At least I'm consistent in my likes (revisiting Alan Wilder, the metaphorical drummer)

I was surfing around, reading about Moby, which led me to reading about Mute Records (I didn't realize that it was independent again, kinda sorta), which led me to thinking about Alan Wilder, which led me to this 2009 post by Aircrash which quoted from another source. The other source had written about Alan Wilder, drummer for Depeche Mode. Here's part of what the other source said, as quoted by Aircrash:

...some of the groups which were even more heavily in thrall to the space-age world of the electronic keyboard - particularly New Order and Depeche Mode - either retained their drummers or, in the latter case, made Alan Wilder play the drums because the rest of the band didn't like Alan Wilder very much, they were jealous of him, standing there behind the keyboard, like Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys, but with leather trousers. Many groups have metaphorically made Alan Wilder play the metaphorical drums, although only one group has literally made Alan Wilder play the drums, that group being Depeche Mode, in which group Alan Wilder was in.

After that the piece got really weird.

The whole thing made me curious - what was the original source of the material quoted by Aircrash? All that Aircrash said was that the Wilder stuff was buried in a post about A Flock of Seagulls.

So I began searching for information on metaphorical drummers, and I was led to a post by a a little blog called the Ontario Empoblog, written in 2005. Perhaps you've heard of it. I know I have.

The post, which also mentions then-love of my life Helen Marine and the four times that individual Beatles quit the Beatles, includes a lengthy quote from the original post about Alan Wilder the metaphorical drummer. It also includes a link to the original post at http://www.ashleypomeroy.com/seagulls.html. Sadly, while there is still a website at ashleypomeroy.com, there is no seagulls.html post any more, so Aircrash and I are the only people who have preserved any portion of the original post.

Or perhaps not. After some searching, I found another copy of Ashley Pomeroy's original essay on A Flock of Seagulls. I'm going to skip over the parts about Rudolf Hess (yes, Pomeroy discusses several British bands) and put Ashley's statements about Wilder in context.

Four people manned the tank that was A Flock of Seagulls. Mike Seagull sang, and played the electronic synthesiser keyboard - and because this was the early 1980s, he almost certainly played a Sequential Circuits Prophet 5 - whilst his brother Paul Seagull played the electric guitars, and ironically although Mike was a hairdresser, he was genetically predisposed to baldness, and indeed his brother Frank was losing his hair even at the height of the group's success, and both have lost their hair now. There were two other Seagulls, being Frank Seagull, who was also a hairdresser, and Ali Seagull, who respectively played the bass guitar and the drums and was the brother of Paul Seagull. A Flock of Seagulls did not pride themselves on their ownership and use of a drum machine. Frank is an uncommon name nowadays.

It is easy to forget, nowadays, that although so many bands of the early 1980s used synthesisers, the vast majority also used traditional electric instruments, and drums, which are not electric at all, although they are often amplified with electric currents and microphones and amplifiers and so forth. None of the aforementioned leading lights of the New Romantic movement entirely dispensed with their drummers, and indeed some of the groups which were even more heavily in thrall to the space-age world of the electronic keyboard - particularly New Order and Depeche Mode - either retained their drummers or, in the latter case, made Alan Wilder play the drums because the rest of the band didn't like Alan Wilder very much, they were jealous of him, standing there behind the keyboard, like Chris Lowe of the Pet Shop Boys, but with leather trousers. Many groups have metaphorically made Alan Wilder play the metaphorical drums, although only one group has literally made Alan Wilder play the drums, that group being Depeche Mode, in which group Alan Wilder was in. He is like Jesus Christ; just as Depeche Mode in 1990 made Alan Wilder play the drums, so too did the society of wherever it was that Jesus Christ lived in BC 30 or whenever... that society made Jesus go from playing the keyboards to playing the drums, and then he left to do a solo project and was never heard of again. By the end of the 1980s the technology which powered the drum machine had advanced to such a state that it could also power musical synthesisers; the machines which had once held rhythm patterns could now hold melody as well, and poor Alan Wilder stroke Jesus Christ was left with nothing to do. But I digress.

After that the piece gets really weird.

P.S. Whenever I see a mention of Visage the band, I think of Kelly Osbourne.