1128

This is probably the first and last mention of my drums on this weblog. That’s because I sold them today, so in honor of them and the dust they collected, I present the following brief history.

I started playing guitar, an old family acoustic, back in high school, struggling with pressing my fingers down hard enough to keep the thing from buzzing. Before I went to Tech, I picked up a Peavey Raptor, a Strat-a-like guitar. By the time I was making some progress with it I realized that everybody in college (even engineering schools) plays guitar. Nobody, however, plays drums. So I decided that in order to be useful as far as playing with others I’d get into drums.

I borrowed my friend Joe’s ancient Ludwig kit. We had to pull it out of the storage garage. The heads had been structurally reinforced by duct tape. You can imagine how good this thing sounded - particularly the cracked cymbals. After saving up money from my co-op job I went for a Yamaha Stage Custom. My friend Ben, who had moved to Augusta, happened to be in town and went with me to pick it up. He had slightly more drum experience than I, you see, having played cymbals in marching band.

And so began a year or two of jams at Preble’s house. I’d “practice” on the weekends, and maybe once a month or so Morris, Joel, and I would get together and play Sunshine of your Love. After some time I began to suspect that I wasn’t so good at this whole “rhythm” thing. Anything outside of 4/4 time, accents, etc. - all of these were beyond me. I even bought some pretty nice cymbals, but shiny metal discs can only do so much.

Then I met Mike (my present roommate). Mike played drums, and he was pretty dang good: better than anybody I knew. At the same time my musical tastes were growing (I think I had recently decided that the Hammond organ sound was pretty kickass), and I was starting to think about those piano lessons I took a long time ago - maybe I could learn to play some blues piano or something - or better yet: organ. Co-op money bought me a Roland VK-7 organ simulator/keyboard to play at school, and I left the drums behind.

I still play guitar every now and then, along with piano/organ, but I never really went back to the drums. I don’t even do so much as sit down behind Mike’s kit. It took me a few years to find my place, and I’m still trying to narrow it down.

There must be some irony in the above photograph, a farewell taken with my new camera. The camera that cost enough to give me real incentive to sell my kit. I’ll miss them in a way. If you’re like me you want to hold onto that stuff because you think that somewhere down the line when you don’t live with a drummer anymore you’ll want to have a kit set up for friends to come over and jam on.

Thanks to Paul Montineri and Rob, the drum buyer at Galaxy Music for taking them off my hands. After we’d moved them inside the store I chanced to see a dad looking them over. Maybe they’re being setup in somebody’s rec room right this moment, the snares being prepared to rattle and snap to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida.

Posted: Saturday, August 28th, 2004 at 3:20 pm; Category: 1128; Comments feed: RSS 2.0.
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