By Martin Popoff
Carmine then moved onto Cactus, a band considerably heavy for its day, in an old school way. Four albums with that band led to a stint with/as Beck, Bogert and Appice, work with Rod Stewart, Ozzy, Pink Floyd, a Vanilla Fudge reunion, King Kobra and numerous solo projects in all sorts of media, including audio, books and video. And through it all, Carmine's big sound prevails.
In closing, Carmine gives us a glimpse of just what that sound was and emphatically, continues to be.
"Let me see, well basically a big, ambient, natural sounding drum kit that comes across very aggressive and dynamic when it needs to be. But technically, it's a compressed kind of drum sound; it has compression on it. When it comes over the radio especially, it comes to life and the cymbals and everything pop out and just bite your head off and the bass drum is just beating your heart down. Something like that (laughs)."
And where does Carmine plan to take this sound next? "The next gig is the 22nd in Denver and then there's a couple of free shows we're doing in Florida for this thing called Rock For Christmas, an early Christmas benefit. Then we're going to Asia on the 5th of December until the 22nd, then I'd imagine - because we're in the midst of getting a new agent - we're probably going to book some stuff in January, after the record gets going a little bit..."