Well, I felt I should give a little history about myself, and why this website came
to be. As you'll see, I hope, it wasn't just a whim for something to do to fill
my time (I have enough things for that), it was (is) a natural progression. Possibly
augmented, but never diminished :-).
"Jerimiah was a Bullfrog" was playing on the FM radio in the car. My mom was driving,
and I was tapping on the dashboard. I was eleven or twelve years old. My mom asked,
"...you like the drums?" and I answered "yea, drums are cool!".
At the same time, a friend of hers was in-between apartments and was staying
with us. She was a drummer and had a set in a back room at the house. They were
1967 gold-sparkle Slingerlands with a
Ludwig Speedking pedal. No hats, some trashy cymbal on the rod that
was attached to the kick drum. A standard chrome snare, one mounted tom and a floor
tom. They never got played while I was around, but I'd always get to sit behind
them and tap, tap, tap away.
I never put two-and-two together, but ended up getting the kit as a Christmas present
that year. I was walking on air. Overwhelmed, to say the least.
We weren't well off, we were middle class at best, so there were no lessons in my
immediate future. So the next best thing (and I still feel this way today) was to
strap on the headphones, crank up my favorite albums (or tapes) and kick it! That's
what I did.
The weird thing about it was that there was about a year, maybe a year and a half
that I don't really remember much about the drums, or durmming. I was young, there
was a lot going on with school and moving into high school, but there was this one
day (I don't know the exact date, just remember the feeling) that all of the sudden,
it all made sense - I could play the drums.
Of course I had to find a band, or, as the case may be, MAKE a band. I had a friend
who played guitar, loved
Randy Rhodes with Ozzy.
I had another friend who played piano, and a little guitar, who loved Lynyrd Skynyrd and The Who.
But we didn't have a bass player. So I volunteered my best
friend for the position. I remember going "pawn-shopping" in search of a bass. And
I remember the feeling of seeing the Gibson SG
bass hanging from the ceiling (we
were big AC/DC fans). Sold. Now
he just had to learn how to play. Luckily, one of his brothers was proficient at
guitar and helped along the way.
We started jamming. Black Sabbath,Kiss, AC/DC, Ozzy,
Van Halen (NOT Hagar!).
And after a while (a short while) I realized that nobody was singing. And nobody
wanted to. So I took the helm. In retrospect, I thank them for that, 'cause it has
really helped along the way.
Somewhere along the way, I added a
Ludwig gold-sparkle floor tom to my mix. It was used, and a slightly different
shade of gold. But it was an 18" so it worked out well. Despite the size of my now
"massive" (5 piece) kit. I wanted something more. So I found a way to purchase a
new Tama Rockstar kit (I think
that was the model. They were the low-end line, whatever they were called). It was
also five piece, but it was NEW, and had two mounted toms instead of one. Plus the
hardware was new and much nicer and sturdier. I still used the
Speedking for a little
while - until I snapped it one night during a gig/party.
Highschool now, playing for beer, and playing just about all the time. But there
was another band that the best friend of my best friend's brother was in, and they
were the ones to watch. They were a couple of years older and, to us, monsters.
Ironically, their band sort of fell apart after they graduated high school. And, when
I graduated highschool, two of the members - my best friend's brother's best friend
- the bass player, and the female lead singer - asked me if I wanted to put a band
together with them. I was awestruck, overwhelmed and absolutely, positiviely not
going to let this oportunity pass me by. This was basically John Entwistle and
Ann Wilson asking me to jam!
What to do >>>