Too much time on my hands

I may be one of the few people who is willing to say this, but I am not ashamed to admit that I like the new Guns n’ Roses album, Chinese Democracy.  It is a different style from their past efforts, but I was glad to hear an updated sound and not a simple rehash of the hair/hard rock that made them the mega band that they were in the late 80’s and early 90’s.

It is my opinion that people refuse to like this album due to the fact that it is Guns n’ Roses sans the entire band aside from Axl Rose.  Maybe people would be more open to the album if he would have changed the band name to something not quite Guns n’ Roses, like Velvet Revolver.  Oh wait, that has already been taken by some of his former band mates.

I am getting off the subject of this post, so let me rein it back in a bit.  All of this recent talk about Guns n’ Roses and their music brought up another age-old discussion.  I know I have had this conversation with several people in my lifetime and it is that their original drummer, Steven Adler, was at the forefront of the cowbell revolution and was the best drummer to rock the bell.

Yes, even better than any member of Blue Öyster Cult or Will Ferrell.

Don’t believe me?  Take a listen to the Appetite for Destruction album, whether it is on MP3, CD, cassette, or vinyl.  The album sold 28 million copies worldwide so chances are you already have it.  Listen closely to the tracks and you’ll find it all over the place.  It appears so much that I told myself that if I ever had nothing else better to do, I would listen to the entire album and pick out every instance of it.

On Monday my MP3 player randomly selected the song Sweet Child O’ Mine to play while I was at work.  With the song playing in my headphones I was able to hear a cowbell during the song that I hadn’t previously heard in the past 21 years.  It was a close call on whether it was a cowbell, a woodblock, or some other auxiliary percussion instrument, so I called over another pair of ears and he confirmed that it was indeed a cowbell.

As luck would have it, Crystal went down to the Twin Cities for a few days do visit with friends and on Monday night I didn’t have anything else better to do.  I put on the album, put on my headphones, and using my ear that has been trained to pick out every little percussion sound, found that the cowbell appeared in eight of the 12 songs.  It was actually used so much that it appears on the album a whopping 290 times.  Nightrain was the biggest cowbell infused song with it being hit 125 times.

Want to count the times yourself but don’t quite have the ear to do that?  Don’t worry, I put together a four minute compilation for your listening pleasure I like to call “Welcome to the Cowbell.”  Count along if you’d like, they’re all there.

Welcome to the Cowbell mp3 (4 MB)

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