Here’s a toad I found underneath my computer. I call him Ginger, for the only drum solo I could ever stand to listen to.
One day I’ll clean up down there.
Oh, all right; he was down by the compost heap. I think he was asleep, but he soon woke up.
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A Bad Guide 
Solo in which song?
Was the toad drumming in his sleep?
Toad (by Cream).
Ah. I did know what drummer is named Ginger (and I do appreciate his distinctive style) but my knowledge of Classic Rock is as spotty as my knowledge of so many other things, so I did not know there was a song of that name.
I’m no expert. I suspect we’re roughly similar in age, and using the Cream playlist as some kind of shibboleth of coolness ceased sometime in the early seventies, so I wouldn’t worry.
Don’t tell me the toad makes sounds.
I love their little toes.
Everything in Kronland gets named immediately.
Mesmerizing drumming: Steve Gadd–50 ways to leave your lover
I had a coupla toads (or perhaps frogs …) visit me last year. Been much too dry for them lately, though.
And I’m afraid the cat eats them – like he does everything else.
I could feel its heart beating, poor thing; and of course it peed on me, as they do.
They’re probably around. This one I dug up with some earth from the compost heap.
No delayed gratification in this day and age — I rimmediately bought the song Toad at the i-Tunes store and listened to it through the car’s speakers while driving my son somewhere. Deliberately chose a 10+ minute long version as likely to have lots of drum solo in it, but did not notice until too late that it was from a 2005 Cream concert. No worries, though: these old guys seemed to still have it.
My 15-yr-old son listened intently — he is more of a connoisseur of these things than I — plays guitar very well and dabbles in drumming himself. Actually stated that this was the sort of a drum solo that he could imagine spending a few days carefully transcribing so as to learn to play it oneself.
(This is the same kid who says “based off”.)
that’s “immediately”, not “remedially”
Nice to know he’s interested. My fifteen-year-old daughter would never listen to that, though she likes The Who’s “Baba O’Riley”. I recently stuck some Led Zeppelin on her Ipod.
What about old school jazz drummers? (I am inclined to agree that Ginger Baker is one of the few rock drummers of that caliber.)
Drummer Steve Gadd.
Yes, I can copy and paste now!!!!11!
Jazz — yes, the same thought went through my mind as I wrote it. There are lots of great jazz drummers I could listen to.
Listening recently to some Led Zeppelin songs I thought that John Bonham’s bang, bang drumming was a big part of their success, even though it’s not especially sophisticated or complex.
I see on Wikipedia that Steve Gadd is a native of Irondequoit, a suburb of Rochester, NY. That’s a name I hadn’t heard before.
Here’s a reading, by some Yank, of Larkin’s “Toads”.
http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/index.php?date=2002/08/08
MMcM: of that caliber*
I never suspected that this was actually an English expression. For me, “de ce calibre” was purely French. Now I am wondering who were the first to use caliber with the meaning “degree of worth, quality”. Is it a much-despised anglicisme or is it a frenchism?
Croâ-croâ?
* caliber, a word that apparently went from Greek to Arabic to Italian to French, then to English
I think of it as an ammunition metaphor, like ‘a bigger bang for the buck’.
When the human cannonball retired from the circus, his boss said, “It’s going to be hard to find someone of your caliber.”
There are slightly earlier citations in English for the figurative sense. So both probably developed in French.