Dig Deep: Mike Ricciardella and Dick Dowling – The Fabulous Sounds Of Rock Drumming – Music Minus One (1970)

Mike Ricciardella and Dick Dowling – Drum Solo + Narration
Mike Ricciardella and Dick Dowling – New Rhythm Patterns
Mike Ricciardella and Dick Dowling – Bass Drum and Hi-Hat
Mike Ricciardella and Dick Dowling – Rock Group Featuring Solo Drummer

For the first Dig Deep of Melting Pot’s (unbelievable to me at least) 10th year of sharing music, I wanted to come strong and hard with it and thus, you have this heavy duty break record. For a number of Hip-Hop DJs/Turntablists, instructional records are a goldmine, because they tend to have great narration that is almost tailor-made to be cut up and played around with. In terms of the music itself, a lot of times, I find instructional LPs to not be all that fulfilling. This record is not one of those records, as it’s basically just wall to wall clean, open, and heavy drum breaks from start to finish.

The name Mike Ricciardella seemed sort of familiar to me, but it wasn’t I was getting this post together that I realized that he was the drummer in the rock band The Illusion, whose song “Did You See Her Eyes,” has a really solid, quick paced clean drum break on it (in addition to a Sly & the Family Stone inspired breakdown just after).

While these tracks are my favorites from the record, again, the whole thing is basically just one big open drum break. When I saw this at the most recent Boston Bob Rappcats pop-up, I didn’t hesitate for a second to get it. Growing up with Hip-Hop and having Hip-Hop ears, I love how things like this, that were only created to facilitate the learning process of “live” musicians as they were coming up, takes on an entirely differently life in the hands of creative contemporary producers. For those who dig these sounds, this is definitely one you want to put on your radar and track down when you get the chance.