There may be no more crit­i­cal inter­play between two musi­cians in mod­ern music than that between bassists and drum­mers. As jazz bassist Chris­t­ian McBride put it in a recent NPR inter­view, “the bass and drums should work as one instru­ment. It deter­mines whether it’s funk or jazz or coun­try or rock ‘n’ roll. It all depends on what rhythms are com­ing from the bass and the drums that make a par­tic­u­lar music what it is.” In funk and jazz, these rhythm play­ers tend to get a lot more cred­it. Most people—even die hard fans—would be hard pressed to name one coun­try bassist or drum­mer. In rock and roll, we’re used to laud­ing lead singers and gui­tarists. And cer­tain­ly clas­sic duos from Jag­ger and Richards, to Page and Plant, Roth and Van Halen, Mor­ris­sey and Marr and a lengthy list of oth­ers each have earned their vaunt­ed places in music his­to­ry.

Yet as a fan, I’ve always been drawn to unsung bass and drum combos—like The Smiths’ Mike Joyce and Andy Rourke, Jane’s Addiction’s Eric Avery and Stephen Perkins, and many oth­ers in bands whose flam­boy­ant lead­ers tend­ed to over­shad­ow their rock sol­id sup­ports. This is not the case in many oth­er groups of super­stars. McBride gives us the exam­ples of Boot­sy Collins and John Starks in James Brown’s band, and bassist Sam Jones and drum­mer Louis Hayes from Can­non­ball Adderley’s ensem­ble. Today we look specif­i­cal­ly at some famed rock rhythm duos, and lis­ten in on iso­lat­ed tracks from some of their bands’ most well-known tunes. We begin with the absolute­ly clas­sic pow­er­house rhythm sec­tion of John Paul Jones (top) and John Bon­ham, whose grooves anchored the riff machine that was Led Zep­pelin. Just above, hear their push and pull on “Ram­ble On.”

As it turns out, Zep­pelin were big James Brown fans, and Jones has specif­i­cal­ly men­tioned the funk influ­ence on his play­ing. Jones and Bon­ham, in turn, have influ­enced thou­sands of rhythm play­ers, includ­ing per­haps one of the most famous of bass and drum duos, Rush’s Ged­dy Lee and Neil Peart. Just above, hear Lee’s fuzzed-out bass work in tan­dem with Peart’s expert time changes and break­downs in iso­lat­ed tracks from “Vital Signs,” a song from their ear­ly-eight­ies new wave-inspired album Mov­ing Pic­tures. Rush is cer­tain­ly not everyone’s cup of tea, but more rock and roll drum­mers than not prob­a­bly cite them as an influ­ence at some point in their careers. Though it wasn’t appar­ent to me in their hey­day, even such a min­i­mal­ist band as the Pix­ies had a Rush influ­ence, specif­i­cal­ly by way of drum­mer David Lover­ing. His locked grooves with bassist Kim Deal more or less defined the sound of the 90s through their influ­ence on Nir­vana, Weez­er, Radio­head, Smash­ing Pump­kins and count­less oth­ers. Hear their iso­lat­ed rhythm tracks from Doolit­tle’s “Wave of Muti­la­tion” below.

It’s hard­ly nec­es­sary to point out that per­haps the most famed rhythm sec­tion in rock his­to­ry comes from its most cel­e­brat­ed band. But Paul McCart­ney and Ringo Starr often get remem­bered more for their song­writ­ing and per­son­al­i­ties than for their rhythm play­ing. Ringo’s tak­en his share of unde­served flak for his no-frills style. I’ve always found him to be an espe­cial­ly taste­ful play­er who knows when to add the per­fect fill or accent, when to lay back and let the song dom­i­nate, and when to get out of the way entire­ly. Starr’s thought­ful drum­ming per­fect­ly com­ple­ments McCartney’s high­ly melod­ic walk­ing basslines—captured as well on the George Har­ri­son-penned “Some­thing,” below, as on any­thing else the band record­ed.

Again, it’s hard­ly nec­es­sary to cite the num­ber of bands influ­enced by the Bea­t­les, though it’s hard­er to name rhythm sec­tions direct­ly inspired by McCart­ney and Starr’s dynam­ic. Nonethe­less, their DNA runs through decades of pop music in all its forms. The oth­er three duos above have direct­ly inspired a more spe­cif­ic phe­nom­e­non of bands made up sole­ly of bass and drums. One such band, the UK’s Roy­al Blood, has won numer­ous awards (and praise from Jim­my Page). See them per­form a live ver­sion of “Fig­ure It Out” below.

Oth­er bands like Death From Above 1979 and Om have huge­ly devot­ed fol­low­ings. (See a dis­cus­sion of more bass-and-drum-only com­bos here.) With the suc­cess of these bands—along with the rise of elec­tron­ic dance music as a dom­i­nant form—it’s safe to say that killer rhythm sec­tions, so often over­shad­owed in rock and pop his­to­ry, have pushed past tra­di­tion­al lead play­ers and, in many cas­es, tak­en their place. I’d say it’s about time.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Iso­lat­ed Tracks From Five Great Rock Bassists: McCart­ney, Sting, Dea­con, Jones & Lee

7 Female Bass Play­ers Who Helped Shape Mod­ern Music: Kim Gor­don, Tina Wey­mouth, Kim Deal & More

Iso­lat­ed Drum Tracks From Six of Rock’s Great­est: Bon­ham, Moon, Peart, Copeland, Grohl & Starr

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness

“A beau­ti­ful way to per­form one of the world’s great musi­cal trea­sures.” The video above, and the accom­pa­ny­ing 58-char­ac­ter sen­tence, make up the last tweet from Oliv­er Sacks, the influ­en­tial neu­rol­o­gist who passed away ear­li­er today. The clip (orig­i­nal­ly high­light­ed on our site back in 2012) fea­tures 100 musi­cians and singers from the Orches­tra Sim­fon­i­ca del Valles, Amics de l’Opera de Sabadell, Coral Belles Arts, and Cor Lieder Cam­era per­form­ing what’s now the anthem of the Euro­pean Union — Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” from his Sym­pho­ny No. 9. It’s a pret­ty stir­ring per­for­mance, and cer­tain­ly a worth­while way to punc­tu­ate a Twit­ter stream. (Side note: Dr. Sacks start­ed fol­low­ing our Twit­ter stream sev­er­al years ago, and we still con­sid­er it a great hon­or, a high point in OC his­to­ry.)

You can read Mr. Sacks’ obit­u­ary here, and an appraisal of his intel­lec­tu­al con­tri­bu­tions here.

h/t @miafarrow

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Relat­ed Con­tent:

This is What Oliv­er Sacks Learned on LSD and Amphet­a­mines

Oliv­er Sacks Con­tem­plates Mor­tal­i­ty (and His Ter­mi­nal Can­cer Diag­no­sis) in a Thought­ful, Poignant Let­ter

30 Renowned Writ­ers Speak­ing About God: From Isaac Asi­mov to Oliv­er Sac­sks & Mar­garet Atwood

I recall with unchar­ac­ter­is­tic clar­i­ty the first time I heard the B‑52s. Forced on a youth-group ski trip by my par­ents, I arrived an angry thir­teen-year-old wan­na-be punk: mohawk, ripped jeans, patched leather jack­et, dis­af­fect­ed scowl, and feigned air of ado­les­cent cyn­i­cal world-weari­ness. Pop music, I had already decid­ed, was for suck­ers. The only sounds that spoke to me were loud, abra­sive, and delib­er­ate­ly unlove­ly. Then some­one in our dorm put on “Rock Lob­ster” and it blew my nar­row mind. Though the osten­si­ble pur­pose of this church-spon­sored vaca­tion was to stir up some Protes­tant piety, I came away con­vert­ed instead to the gospel of new wave. I cred­it my awak­en­ing to Kate Pierson’s oth­er­world­ly wail, Cindy Wilson’s throaty har­monies, and Ricky Wilson’s bizarrely tuned gui­tar.

Maybe it wasn’t quite that dra­mat­ic, but it was a deci­sive moment in my young fan­dom, after which I found myself seek­ing out the odd, angu­lar, jan­g­ly sounds I’d first heard on that B‑52s record—and find­ing them in John­ny Marr’s Smiths gui­tar work, every ear­ly R.E.M. album, and in more morose form, in The Cure, Psy­che­del­ic Furs, and count­less mopey British post-punks. What sur­prised me at the time was learn­ing how many of these bands arrived on the scene at the same time as the nas­ti­er, grit­ti­er bands that scored my angst-rid­den entry into cal­low teenage-hood. We’re famil­iar with the sto­ry of new wave bands like Talk­ing Heads and Television’s begin­nings at CBGB’s. But around that same time, in 1976, Georgia’s B‑52s got their start in the col­lege town of Athens. As one inter­vie­wee says—in the above short doc­u­men­tary on the South­ern art-rock scene that also birthed R.E.M.—“the B‑52s start­ed the music scene as we think of it.”

Tak­ing their sound from surf rock, 50s doo-wop and girl group har­monies, and a weird­ness that is Athens’ own, the B‑52s carved out a space for them­selves with­in music that had some­thing in com­mon with the Ramones except it was hyper-col­or­ful, thrift-store kitschy, and unapolo­get­i­cal­ly campy. Their warped take on 50s and 60s dance rock—complete with Pier­son and Wilson’s “B‑52” bee­hives—first broke out with “Rock Lob­ster” (a song John Lennon once cred­it­ed with influ­enc­ing his come­back). You can see them open with the song at the top in 1978 at Atlanta’s Down­town Cafe, just pri­or to the release of their debut album. (Stick around to watch the rest of the 28-minute set.) Fred Schnei­der, the band’s wry, flam­boy­ant front­man, intro­duces each band mem­ber with a series of quirky pseu­do­nyms. Above, they do my per­son­al favorite, “52 Girls”—with its pound­ing tom-tom surf rhythms and sung-shout­ed lyrics about “The prin­ci­pal girls of the USA.” Just below catch anoth­er ear­ly gig from 1980, at New Jersey’s Capi­tol The­ater.

The B‑52s plugged along through the 80s—suffered the loss of Ricky Wil­son to AIDS—then hit it very big on the pop charts with “Love Shack” and “Roam” from 1989’s Cos­mic Thing. For my mon­ey, though, noth­ing beats the glo­ri­ous joy­ful­ness of their debut, which sounds like the most fun any band has ever had mak­ing a record togeth­er.

Though the band has always been a high­ly col­lab­o­ra­tive ensem­ble, Kate Pierson’s huge voice came to shape their sound over the years. She would go on to record the torch song “Can­dy” with Iggy Pop and the ridicu­lous, love-it-or-hate-it “Shiny Hap­py Peo­ple” with her home­town peers R.E.M. Now, at 67, she’s putting out her first solo album, Gui­tars and Micro­phones. Lis­ten to the super-catchy title track above, and hear an inter­view with Pier­son on NPR here and anoth­er on WBEZ’s Sound Opin­ions here. For more on the B‑52s ear­ly years, see ret­ro­spec­tives on Dan­ger­ous Minds and Pitch­fork. You owe it to your­self to get to know this band. They may not change your life like they did mine, but they might just expand your under­stand­ing of pop music’s pos­si­bil­i­ties.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Watch the Talk­ing Heads Play a Vin­tage Con­cert in Syra­cuse (1978)

The Ramones in Their Hey­day, Filmed “Live at CBGB,” 1977

Blondie Plays CBGB in the Mid-70s in Two Vin­tage Clips

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. Fol­low him at @jdmagness