The Lost Art of the CowBell

Not sure if this proper forum but it seems like the appropriate place to go deeper into and debate the lost art of the CowBell





Where should a CowBell be used???

When is it appropriate to use a CowBell??

this is just for you Chance, was watching the rockets v Miami game from last season and it inspired me

 

here is some History of the Cowbell

I. Back to the Stone Age


In 5000 B.C., a mere 1500 years after the Sumerians woke up to the wheel (and more importantly, the axle), some folks in Persia discovered copper, the first shapeable metal. A process called smelting forms copper and God only knows what that entails, but it was much too soft to be good for anything but coinage and decorative religious iconography. So it wasn’t until sometime around 3600 B.C. that the Chinese forged bronze—humanity’s first real metal. And that’s essentially when the cowbell was invented. Not without some controversy, of course.
The Chinese, according to the exhaustive Percussion Instruments and Their History by musicologist James Blades, are “credited with discovering the art of bell founding” but, another bulletproof authority on the subject, Curt Sachs, in his book, The History of Musical Instruments, says:

“We do not know how the bell originated. Primitive people possessed rough bells made of natural material, such as crab pinchers, shells and wood. But it is not sure that non-metallic bells preceded the metal bell; [however] most are clumsy imitations probably due to the lack of metal and foundries.”
Nevertheless, scholars agree that as late as the fifth century B.C., the Chinese already had two distinct varieties of bells: The chung bell, struck from the outside with a hammer; and the ling bell, struck by an internal clapper. The chung was used in traditional religious and orchestral settings, while the ling was suspended from the necks of animals, and regarded as an amulet to ward off evil spirits.
This is meant in no terms to be condescending to the reader but the bell is an idiophone, which literally means it’s made from a “naturally sonorous material”. In Locker Beef terms, no matter how many times you strike an idiophone, it’s going to sound pretty much the same way it did the first time. A gong, for instance, is also an idiophone. The sonority, simplicity, and character of a bell has been mythically associated with purity and fertility, and was used as an instrument of ‘protection from the spiritual world’ in the formative years of virtually every civilization. Hindus hung small bells around the necks of children and Africans banged on the agogo. Arabs hung them around the necks of camels and Native Americans used them to gauge the wind. The Chinese would often “mix with the molten metal the blood of a sheep or an ox as a sacrifice to the bell” itself. By the time we get to the Middle Ages, bells have become, Blades says emphatically, “the most universal of instruments.”
One of the factors that make a thing ‘universal’, says Locker Beef, is that every one likes it, but no one can agree on where it came from.
And so it seems appropriate that the actual and practical use of the cowbell should have contentious origins. Certain historians say the practice of hanging a clapper bell around the neck of cattle got started by shepherds in the Alps, who would award the champion milk-producer with the honor of wearing the bell with the deepest resonance. Locker Beef has one question in two parts. Are cows designed to be capable of caring about: A) milk-production or B) a bell strapped around their necks? Other than illustrating the stupid trophy mentality of the human species, the milk cow theory appears to be valid, except that it may be preceded by story involving Mongolian shepherds and goats.
As a rule, cows are relatively intractable animals. They’re really dumb but they’re really big, and you can’t really make a cow do anything without unreasonable force. Hence, the cattle prod. But a goat holds tremendous sway with a cow. A goat will walk right up to a 2,000-pound heifer and go Nnnnnneaa-aww-wwwg-gghhh and that ****ing cow will move and snort, “**** off, you old goat.” The story (from Charles White's Drums Through The Ages) goes that for a variety of very rational and simple reasons, Mongolian shepherds used goats to help corral their livestock in difficult mountainous terrain. The Mongolians had oxen, which in essence are just malnourished and geographically disadavantaged cows..Anyway, in order to track the whereabouts of the herd as they made their way up or down a rocky precipice, the Mongolians hung bells around the necks of the goats, not the oxen. In doing so, the Mongolians created the most advanced property-loss management system in the turgid history of mankind, paraphrased as letting the goats keep check on the cows. Ironically, the term “bell cow” may have been a bit misleading all these years. If you’re following the bell cow, you may be following the goat.

II. The Not-So-Bright Enlightenment

In the halcyon days following the fall of the Roman Empire, most bells of all shapes and sizes enjoyed a planet-wide popularity, that is, if bells can actually enjoy anything. Forged in the 1400’s, The Great Bell of China—used only when the emperor prayed for rain—stands over 14 feet high and weighs 118,720 pounds, while somewhere in nowhere, the poor old cowbell spent the entire Dark and Middle Ages (as well as the Renaissance) in the pastures, meadows and jungles, where most composers and musicians believed it belonged. Blades says, “Thirteenth-and-fourteenth-century writers speak of chime bells, cymbals, or little bells; organs and chimes are placed together. [But] authentic music for the cowbell is hard to find.” Not that it had disappeared from music altogether, but it wasn’t used in any contemporary context for most of what we call the development of Western civilization. Bach and Beethoven had no use for the cowbell.
Europeans wanted silver bells that jingled and jangled, but remember that most of the world as late as the mid-1800’s was not European. Even though you’ll find the cowbell (or a reasonable facsimile thereof) firmly entrenched in the pantheon of Southeast Asian, Latin and African-American folk music—the latter two eventually turning into American jazz—up until 1800 or so, save for around the neck of a cow or, shucks, a goat, the cowbell was obscured by its more dainty and pleasant brethren.
And then at the turn of the 20th century it reappeared in a most unlikely place, the Symphony No. 6 by controversial Austrian composer Gustav Mahler.

It’s one of the early great moments in cowbell history for all the right reasons and Mahler is and was the perfect guy to share it with us. Locker Beef would really like to spend an entire essay just talking about Mahler, particularly how the debut of his Symphony No. 1 in D Major caused a riot in Budapest, but we’re already way off track. The Symphony No. 6 is a bewilderingly complex piece of music, full of obtuse sheets of sound and tone. Locker Beef says he had an out-of-body-experience listening to the second movement while driving at night. Though the composer had no intention of putting the cowbell center stage, according to yet another noted musicologist, Jay Scott Odell:

Mahler was trying to “evoke an experience of high-mountain solitude: unrelated triads and 7th chords drift like mist (celesta and high tremolando strings) while offstage, cowbells are heard. Mahler's last printed revision of 1906 somewhat contradictorily directs that these be played 'so as to produce a realistic impression of a grazing herd of cattle.’”
Mahler’s subtle re-introduction of the cowbell into contemporary music was a mere foreshadowing of what was to come.


III. Kicking and Screaming into The Modern Era

Here we are, 21st century slobs looking back because we can.

Metaphorically speaking, the cowbell has been a pothole in the road of popular music—ignored until somebody hit it real good. There are Afro-Cuban and Latin percussionists that don’t have a gig without a cowbell in their flight case, but for the most part, nobody in 2002 considers the cowbell a primary element of any rhythm section, for precisely the same reason that it isn’t one.
Even though it is made in various shapes and sizes, the cowbell is the most unapologetic of idiophones; it’s a one-dimensional sound—a solid and resounding Thonk! You either get a loud Thonk! or a soft Thonk! depending upon how hard you hit it and with what. Tap it with a pencil and it’s an almost pleasant, gently abrasive ringing tone. Whack it with a drumstick and it’s obnoxious as a stack of dishes breaking in a tiled room.
When Locker Beef was a kid he played drums in the junior high school jazz band. Whenever he wanted to get the attention of his bandmates, he’d crack the over-sized black cowbell mounted to the bass drum with the fat end of a Ludwig 5B drum stick—just once—and everything would stop. Stop cold like a May-December love affair. Thonk! The faggy saxophone players would roll their eyes and huff, “Does he have to do that?” And there was great dissension among the brass and woodwind sections as well, and they complained to the band director. “Take it away from him or we’ll….” Only the bass and guitar players didn’t seem to mind. The poor band director was powerless to do anything about it except blame himself for encouraging a cowbell break in “Woodchopper’s Ball.” And he knew better. Take the cowbell away from young Locker Beef and you’ve got an even more heinous weapon in his hands—the crash cymbal.

The cowbell stayed mounted to the sparkly green bass drum.

At this juncture, Locker Beef wishes to take yet another detour: further into the realm of 20th century ethnomusicology. Despite all the evidence presented here otherwise, do not think for a second that the cowbell was marginalized by an imagined omission in ‘modern’ art. Modernist art ****ers like Aaron Copeland and Igor Stravinsky were among the first to incorporate ‘the mundane sounds of life’ into their compositions. The early 20th century was front-loaded with Dadaists, Surrealists, Materialists…those ****s were banging on cowbells to fall asleep. Gus Mahler was certainly not alone in his vision. Even though terms like ‘modern’ and ‘post-modern’ apply (and belong) to architectural ideologies, the paradox of the cowbell is that in the perspective of ‘modern’ musicians and drummers—ostensibly, the folk who keep the spirit of rhythm alive everywhere on this planet and in this dimension—it is not just a throwaway novelty item. Certainly the African and Latin cultures could refute this argument even further, on grounds of subjectivity, but someone would have had to invent the cowbell if it didn’t already exist.
In the 1930’s and 40’s, bandleader Spike Jones was inventing a new genre of music Locker Beef affectionately calls “Cartoon Music” which employed a series of ad hoc instruments like washboards, bottles, kazoos, and cowbells. You can’t watch a Disney cartoon without hearing the ghost of Spike Jones. Thanks to the lethal combination of a shrinking American attention span and the emergence of Hollywood as a viable industry, composers of all sorts began employing these ‘arcane’ instruments as realistic touches to their pieces. But it was an afterthought, much in the same way Steven Spielberg waited until he’d done Schindler’s List before he tackled Amistad. Thankfully, it was the aforementioned Latin and jazz percussionists who really kept the cowbell in play. As the development of what we now call a ‘drum kit’ was taking place, ‘exotic’ instruments like cowbell found a place of employment. The fabled Thonk! was a common term in the lexicon of percussionists everywhere by the start of the second world war.
For the sake of expediency, Locker Beef would like to say that there were many wonderful and treasured moments in cowbell history during the next 20 years, but we must move on.

The legendary Bay Area rock promoter Bill Graham is partially responsible for the surge of popularity of the cowbell in all rock music. In the late 60’s, Graham became enamored of a young San Francisco based group that was struggling to marry Afro-Latin jazz grooves with Anglo-rock sensibilities. That band (regrettably, for some of us) was Santana. And Bill Graham, an aficionado of Latin music and self-proclaimed “cowbell nut,” took Santana and turned them into superstars. It was, in fact, Bill Graham who suggested Santana cover a little known blues song by Willie Hobo called “Evil Ways,” which ultimately became their biggest hit and brought the weighty Thonk! into the hearts and homes of America.
However, the cowbell was no stranger to rock music prior to 1970. The Beatles used the piss out of it in ‘65 on “Drive My Car.” Bob Seger’s “Ramblin’ Gamblin’ Man” was ridin’ the cowbell in 1968. Led Zeppelin made it a prominent feature of the best song (“Good Times Bad Times”) on their debut album. And perhaps one of the greatest moments in cowbell history, “Honky Tonk Women” by the Rolling Stones, is followed by a phalanx of challengers: “Mississippi Queen” by Mountain, “Hair of the Dog” by Nazareth, “Down on the Corner” by Creedence Clearwater Revival, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper,” by Blue Oyster Cult. The list could go on and on and almost did, until it became apparent that it’s hard to find a band during the Golden Age Of Classic Rock (1964-1983) that didn’t have a great cowbell moment somewhere in their careers. It’s like, the guy from Metallica may have used a cowbell at some point in his career, but Locker Beef says he would rather be unsure than have to listen to the entire Metallica catalogue to find out. **** ‘em. They should have let a cowbell sing their biggest hit, something-something “Sandman”.
More to the point, some cowbell moments during the 70’s were greater than others. After seeing Carl Palmer (of Emerson, Lake, and aha! Palmer) make a complete super-indulgent ass of himself in say, 1972, Neil Peart, the philosopher-c*m-handlebar-mustache-sporting drummer for the only Canadian power trio that matters, Rush, decides one cowbell is not enough for his monstrosity of a drum kit, and orders a set that spans an octave (F to f) including half-steps, making 12 in all. Peart wasted no time in putting the cowbells to use, especially during the drum solo on the group’s 1975 live album, All The World’s A Stage. Meanwhile, in 1978, another guy with a drum kit way too big for his own good, Alex Van Halen, tries and fails miserably to hide the fact that he’s ripping off the intro to the Stones’ “Honky Tonk Women” on Van Halen’s sassy new hit, “Dance the Night Away.”
A very dear friend of the author writes: “If you’re doing a piece on great moments in cowbell history, you must include Lou Reed’s “Vicious” from the live album Rock and Roll Animal. I swear to God the cowbell is mixed louder than the vocal.” Yes it is, dear friend. Yes, it is.
Everyone from Elton John to Lynryd Skynyrd, The Carpenters to Kiss, Ted Nugent to Olivia Newton-John, Aerosmith to Bread, and Jethro Tull to Luther Vandross; they all had hits with cuts that featured (or at least had a hint of) a cowbell. War had two of the most enduring cowbell hits ever, “Cisco Kid” and the ubiquitous, “Low Rider.” How can you top that? With Foghat’s “Slow Ride”?


IV. The Secret of the Post-Modern Disappearing Act

1980 was either great year or a horrible year for anyone who loved rock music, and not just because Styx had a number one album. In Late ’79, Bon Scott went ahead and drank himself dead. Ozzy Osbourne was kicked out of Sabbath. John Lennon and John Bonham died. Punk was starting to become more enduring than a fashion statement. While many serious musicians were busy subverting the political, social and artistic hierarchy of their choice, most became a hiccup in the past. Classic rock was in transition. Pink Floyd’s The Wall pretty much put the karate chop on concepts and excess. From 1980 to 1983, everyone was scrambling; you either had some sort of Disco residue clinging to the cilia of your nostrils, or you woke up every morning ready to fight. Bands like AC/DC had something to prove; bagpipes, cannons, cowbells, whatever, man.
The new breed of guitar bands like The Smiths, The Cure, R.E.M., and U2, showed outright disdain for their immediate predecessors, but the cowbell didn’t disappear. Like the hula hoop and the modern day cell phone, by 1983, the cowbell eventually “played in Peoria”. To this day, its a rare high school marching band in America that doesn’t have at least one kid banging on a cowbell. And in the self-conscious early to mid 80’s, even foofie techno one-offs like Falco and Taco had 16-bit samples of a 5” bronze bell struck with a mallet. Rock me, ****ing Gustav Mahler. The late 80’s were dominated by Bon Jovi and Guns ‘N Roses, both of whom loved the cowbell. Take me down to the Paradise City where the grass is green and the girls are sitting around topless smoking pot and playing timbales and congas, right?
The cowbell, like the guitar solo, has found its place in rock music.

1999’s “Praise You” is one of the more recent smash hits by the dancey-dance laptop ‘geniuses’ like Fatboy Slim, to feature a cowbell.

So how did it get from the cow’s neck to the percussionist’s hand? We don’t know. There’s no one answer. The cultural significance cannot be understated in respect to the development of contemporary—well, rock music. It is precisely because the cowbell remained in obscurity that we’re having this exchange today. And to be quite honest with you, Locker Beef says, rock music and the cowbell are one in the same: loud, abrasive, obnoxious, jarring, annoying, and so much fun to play. It is a fundamental truth not many “serious” musicians care about, understand, or have the willingness to explore. Until it’s too late.

 

Some local history on the Cowbell form Mississippi State University

The Cowbell

The most unique and certainly the most resounding symbol of Mississippi State University tradition is the cowbell. Despite decades of attempts by opponents and authorities to banish it from scenes of competition, diehard State fans still celebrate Bulldog victories loudly and proudly with the distinctive sound of ringing cowbells.

The precise origin of the cowbell as a fixture of Mississippi State sports tradition remains unclear to this day. The best records have cowbells gradually introduced to the MSU sports scene in the late 1930s and early 1940s, coinciding with the 'golden age' of Mississippi State football success prior to World War II.

The most popular legend is that during a home football game between State and arch-rival Mississippi, a jersey cow wandered onto the playing field. Mississippi State soundly whipped the Rebels that Saturday, and State College students immediately adopted the cow as a good luck charm. Students are said to have continued bringing a cow to football games for a while, until the practice was eventually discontinued in favor of bringing just the cow's bell.

Whatever the origin, it is certain that by the 1950s cowbells were common at Mississippi State games, and by the 1960s were established as the special symbol of Mississippi State. Ironically, the cowbell's popularity grew most rapidly during the long years when State football teams were rarely successful. Flaunting this anachronism from the 'aggie' days was a proud response by students and alumni to outsider scorn of the university's 'cow college' history.

In the 1960s two MSU professors, Earl W. Terrell and Ralph L. Reeves obliged some students by welding handles on the bells to they could be rung with much more convenience and authority. By 1963 the demand for these long-handled cowbells could not be filled by home workshops alone, so at the suggestion of Reeves the Student Association bought bells in bulk and the Industrial Education Club agreed to weld on handles. In 1964 the MSU Bookstore began marketing these cowbells with a portion of the profits returning to these student organizations.

Today many styles of cowbells are available on campus and around Starkville, with the top-of-the-line a heavy chrome-plated model with a full Bulldog figurine handle. But experts insist the best and loudest results are produced by a classic long-handled, bicycle-grip bell made of thinner and tightly-welded shells.

Cowbells decorate offices and homes of Mississippi State alumni, and are passed down through generations of Bulldog fans. But they are not heard at Southeastern Conference games, not legally, at least since the 1974 adoption of a conference rule against 'artificial noisemakers' at football and basketball games. On a 9-1 vote SEC schools ruled cowbells a disruption and banned them.

This has done little harm to the cowbell's popularity, however, or to prevent cowbells from being heard outside stadiums in which the Bulldogs are playing. They can still be heard at non-conference football contests, as well as other sporting events on campus. And bold Bulldog fans still risk confiscation for the privilege of keeping a unique Mississippi State tradition alive and ringing at SEC affairs.

 

thanks for readin it R03