, stopping off at funk, fusion, disco, reggae and punk and much 80s ffwwwwaaappp drums, pretty much I've detected a bewildering array of sounds, some great {ie to my liking}, some lame {ie, as actual sounds, not to my liking !} and much kind of average. I think like alot of things in looking at popular music history, the story isn't always as clear as can be represented in a sentence or two.
 
There's also misconceptions about different eras as well. Not everything in the 60's and 70's was dead. Bonham's drums were as anti-dead as you can get. Ian Paice's tone was still controlled but not dead (his is probably my favorite drum sound of the era, although his bass drum was a bit too tight, his snare and toms were fantastic). Deadness in drums didn't really start until the late 60's. As Greg said, look at Moonie's early drum tones, so open, so out of control, but by Who's Next they're very controlled.

I agree also with Ringo Starr, of all the dead tones, his was by far the best, especially on Abbey Road.
 
That's what I mean. There were fads and fashions in every era and there were so many drummers with variations on a variety of drum sounds plus engineers in different studios getting different sounds and mixers mixing drums in different ways, some very prominently, others hardly audible. I was listening to "Rubber Soul" this morning and even though the drums are generally hard panned, you can hear them very clearly and they're really bright. On the other hand, Charlie Watts' 1965 drums sound really muffled. The Motown ones from the same era are also quite muffled but with the tambourine shadowing the snare, very present.
 
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