Drum Wars
Monday, September 21st, 2009
It was the most intense and anticipated drum battle of all time. Man pitted against beast. In 1978, a jazz legend wearing an ill-fitting toupee took on a 3ft, pink fluffy puppet: Buddy Rich v Animal.
The Muppet Show has never seen anything so surreal.
In retrospect, it’s hard to decide who looks the most ridiculous: In one corner sits a hunchback midget with a head too large for his infant frame. His face is smeared with toffee coloured foundation, and boasts a cavernous mouth fringed with huge rubbery lips. A powdery rug crowns his horsey phizog, his upper body is teensy, and the overall picture is of a man whose anatomy has been assembled from disparate, disproportionate parts. Buddy Rich looks silly.
His adversary, meanwhile, is a screaming bundle of pink fluff - the puppet world’s ode to John Belushi. Bushy eyebrows squiggle over his ping-pong ball eyes, and a bulbous foam nose sits aloft a gaping mouth crammed with jaggy fangs. This Animal means business.
A gruelling 2 minutes and 26 seconds of rim shots, flams, paradiddles and grunting ensues. Rich, arms flailing and wheezing like a pensioner on a treadmill, emerges triumphant. Animal is disconsolate and trudges back stage to do an 8 ball with Miss Piggy.
The most hilarious moment of this percussive rumpus arrives at 2.08, when we are treated to a Sergio Leone close-up of an exhausted Animal; panting and staring in awe at the trails of light streaking from Rich’s flailing arms. It’s his Oscar moment - where the hyperactive marionette transcends into the Laurence Olivier of soft toys.