Review of the Greatest Tambourine Player Ever
I must confess in the very first sentence that I am a devoted Marc Fisher fan. I promise to maintain objectivity, but I cannot promise that a hint of bias won't slip through. In my mind, a Top 5 list of the Greatest Tambourine Players of Time and All Eternity would go something like this:
1. Marc Fisher
2. Marc Fisher
3. Marc Fisher
4. Marc Fisher
5. Marc Fisher
Who the hell is Marc Fisher?
Wh- what? If you have the nerve to ask that question, I'll answer your question with another question: Under from which rock did you climb out from under? Marc Fisher is to tambourine players what Michael Jordan is to basketball players, what Gene Frenkle is to cowbell players.
Here, just watch this. (Unfortunately, Windows Live™ Spaces doesn't let one embed YouTube clips, which gets one's goat. So one will just have to click the link.)
What makes Marc Fisher's so great?
Writing about music is like writing about comedy. Sure you can say that Chris Rock achieves humor by combining non sequiturs with both verbal and situational irony, but you come off sounding as pompous as Dug. In the same way that the best critique of a comic is loud laughter, the best critique of a tambourine player is saturnine swaying to his rheumatic rhythms.
That doesn't mean we can't try to break down Fisher's technical prowess. In this song, a cover of Neil Young's "Down by the River," Fisher layers a tambourine part with an accent placed on the first beat of each bar. The tambourine plays throughout the middle eight, punctuating the last quarter of the bar with a subtle trill. While the norm is to use tambourines to create patterns, Fisher isolates his play to punctuate a certain section within a composition. Yet Fisher does not overdo the isolation. He recognizes that he is a member of the band and that the whole is greater than the sum of the parts. His subdued performance may go unnoticed by the masses, but not to the eagle eye of this random reviewer.
How do Marc Fisher's dance moves compare to the Lord of the Dance?
Do you mean, How do Marc Fisher's dance moves compare to those of the Lord of the Dance? I thought so, because it's difficult to compare dance moves to a person. Marc Fisher's dance moves are frenetic yet lovely while the Feet of Flames is a carbon-based biped. But now is no time to lecture on the fine points of grammar. As much as it pains me to say this, Michael Flatley is the better dancer of the two.
Are you writing under the influence?
Yes. The influence of a brilliant tambourinist.
Are you done?
Almost. Marc Fisher gets seven stars. To put this in perspective, Buddha, Vishnu, Jesus and Zeus combined for only nine stars.
-Bob
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