London Drum Show 2015 - Pete Ray Biggin and Mark King

[@greatwhite61967]

Normally you'd get Pete on drums , then Mark , Mike & Nathan on percussion as they can all play percussion & I was surprised to see in one online clip that Mike jumped on to either a separate drum kit or Petes & he played brilliantly on those drums & has obviously been self taught or had lessons on how to play the drums as he was no slouch on them & this I'd what used to be amazing about bands as each member could play more than one instrument & that in itself helps to create music you might otherwise no do unless the other members were extremely proficient on other instruments... There's only a few uploads of percussion being plated by the current Level 42 line up I've seen on KZbin & it's the one formula that I really miss from Level 42 overall sound whether in Live Shows or on recordings & the song's they could play (that I haven't heard in over 3 decades) like " Kouyate " or other song's they used percussion on theirs songs or they could easily add percussion in for other song's that didn't have percussion on the single or album versions & I've seen with these clips that it's just down to Lucy when you get a chance to see them play percussion during their Live gigs & it's something that won't take up a lot of space & wouldn't be much of a problem for whoever is setting the PA up & hope I get to see them play percussion at a gig I go to in the foreseeable future... Being like Mark (but not as good on bass guitar) I started out on drums but eventually moved over to bass guitar as my childhood close friend who played lead & rhythm guitar bugged me for so long to try the bass guitar that I only agreed to try it out once & if I didn't like it I was sticking with just having fun on the drums & acoustic but i was more shocked than my friend that once i picked up a bass guitar up in one of our local stores " somethings clicked in my head " & I definitely believe that there are those who can play other instruments but by accident or through no choice pick up another instrument only to find they were made to play that one particular instrument & this was my case & subconsciously I had stored all of the great bass lines I had heard as I was growing up & I could just (mostly) play at least 70% of the bass lines from just memory & I dug those song's out to learn the rest & it's one of the only times that I enjoyed letting someone convince into to doing something else as I'm quite driven in my own goals & what I want to do but this was indeed a pleasant surprise & though I don't play as much I absolutely love the electric bass guitar & the way players can find many ways to approach it & make up their own style & from the mid 70s onwards the bass guitar was no longer the player somewhere in the back area of the band as bassists pushed & kept pushing the bass guitar to be more upfront & hold its own with any instrument but a great bassists also knows when to back off & play less & as long as it serves the song we are happy to play whatever way we want to put a bass line down in any given song... I think if I remember correctly that Mark dropped playing the drums as his go to instrument after seeing & hearing Phil Gould play on them & who wouldn't... Mark rightly stated that he was nowhere near as good as Phil on the drums & , again , I think it was part using that sequence that plays throughout Hot Water which was to be played on an emulater or one of those one's that you could programme in rhythms that could be repeated & were not like synths... As you can tell I never did pick up the proper street jargon for those who played keyboards/synths & (damn it , its on the tip of my tongue but I can't remember) other synthetic ways ways of getting sounds via those instruments... Was it a sequencer!.. Anyway , I remember that Mark said that the constant loop thats played on the device he wanted it played on sounded so good & that he then tried playing a bass guitar all the while playing the same part & though that part might not have been his im a bass guitar player eureka moment he did go on to become one hell of a bass player in such a very short period & he was still learning & teaching himself as he wrote or co wrote song's but that's what you do when you eventually find an instrument you can best express yourself on & in the nicest possible way I'm glad Phil made or kind of eased him off of drums or we wouldn't have had Mark's amazing bass lines... Til this very day & how we can get knowledge by the touch of our finger tips & looking up information on our mobile aka cell phones I'm more of the kind of person that doesn't want to know how certain things are done with one artistic field yet I love looking into & watching other artistic fields & hence why I've said " I think " as just with the band " Japan " & " Level 42 " I prefer to just hear what they have to play & yes I'm tempted to learn some bass lines but I still (with certain) things prefer not to know as I don't want to ruin the experience of enjoying what ime hearing or seeing... I hope that made sense as it is rather late & I need to stop as no doubt I've typed in many spelling mistakes... In light of this still ongoing coronavirus and it's variants stay safe and healthy wherever you are in this world... .....

[@amandahodgkinson9193]

Yeah I was there, sitting on the front row infront of Mark king.

[@maxash3927]

+Mandy Hodgkinson When they showed the audience view, i was directly to the left lol

[@12345fgr]

Lucky

[@dazza42UK]

Is there any chance of posting the whole performance?

[@DrewBrda]

Sounds from Starchild?

[@BritishBoy1971]

Wouldn't it be good, if Mark King wrote a new song and be recorded playing the drums himself, then playing the bass guitar himself, playing the lead guitar himself and sing the lyrics to it, so it would all be his song with no one else involved?!!

[@knumbugs]

Nah. Wouldn't It Be Good was Nik Kershaw :-p

[@Sotnek79]

Now that’s fun!