Day 184 | I'm finally leaving Kakadu: after a good look around

124 km | Heading west total: 8,207 km

Trundling down this lazily undulating road hoping for the benefit of a tailwind I’ve been battling into for the last 2 weeks, and now finally having turned the corner sadly absent, I’m glad that the iPod is charged up. (I can get a couple of 24 hour charge-ups out of my computer battery.)

I’ve fiddled with the equaliser setting and for some reason, maybe I’m playing jazz on a rock setting, the drums are coming through very clearly. It’s good to have a little rhythm to power along these long stretches. You hear the albums in a new way when you focus on one particular instrumentation.

At least I have two of the best drummers around to listen to with completely contrasting styles.

I’ve been listening to some of my Keith Jarrett jazz piano pieces, (I’ve got 5 albums of him on the iPod), and Jack DeJohnette ain’t no ordinary drummer or even a tasteful jazz drummer like Jorge Rossi who used to play with Brad Mehldau. Jack doesn’t bother with keeping the beat: he just plays something that crops up in his head often unrelated to the other two in the trio. And in any case he seems to lose interest, or let’s say, find some other interest about every 20 seconds. Never a dull moment and even Jarrett seems unsure what he’s up to at any time.

In contrast, Phil Selway’s bashing of the percussion is metronymic, well, he is the centre of the band really. He just keeps plugging away, inventive for sure, usually in some obscure time signature, whatever the rest of the band (Radiohead) is doing.

Drummers: they’re a revelation.