Originally Posted by
NPYYZ
Not sure how old I was, but I used to set up empty cardboard boxes and hit them with pencils. One day I came in from playing outside ( yes back then we actually went outside the house and played) anyway when I went into the den there was a toy drum set there my father had bought for me. It had a kick drum with a wooden foot pedal , one tin cymbal and two smaller drums attached to each side of the kick drum. The heads were like a heavy paper. These were not real drums. The reso bass drum head had a picture of kids dancing on it. Lol. I played with them every day until the heads all broke and that was that.
At age 10 I again came home to find a real drum kit waiting for me. It was a set of ludwigs. It had a 20" kick , a 5x14 snare, a 12x8 tom, a pair of 12" zilco hi hats , and a 14" no name crash. I banged around on these for a year or so with no rhyme or reason. Once frustration set in I put them in the closet and moved on.
In my 12th year of life a few months before my 13th birthday I pulled the kit back out of the closet. This time I would put a record on and just try and stay in some kind of time with it. I did this for months then finally it happened. My hands and feet finally made the jump to being able to move independently and I could finally play a proper drum beat.
I practiced and practiced day after day month after month, at age 15 I was playing along to my Zeppelin, Deep Purple, Sabbath albums. Again my Father who loved music decided it was time for a new kit. I have no idea what the brand was, I believe they were just cheap no name drums. It was a blue sparkle kit with 20" kick, 12" & 13" toms , 14" fl tom. I had a ludwig acrolite snare.I was still using the zilco hats and 14" crash and a foot pedal that my cousin had to weld for me because the beater kept flying out.
I got a paper route and started saving money. I saved up enough go buy my first real cymbal. It was a Zildjian A series 18" crash. Again my Father stepped up and also got me a set of Zildjian 14" new beat hats and a ludwig speed king foot pedal.
At the end of 1975 I discovered the band Rush. This changed every thing. Neil was doing things I'd not heard before. The quick triplets with his feet, the multi tom fills, the odd time. So I took some lessons. My teacher was a very good drummer here in Maine. His name is Joe Smith, he later went on to become the drummer for a fairly popular country band called Saywer Brown. Any way he got me go the next level. Opened my drumming mind up and expanded my drumming knowledge. Once I got the odd time thing down and also learning how to "feel" a song and learn it properly, and also learning how to create a drum part for a song, I stopped the lessons and taught myself from then on.
1977 I went to Crazy Ed's Music in Portland, ( he was actually dealing out of his apartment at this time) and ordered my first real drum kit. I got a set of Fibes fiberglass shell drums , 2-24" kicks 10",12",13" toms 16",18" fl toms 5.5x14 snare. I later added a set of gretsch 6",8",10" concert toms. Once I got this kit I began to learn every Rush song there was. I was obsessed.
Later that year I started playing out. We did high school dances for a few months then hit the club circuit . I spent the next 14 years playing full time on the New England club circuit, 4 to 5 nights a week. New Year's Eve 91" was my last gig. At this point I'd had it, I was sick of playing cover tunes and no longer had the desire to play other peoples music, so I packed up my kit that night in my station wagon instead of the band truck, and brought them home.
But this long boring story doesn't end there. Because I lived in an apartment I set my kit up in my parents basement. They had no problem with me coming over go play them whenever I wanted. I tried joining up with a couple all original bands over the next several years , but none of them worked out.
In 2005 I got together with a couple friends a played a benefit gig to raise money for a family that list their home in a fire ( I posted a video from tha gig of us doing our version of moby di*k the video section a while back) that was fun and we were talking about going back out and gigging but a few months later I was diagnosed with cancer so I had to deal with that. To pay for medical expenses I had to sell both of my kits at the time, a beautiful set of Ludwigs and my monster triple bass set of Premiers. I managed to get a used Yamaha DTXpress ll kit just to have something to play.
In 2008 I got a new acoustic kit, a Sonor SE kit, basswood shells, but it was great to have a real kit again. Then in 2011 I got my current PDP X7 kit, two of them actually. I've never stopped playing and I won't stop until my body forces me to. I've been playing drums for so long it just doesn't feel right to not play them. If I'm having a busy week at work and I miss a couple days where I can't play , It bugs the heck out of me. When I miss days I get that feeling that I can't wait to get behind my kit again.
One would think after 40 years playing drums I'd be a monster drummer. I'm not, I'm a very good rock drummer , nothing more, nothing less. I've never been the kind of person that can sit behind a kit and practice the same thing over and over, and I've never learned the rudiments, never sat down and did all the RR LL , RLR LRL , RLRRLRLL.... and so on. I can do them but not at super high speeds like some guys. My thing has always been being able to hear a song and learn it note for note beat for beat. I made a decent living for 14 years, played with some great musicians and made some life long friends. I couldn't imagine not having drums in my life.
So that's it , you asked for a story you got one. I could write a book if I covered all the things that happened on the road, but that's another story..........
No go play your kit.
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