Missing beats round (5)

Joan Jett & The Blackheart's cover version of "I love rock'n'roll" is full of missing beats.

For example at 55 seconds in, the last line of the chorus is "So come and take your time and dance with me". The word "me" is the last beat of that bar and also the first beat of the next bar:

Missing beats round (4)

Heart Attack Survivor says: "Try Cream's 'Deserted Cities of the Heart' - 4 beats, 4 beats, 3 beats, 4 beats. I've known drummers give up their sticks for ever after trying that."

Genius. Try counting along to this:

Missing beats round (3)

Van Halen's "Outta love again" came up on my iPod on the way home yesterday, and I noticed that there's a beat missing just before the chorus starts. Scroll forward to 43 seconds in and start counting:

Said that you are leaving, I don't (4 beats)
wanna hear that talk (4 beats)
Stare at disbelief in me, as (4 beats)
I just up and walk (4 beats)
Outta love (without backing vocals, 3 beats)
[new riff] (without singing, 4 beats)
Outta love (with backing vocals, 4 beats, from here on it continues in 4/4)...

Missing beats round (2)

Blondie's "Heart of glass" may not be as great as you remember it, but there is a moment of towering genius at 2 minutes 0 seconds in (at the start of the instrumental bit) where they miss the fourth beat off the end of each two-bar phrase, or if you want that mathematically, you can count it in sevens. They then start humming along at about 2 minutes 20 seconds without the missing beats (so you can count in eights again). I think on the twelve inch version of the song they mix and match both towards the end.

Missing beats round

In place of a gear-change this weekend, let's do 'missing beats' instead*.

Here's a fairly faithful version of "Rolling and tumbling" by Muddy Waters. The riff (which is in A) between the singing parts isn't repeated four times, it's repeated three-and-a-half times or it's three times with two empty beats where they slide up to the singing parts (which are in D or E) depending on which way you look at it. I'd been listening to this song for over twenty years before I noticed - it wasn't until I compared it with Bob Dylan's version on "Modern Times" (who just does the riff four times in a perfunctory sort of fashion) that the penny dropped...



* Other songs to be featured in this series will be "Heart of glass" by Blondie and "Hell in a bucket" by The Grateful Dead. I can't actually think of many others.