No, but even if you can't hear the kick in the final recording, it doesn't mean that in that band the sound wasn't built on the kick. It was. By deviations I mean trombone quartets, stuff like that.
It doesn't matter if it's Thin Lizzy or Count Basie. People need to know that in all but bizarre perversions, the kick drum is ground zero.
Everything Hal Blaine was on. Everything James Jamerson was on. But not trombone quartets, Ravi Shankar, Beethoven, John Cage, Romanian folk songs etc...
I think that statement is way, way too absolute. It is true in many many instances. But like stereotyping, it's taking something that's true in
some instances {many instances, even} and making it the
whole truth and nothing but the truth.
What's revealing is
It is genre related but it's related to all the genres that I can relate to.
,
I think it is, in all the music I like, which is all Motown, pretty much everything that's ever made the Billboard charts, etc...
All normal music is based on the kick
That's the way a "normal" (I'm talking about songs you hear at Safeway) band works.
which show global all encompassing statements but are in the main backed up by what the individual likes....
I'm not having a go at you dinty {I generally enjoy your posts, they're usually a good read, contain food for thought and give me lots to think about, mainly where I disagree - all of which, incidentally apply to your posts here} - but when you have listened to lots of different forms of music, some of your statements at the very least catch the eye ! It becomes almost impossible to see things that way again when you've seen other.
I'd be more inclined to say that much music carries a pulse or definite rhythm, which, when drums are used, can act as a foundation. The same pulse and definite rhythm is still there - regardless of whether the drums are used. You know in those zillions of songs where the drums drop out or before the drums come in, the pulse still exists. Sometimes it can be knocked out on other parts of the kit. Drumming on the trap set has
developed over the last 90 or so years. Sometimes the kick is actually decorative. Sometimes, both decorative and foundational. Sometimes it's the removal of the snare that would cause a song to fall apart. Sometimes the bass anchors. Sometimes the foundation is carried on other instruments. Music is actually quite varied !
If it's true that all music 'that normal people listen to' is built on the kick (even when you can't hear it...), it actually doesn't say alot for our normality. And to kind of dismiss the music of what is effectively most of the world's population as being a perversion {because much of the music across Africa, Asia, the Middle east, South America, Europe and even Australasia ain't necesarilly 'built on the kick', and that's before we even look at classical stuff, field blues, Caribbean music, hymns and spirituals etc, etc, etc}, well, that is too absolute for me. Perhaps our problem in the West right now is that we are far too reductionist in our thinking....Incidentally, not being
built on the kick in no way implies or means 'rhythmically sterile'.
no offence to any that post in the clinic but the biggest let down for homerecorders mixes is their drums...folks spend days getting that guitar tone, hone their vocals to perfection..then back it up with untreated samples from EZ Drummer going boom boom tish...it just wrecks all their hard work
Im sure it does make a difference when you mix songs from across the spectrum......
I think drums become a second thought for so many
I thought some of Kcearl's points were valid when he spoke of the importance of getting the rhythm right in music that
is beat driven and it kind of makes sense that if you're going to use drums that they be audible. There was a thread a few months back asking how important the drums were in one's songwriting and it was interesting that there was so little response. Maybe not many hang around the songwriting forum, maybe it was just a daft question !
So to come back to benherron.rrr's original question, I think that mixing is one of those interesting disciplines that is artistic but with a 'scientific' element that shouldn't be devalued and a mixer's main task is bring out what the song
is ~ as they see it. Which parts mean maximum when ? How do the individual elements contribute to the whole sound ?
...which is why most threads you spend any serious time in usually turn into a junior-high free-for-all. But I guess that's the only way you can still feel "young". From the 16-to-20-something crowd, that would not be very odd behavior...but dude, you're a middle aged fart, so stop playing the youth angle! 
