The training is a much bigger deal than the equipment IMHO. The equipment is clearly important and an experienced goalie is going to prefer their specific equipment, but it wouldn't be hard to have a small pile of extra goalie equipment that would fit a range of players.
Not sure about NHL rules, but in youth hockey, you have to start with an equiped goalie, but you could continue without one, although it's not very advisable except in certain circumstances (which is why sometimes teams pull their goalie). In friendly leagues, you can put a 'shooter tutor' on the goal as a goalie replacement, but that doesn't fly in competitive leagues.
Tangential: I can't for the life of me understand why The Who chose Kenney Jones as the replacement drummer after Moon died, and kept him for nearly ten years. While competent, his playing on It's Hard is about as inspiring as a metronome, and if that's the way he played live, it would have really taken away the dynamism that The Who were famous for. Live at Leeds (1970) is one of the most driving, passionate live rock albums ever recorded, and other Moon-era live recordings (check out "Thirty Years of Maximum R&B") underline how important Moon's drumming was to the band.
He replaced Keith moon first on Face Dances, and you’re right, he is nothing more than a metronome.
Keith Moon was a one-of-a-kind drummer. He pushed the drums up from the background to a first-order instrument. He didn’t keep time and didn’t maintain a steady beat.
I recently started teaching myself drums and when I listened carefully to Keith Moon, he doesn’t maintain any semblance of repeatable beat. But it’s beautiful and intimidating and ferocious. I wonder why others haven’t tried to imitate him because it’s so much more interesting than a regular drummer.
From my amateur ear, Moon and Bonham are the only ones who both played match grip but were exceptional and were members of popular bands. Even Peart is a bit of a yawner compared to these two. Compare to all those great drummers not playing match grip, like a dozen including Buddy Rich, Keith Carlock, Steve Gadd, other great jazz drummers, and with the exceptions I mentioned, match grip doesn't hold up as well to my ear.
One more match grip exception would be Tony Thompson, who exemplified why xor decisions suck for just about everything in life.
Oh yeah, Modula2 foundationally rules. Just needed some more iterations.
Yeah I always wondered too. I assume they chose him because they wanted a "peer" from the old days that had its own thing rather than an anonymous player/fan that could replicate Moon's style. Also at this point I guess they were ok with a change in style.
Similar to, for example, Metallica picking Rob Trujillo, Dio in Sabbath or maybe Dave Navarro in Red Hot Chili Peppers.
I like Dio era Sabbath a lot, but it really does feel like a different band in a lot of ways. To some extent that's probably a product of developing musicianship and musical interests among the whole group, but Dio as the frontman definitely is a major vibe change from Ozzy and the sludgy occult warbles of the first few Sabbath albums.
For my money, though - thank God we got both versions. I really like Heaven and Hell and also Dehumanizer had some great tracks. And I wouldn't trade Paranoid or Master of Reality for the world.
Could it be the case of hiring an uninspiring player so that the surviving members can enjoy the limelight and preserve their existing brand? Think of how, after Bill Berry retired from R.E.M., that band hired various drummers who were supposed to remain quietly in the background, not represent the band in the press, etc.
I very much miss Pete Townshend’s articulate and incisive commentaries on music and society which were more frequent in the press many years ago. I knew this story but not the part where he wrote a message to the family on Scott Halpin’s death, very kindly.
He lives just up from my local, but now closed, record shop, Sleeve Notes, and popped in on the way back from shopping one afternoon to sign copies of the last album and chat with Ken, the owner. Top lad, old Pete. RIP Scott Halpin, immortalised in rock legend.
1. He passed in '08 of natural causes at 54. Set the life insurance to autopay.
2. "On a whim, Halpin’s wife Robyn wrote to Pete Townshend’s office to tell him her husband had passed away. But she was astonished when Townshend replied with a message to be read out at Halpin’s memorial.
“Scott is often in my mind and always with the greatest gratitude and affection,” Townshend wrote. “He showed such youthful courage and humour standing in for Keith Moon that fateful day. Scott played so well too… He played drums brilliantly, smiled and went home…
“I measure my life by great and good people I have occasionally met,” he said finally. “Scott is one of the great and good ones. I worked that out in 30 minutes. That must surely say something about the man.”"
I don't know if Townshend wrote that or not but what a marvelous sentiment to convey to a widow.
Here's a similar story from 1974, from the opera world, about an audience member finishing off a performance of Carmina Burana at the Proms after baritone Thomas Allen fainted:
T. Scot Halpin [not Scott!] was also a talented artist.
I roast my own coffee, and several years I saw print 1/50 of "Coffee Cup Angel X 4" on eBay. Of course I immediately bought it and it is in my wall now:
We had something similar in London recently. A pub band was covering Green Day when Billy Jo walked in to the pub and decided to to go up on stage and sing his own song.
