The Bridge: Monster Drums Edition

Summary

Hit Parade: The Bridge – Monster Drums Edition

Podcast: Hit Parade | Slate Podcasts
Episode Date: May 17, 2019
Host: Chris Molanphy
Guests: Charlie Harding & Nate Sloan (Switched On Pop)

Episode Overview

This special "Bridge" episode of Hit Parade explores the art and science behind pop music’s monster drum sounds—with a particular focus on Phil Collins and his pioneering contributions to '80s drum production. Host Chris Molanphy is joined by Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan, co-hosts of Vox’s Switched On Pop, for a dynamic conversation blending chart trivia, musicological deep-dives, and fan favorite pop history. The trio also reminisces about posthumous chart-toppers and play a lively round of music trivia with listener Eli.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Bridging Pop Podcasts (00:25 – 03:01)

• The Collaboration: Chris Molanphy welcomes Charlie and Nate, celebrating a long-awaited crossover between two "music nerd" podcasts.
• Switched On Pop’s Mission:
  • Charlie Harding (02:11):

    "Switched On Pop is all about deconstructing the making and meaning of popular music. We really try to get to some essential truth about that thing. And we do that by listening and looking at the entire language of music..."

  • Nate jokes, “You can just say nerds. Yeah, nerds. We're nerds. We're big music nerds.” (02:57)

2. Encountering Loss: Most Impactful Musical Deaths (03:01 – 06:40)

• Prince’s Enduring Influence

  • Nate Sloan (03:24):

    "The death of Prince just rocked me...he still had so much music, so much creativity still left...but at least his sound remains."

  • Chris recalls his obituary for Prince, emphasizing the artist’s fingerprints on even the most recent pop (04:13).
  • Nate highlights Lizzo’s “Cuz I Love You” as “so indebted to Prince and the Minneapolis sound” (04:34).

• Leonard Cohen’s Late-Career Brilliance

  • Charlie Harding (05:22):

    "His albums 'Old Ideas' and 'You Want It Darker'… were some of the most poignant lyrics about life, death. And I think, oftentimes there's a sort of a trope that all the best work happens early on and I think is a great demonstration that wisdom and experience can add to the songwriting process."

  • Nate recites lyrics from "You Want It Darker" (06:06):

    “Magnified, sanctified be thy holy name...A million candles burning for the help that never came. You want it darker.”

3. Listener Trivia Challenge (06:40 – 14:57)

• Welcoming Slate Plus listener Eli (06:40)

• Questions & Results:

  1. Posthumous Hits:
     • Q: Which artist scored two posthumous #1 hits in the year of his death?
     • A: The Notorious B.I.G.
     • Eli’s quick reply (08:39):

       “The answer is D, the Notorious B.G.”

  2. Phil Collins at Live Aid:
     • Q: Which rock legend did NOT play with Collins at Live Aid?
     • A: The Temptations
     • Eli nails it (09:51):

       “I’ll just take a guess and say, A, the Temptations.”

  3. Genesis’s Only #1 U.S. Single:
     • Q: Which Genesis single topped the Hot 100?
     • A: Invisible Touch
     • Eli guesses (11:03):

       “I’m going to guess D, I can’t dance.”

     • Chris responds (11:15):*

       "Oh, I'm sorry. The correct answer was B, Invisible Touch. It went to number one in the summer of 1986..."

  • Hosts’ Trivia Stumbles:
    • Humorous banter as both guests admit being stumped; Nate jokes (11:44):

      "I haven't gotten a single one right."

• Turning the Tables—Eli quizzes Chris

  • About director Stephen R. Johnson’s music video credits (Sledgehammer, Road to Nowhere, etc.)
  • Eli stumps Chris; the correct answer is "Road to Nowhere" by Talking Heads.
  • Revealed that Johnson directed music videos for Peter Gabriel and Talking Heads, innovations helped by video director cross-pollination.

• On Developing a Taste for Pop Over Time

  • Chris (14:33):

    "I often say ... I eventually grow to love a lot of the songs that I didn't like at first."

  • Charlie agrees (14:46):

    "Oh, yeah."

  • Nate (14:57):

    "Absolutely."

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4. The Musicological Legacy of Monster Drums (15:34 – 21:29)

The "Phil Collins Sound"

• Drum Machine Meets Drummer:

  • Charlie (16:17):

    "If we listen to ‘In the Air Tonight’, the thing everyone knows ... is the ending bombastic drum outro. But we kind of forget ... the song begins with a drum machine, the Roland CR-78... When we finally get that big wild drum solo at the end, it really does surprise us because we've moved from this digital-y sound to a natural sound."

  • The precursor to the iconic Roland 808 and essential in bridging electronic and organic rhythm sections.

• The "Gated Reverb" Innovation

  • Chris (17:44):

    "I am very familiar with the gated reverb. I mean, it was the sound of 80s drums..."

  • Charlie (18:52 & 19:32):

    "The gated reverb is a mistake... Phil Collins is drumming in a drum room... and they actually just had an extra talkback mic, that microphone had a strong compressor and a strong gate... it just chops off. And that sound is the sound. It’s most heavily applied to the snare drum..."

• How the Gated Reverb Sounds

  • Nate (20:49):

    "It’s like if you played a snare drum in a cathedral and then had a giant shoebox that you could just put over that cathedral and muffle the reverberant sound right as it sort of reached its peak..."

• Impact

  • Phil Collins' experimentation resulted in an instantly recognizable sound—powerful, abrupt, and influential on decades of drummers and producers.

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5. Preview & Farewell (21:29 – 23:06)

• Next Episode Teaser:
  • Chris previews Hit Parade's next full episode, focusing on Genesis, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel, and the “hit making universe” that shaped the sound of the '80s.
• Plug & Thanks
  • Chris enthusiastically recommends Switched On Pop.

    “It is educational every single episode and it's one of the most pleasurable podcasts that I listen to.” (22:40)

  • Charlie and Nate thank Chris and promote their podcast and online presence.

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Memorable Quotes

• On Prince’s Influence:

  "His influence is just all over the sound of contemporary pop music. So he's gone, but at least his sound remains."
  — Nate Sloan (03:24)

• On Late-Career Leonard Cohen:

  "...There's a sort of a trope that all the best work happens early on and I think is a great demonstration that wisdom and experience can add to the songwriting process."
  — Charlie Harding (05:22)

• On the Gated Reverb Drum Sound:

  "It actually makes the drum sound even bigger. But it’s this unnatural thing where it sounds like you’re in a cavern that gets cut off, it gets clipped."
  — Charlie Harding (19:32)

• Drum Sound Analogy:

  "It’s like if you played a snare drum in a cathedral and then had a giant shoebox that you could just put over that cathedral and muffle the reverberant sound right as it sort of reached its peak."
  — Nate Sloan (20:49)

• On Growing to Love Pop Songs:

  "Stockholm syndrome with pop songs is real, people. It’s a thing."
  — Chris Molanphy (14:57)

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Notable Episode Timestamps

• 02:11 – Charlie describes Switched On Pop’s approach.
• 03:24 – Nate discusses Prince’s legacy.
• 05:22 – Charlie on Leonard Cohen’s late work.
• 06:40 – Listener trivia round introduction.
• 08:39 – Eli nails the trivia on Notorious B.I.G.
• 09:51 – Eli aces Live Aid trivia.
• 11:03 – Eli stumped by Genesis trivia.
• 14:33 – Chris and guests discuss growing to love pop songs.
• 15:34 – Chris invites guests to analyze Phil Collins' drumming legacy.
• 16:17 – 17:44 – Origin of the monster drum sound in "In the Air Tonight."
• 18:52 – 20:49 – Detailed breakdown of "gated reverb" and its legacy.
• 21:29 – Next episode teased: The Genesis/Phil Collins/Peter Gabriel universe.

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Tone & Style:
Warm, enthusiastic, geekily deep on music analysis, and filled with camaraderie and gentle ribbing.

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For Listeners: Why This Episode Matters

• Great for fans of music nerdiness: The meeting of two podcasts brings unique expertise and playful chemistry.
• Music tech meets pop history: The story of how Phil Collins' "mistake" gave us one of the most influential drum sounds ever.
• Charts, trivia, and pop connections: The episode weaves together stories of loss, musical innovation, and the quirks of chart history with lively quiz segments and listener participation.

Highly recommended for both seasoned chart-watchers and those who simply love a good musical origin story.

Transcript

[Eli]

You're listening ad free on Amazon Music.

[Chris Melanphy]

Hey, everybody. This is Chris Melanthe, host of Hit Parade, Slate's podcast of pop chart history. Welcome to the Bridge. Everybody wants to find Graffiti Bridge Something.

[Nate Sloan]

To believe in A reason to believe that there's a heaven above Everybody wants to find.

[Chris Melanphy]

That's Prince's Graffiti bridge from the 1990 movie and album of the same name. The film and soundtrack were Prince's attempt to bridge his career from the 80s into the 90s. And the song talks about a heaven above, in other words, the afterworld, a longtime lyrical obsession of the late Prince. It's one last callback to our Hit Parade live show last month about posthumous hits and hitmakers from the great beyond. And these mini episodes bridge our full length monthly Hit Parade episodes give us a chance to catch up with listeners and enjoy some trivia. This month, I'm excited to welcome two very special guests, co hosts of their own amazing podcast about how pop music works, Vox's Switched On Pop. Please welcome songwriter Charlie Harding and musicologist Nate Sloan. Hey, guys.

[Nate Sloan]

Hello, Chris.

[Chris Melanphy]

It's so amazing to hear your voices on my podcast. I. I've had you guys in my ears for so many months now.

[Nate Sloan]

It's a long time coming.

[Chris Melanphy]

Yeah, well, I feel like we were kind of willed together, Wonder Twins power style. Because not only do we tweet at each other all the time, but there have been several listeners of our respective podcasts who've been saying for a while that we should probably team up and give the people what they want, I guess is my philosophy.

[Nate Sloan]

Totally. Yeah. We could either fight to the death or combine forces, and I'm glad we've chosen the latter.

[Charlie Harding]

Super team, right?

[Chris Melanphy]

I mean, if we've learned nothing from Endgame, the joining forces thing is the way to go. For those who are not familiar with Switched On Pop, and frankly, if you're a Hit Parade listener, you totally should be. Please tell our listeners what your podcast brings to the table each week and what you guys do that's particular to Switched On Pop.

[Charlie Harding]

Sure. So Switched On Pop is all about deconstructing the making and meaning of popular music. So we're gonna take a song, an album, an artist, or some essential musical idea and really try to get to some essential truth about that thing. And we do that by listening and. And looking at the entire language of music, whether that's going to be timbre or rhythm or form or melody or harmony. And we try to present it in a way where it ends up being like the most fun music class you've ever been in. And a healthy discussion between two strong headed people who often have different opinions, while bringing in some of the best songwriters, producers and journalists in the music industry to help us get to whatever that core idea is.

[Nate Sloan]

You can just say nerds. Yeah, nerds. We're nerds. We're big music nerds.

[Chris Melanphy]

Nerd. Nerd is a good four letter word on this podcast. So you're among friends here. Last month's hit parade was all about hitmakers from the great beyond, as I like to say. It was from Buddy to Biggie, Otis to Janice, Freddie to Kurt. And it was our live episode among deceased hitmakers. Whose work and whose death, I guess, most affected you as music fans?

[Nate Sloan]

Yeah, I mean, for me, it's funny, this is someone. We must be on the same wavelength. Chris Caus, who you kicked off the show with, the death of Prince, just rocked me. First of all, because he's an artist that I'd heard was so incredible live and I never saw him. And so that was just a little selfishly, that was just so, so hard. And he's someone who you just felt like he still had so much music, so much creativity still left. So that was a tough one for me. But at the same time, I can comfort myself a little because his influence is just all over the sound of contemporary pop music. So he's gone, but at least his sound remains.

[Chris Melanphy]

Yeah. You know, when I wrote about Prince, basically it was my memoriam obituary for him. When he died In April of 2016, I talked about how you can still hear his influence on current music right up to the 2010s. In fact, there's probably some records that have come out this year that, you know, have his fingerprints all over them or, you know, very recently.

[Nate Sloan]

Oh, no doubt. We just discussed on our podcast, actually the new album by Lizzo, Cause I Love youe, which just is so indebted to Prince and the Minneapolis sound throughout.

[Chris Melanphy]

Baby, I don't know what I'm gonna do, I'm crying cause I love you.

[Nate Sloan]

You know, he's an artist who I think will continue to resonate for a long time. That DIY approach of being in the studio, playing every instrument, creating these genre bending textures, like, that's not going anywhere.

[Chris Melanphy]

What about you, Charlie?

[Charlie Harding]

Recently was the passing of Leonard Cohen, actually. And part of this was that I actually came to his music quite late, actually towards the end of his life. And I felt that his. His albums, old ideas and you want it Darker. Those were 2012 and 2016 were some of the most poignant lyrics about life, death. And I felt like it was some of the most compelling work that I had heard in all of contemporary music. And I think oftentimes there's a sort of a trope that all the best work happens early on and I think is a great demonstration that wisdom and experience can add to the songwriting process.

[Nate Sloan]

You want it darker? We kill the flame. Magnified, sanctified be thy holy name Vilified, crucified in the human frame. A million candles burning for the help that never came. You want it darker.

[Chris Melanphy]

Now comes the time in our monthly Hit Parade the Bridge episode where we do some trivia. And joining us today from Long Beach, California, is Eli. Eli, are you there?

[Eli]

Yes, I am.

[Chris Melanphy]

Hey, Eli, how are you? All right.

[Eli]

How's it going?

[Chris Melanphy]

As you may have heard, we have two very special guests on the line with us, Nate Sloan and Charlie Harding from the podcast Switched On Pop. So they may be chiming in on your your trivia round as well.

[Nate Sloan]

Hello. Hello, Eli. Hello.

[Chris Melanphy]

I understand, Eli, that you are a Slate plus member, is that correct?

[Eli]

I am indeed.

[Chris Melanphy]

Fantastic. About how long have you been a Slate plus member?

[Eli]

Oh, just a couple of months. Part of why I joined was, well, I've always loved Dear Prudence, but then with Hit Parade and being introduced to that, I was like, well, I consume enough content, I should probably support y'. All. So here I am.

[Chris Melanphy]

We hugely appreciate that. So that is a useful moment for me to remind everyone that while this bridge episode is available to all Hit Parade subscribers, we only open our trivia rounds to Slate plus members. So if you are a member and would like to be a trivia contestant, visit slate.com hitparades signup. That's slate.com hitparadesignup so, Eli, I think you probably know how this works, but one more time we're going to ask you three trivia questions. The first one is a callback to our most recent full length episode, and the last two are a preview of our next full length episode. Are you ready for some trivia?

[Eli]

I am.

[Chris Melanphy]

Fantastic. Here we go. Question one. In last month's live episode of Hit Parade, we played a number of posthumous hits. Several of the artists we played even went to number one after their death, like Otis Redding, the first ever posthumous chart topper on the Hot 100. But one artist scored two posthumous number one hits in the year of his death. Who was it? A, Buddy Holly, B, John Lennon, C, Kurt Cobain or D, the Notorious B.I.G.

[Eli]

The answer is D, the Notorious B.G.

[Chris Melanphy]

Wow. You didn't Even need a second on that one. Nice job. That is exactly.

[Nate Sloan]

That was decisive.

[Chris Melanphy]

Yeah. Wow.

[Eli]

I love hip hop. What can I say?

[Nate Sloan]

Completely stumped. So, kudos, Eli.

[Chris Melanphy]

Yes, indeed, it was the Notorious B.I.G. in 1997. In the months just after his death, he topped the Hot 100 with both Hypnotize and Mo Money. Mo Problem. One down, two to go. Now we're going to ask you some questions about the next episode. Are you ready?

[Eli]

As ready as I'll ever be, given this is gonna be more of a surprise.

[Chris Melanphy]

Here we go. Question two. At 1985's Live Aid concert, the most omnipresent performer was Phil Collins, who played at both Live Aid venues in London and Philadelphia and with several rock luminaries. Which of these rock legends did not play with Collins that day? A, the Temptations. B, Led Zeppelin. C, Sting. Or D, Eric Clapton.

[Nate Sloan]

Ah.

[Eli]

That'S. Hmm. You know, I'll just take a guess and say, A, the Temptations.

[Chris Melanphy]

Amazing. That is correct.

[Nate Sloan]

Two for two.

[Chris Melanphy]

Two for two. I know, right? So what's tricky about this question is that two of the Temptations, David Ruffin and Eddie Kendrick, did indeed perform at Live Aid, but with Daryl hall and John Oates, not Phil Collins. All of the other rockers performed with Phil.

[Charlie Harding]

You got me on my knees.

[Chris Melanphy]

All right, you're running the table here, Eli.

[Charlie Harding]

I would have thought that Sting would have played with Stuart Copeland, so you totally sun me as well.

[Nate Sloan]

Dang.

[Chris Melanphy]

See, you're beating our special guest hosts. Nice job, Eli.

[Eli]

I'll try to keep that streak going.

[Chris Melanphy]

All right, well, you're two for three right now. Here comes question three. Here we go. One year after Live Aid, Collins helped his longtime group, Genesis score their first and only number one hit on the Hot 100. What was that one? Genesis pop chart topper. A, that's all. B, invisible Touch. C, land of Confusion. Or D, I can't dance.

[Eli]

Ooh. Okay. Hmm. I'm going to guess D, I can't dance.

[Chris Melanphy]

Oh, I'm sorry. The correct answer was B, Invisible Touch. It went to number one in the summer of 1986, after Collins had already scored four number one hits on his own. He would go on to score three more. But Genesis would never top the Hot 100 again.

[Charlie Harding]

Eli, don't worry about it. Nate in the studio here was. He was going C, C, C. So he got it wrong, too.

[Nate Sloan]

I haven't gotten a single one right.

[Chris Melanphy]

I guess you guys are Land of.

[Nate Sloan]

Confusion fans have to do some soul searching after this. I'm just gonna have to take a long hard look in the mirror after my poor performance here. But congrats, Eli. You're an inspiration to us all.

[Chris Melanphy]

Seriously, 2 for 3 is nothing to sneeze at. So nice job, Eli. And now, of course, is the time in Hit Parade the Bridge where you get to turn the tables on me and ask me a trivia question. Do you have a question for me?

[Eli]

I do indeed.

[Chris Melanphy]

All right, lay it on me.

[Eli]

Peter Gabriel's video for Sledgehammer won nine MTV Video Music Awards in 1987 and is reportedly one of MTV's most played music videos of all time. The groundbreaking video features claymation, pixelation and stop motion animation and was directed by Steven R. Johnson. Johnson also directed which music video that features elements of claymation and and stop motion animation. Your choices are A Sober by Tool B, Road to Nowhere by the Talking Heads, C Fell in Love With a Girl by the White Stripes, or D, I Stay Away by Alison Chanel.

[Chris Melanphy]

This is an excellent question. Do you guys have any idea? Nate and Charlie?

[Nate Sloan]

I have a guess. Yeah, I have a guess, but I'm not going to tell you. We're not helping you out.

[Chris Melanphy]

Fair for me asking for help. I know I can eliminate Fell in Love with a Girl because I believe Michel Gondry did that.

[Nate Sloan]

Oh, then we're already. Guess is already wrong. So you're. You're on your own.

[Chris Melanphy]

Darn it. I'm gonna go for Tool A.

[Eli]

That is incorrect. The answer is B. Road to Nowhere by the Talking Heads. Stephen R. Johnson directed three music videos for Peter Gabriel, which were Big Time Steam and Sledgehammer, and he also directed the videos for Road to Nowhere by the Talking Heads and the Bug and Walk of Life by Dire Straits. Johnson directed the Talking Heads video a year before doing Sledgehammer, according to the book by Rob Tannenbaum and Craig Marks, I Want my the Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution. Music industry veteran Jeff Eharoff showed Peter Gabriel a clip of the talking headset video and said, quote, I want you to work with Steven Johnson on Sledgehammer. I didn't even like the song, frankly, steven Johnson said of Sledgehammer, adding, quote, but Peter Gabriel took me to dinner, got me drunk on wine, and I agreed to do it.

[Chris Melanphy]

That is a great tidbit. Okay, this much I do know. If you know anything about the Sledgehammer video and how painstaking that video was to make. Can you picture living with a song you don't like that much? That long like Steven Johnson had a lot of work to do on that video. I hope he grew to like the song.

[Eli]

Maybe he got Stockholm syndrome and just really started loving it. Who knows?

[Chris Melanphy]

You know, I often say when I'm writing about a song for why is this song number one? And I should really ask Charlie and Nate if they do this too. I eventually grow to love a lot of the songs that I didn't like at first.

[Charlie Harding]

Oh, yeah.

[Chris Melanphy]

In fact, I think you guys just said something to that effect about the latest Taylor Swift song on a recent episode of your podcast. So Stockholm syndrome with pop songs is real, people. It's a thing.

[Nate Sloan]

Absolutely.

[Chris Melanphy]

All right, well, you stumped me fair and square. Eli, thank you very much for that excellent question and that great trivia tidbit, and I appreciate you being on our program today.

[Eli]

It was a pleasure to be here.

[Chris Melanphy]

All right, take care. You know, I even read I Want my mtv. Admittedly I read it a few years ago, but I feel like I totally should have known that there was some commonality between Road to Nowhere and Sledgehammer since they came a year apart. Right. Like, how embarrassed should I be for not getting that trivia question?

[Charlie Harding]

As a listener from the 80s, you do have a musicological finger of shame pointing at you, unfortunately. Sorry, Chris.

[Chris Melanphy]

I think that's true. No, I think you're right. So of course I want to take full advantage of the fact that I've got Charlie and Nate on the show with me today and go in a musicological direction, since we've now revealed that the next full length episode of Hit Parade is going to be about Genesis, Phil Collins, Peter Gabriel. I would love to pick both of your brains on the musicological legacy of particularly Phil Collins as a drummer. He's one of my favorite drummers. When I talk about 80s drummers, for me, it's kind of between him and Stuart Copeland of the Police. They're almost polar opposites, one with a very light touch, the other with probably the heaviest of heavy touches. But what do you guys think Phil Collins brought to the table musically?

[Charlie Harding]

Oh, my gosh. I think that if we listen to just in the Air Tonight, the thing that everyone, of course, knows about in the Air Tonight is the ending bombastic drum outro.

[Chris Melanphy]

The most monstrous drum break of all time.

[Charlie Harding]

It's spectacular, but we kind of forget, or at least I had, that. The song begins with a drum machine, the Roland CR78 drum machine, one of the earliest sort of pseudo programmable drum machines, came out in 1978, and it's the precursor to the 808, the sort of essential drum machine which defined hip hop and contemporary music. And what we're hearing at the beginning of this track is that drum machine, which is providing just a very sparse rhythm with that languid prophet synthesizer sound and Phil Collins heavily reverberated voice. And so when we finally get that big wild drum solo at the end, it really does surprise us because we've moved from this digital y sound to a, you know, a natural sound. But something carries over, which is unnatural. And that's what we really need to focus on, which is the gated reverb.

[Chris Melanphy]

I am very familiar with the gated reverb. I mean, it was the sound of 80s drums, you know, and it extended past things that Phil Collins himself did. I guess we should probably break down why they call it a gated reverb and why it sounded so monstrous, so thick, because that's what's so fascinating. It was kind of a combination of traditional drumming, but with a digital overlay. And it's almost like a battle between one of the most famous drummers of all time and the machine that in theory could have replaced him, didn't replace him.

[Nate Sloan]

Right.

[Chris Melanphy]

But then the gated drum sound is this interesting hybrid between, to your point, traditional drumming and what digital technology, as we enter the 80s, is allowing you to do.

[Charlie Harding]

That's exactly right. And I want to help break down this idea of what this sound is, because it is so essential and we hear it today so much and it's sort of a non obvious thing, but you know it when you hear it. In breaking this down, I do have to give a big shout out to the Earworm series from Vox, who did an amazing piece on the gated reverb for part of the Vox media network. And in this piece, what we learn about is the history of so much technological innovation. The gated reverb is a mistake. It happens by accident. And actually Phil Collins is drumming in a drum room, a famous drum room, which has a lot of natural rim sound reverb.

[Chris Melanphy]

Right.

[Charlie Harding]

We're in recording studios right now, which don't have any reverb. But that echo can be extremely desirable in a recording. It makes it come alive, it makes it sound like it's in a space. And they actually just had an extra talkback mic microphone that would allow Phil Collins to talk back into the studio on the other side of the wall. And that microphone had a strong compressor and a strong gate. That would. What would happen is that the sound of the drum would go through and the sound of the drum and the reverb would go through. That microphone. And then the gate basically cuts off a sound if it's too quiet. And what the effect of this was is basically you had this cavernous sound that sounds and then as the sound sort of tails off, it just chops off. And this is what the recording engineer on the other side of the room heard. And the rest is sort of history. They're like, that's a cool sound. It actually makes the drum sound even bigger. But it's this unnatural thing where it sounds like you're in a cavern that gets cut off, it gets clipped. And that sound is the sound. It's most heavily applied to the snare drum. So rather than like a kid, you get a kind of sound.

[Nate Sloan]

It's like if you played a snare drum in a cathedral and then had a giant shoebox that you could just put over that cathedral and muffle the reverberant sound right as it sort of reached its peak. And you had a microphone in there capturing that whole thing. That's the sound of gated reverb.

[Chris Melanphy]

Well, guys, I can't thank you enough for walking me through the gated drum sound and Phil Collins role in creating it. As we've now previewed for our listeners, the next episode is going to be about what I'm going to call the hit making universe of Genesis. This band that started as a prog rock band in the 70s and wound up spawning multiple successful spinoff careers, including Phil Collins and Peter Gabriel. Even their guitarist Mike Rutherford wound up being a hitmaker in the 1980s and kind of defining the sound of pop and rock in the 1980s. So listen for that toward the end of May. But for now, guys, I can't thank you both enough for being on Hit Parade the Bridge. Much appreciated. How can folks get in touch with you?

[Charlie Harding]

Chris, first of all, thank you to you as well. This is so much fun. We're going to do some more crossovers, including in some upcoming writing that we're putting out where you've been a great source for us for Switched On Pop. You can obviously find it anywhere you get your podcast. We're on Vox. We definitely recommend checking out switched on pop switchedonpop.com you can talk to us on Instagram or on Twitter whichdompop.

[Chris Melanphy]

Fantastic. I seriously recommend the podcast highly. It is educational every single episode and it's one of the most pleasurable podcasts that I listen to. So my deepest thanks to Charlie Harding and Nate Sloan and for Hit Parade, the Bridge, I'm Chris Melanphy. Keep on marching on the one.

[Nate Sloan]

I.

[Chris Melanphy]

But I.