Posted
Sunday, December 07, 2008 at 3:53 PM
There are those odd days. You wake up without any grand intentions, per se, but they turn into sorta transformative, or transitional slices of time. You have a distinct notion that the currents of your life have changed, in some small sense. About an hour ago, I sold my drum set.
This will probably mean little to most, but I'd had this now-departed Pearl set since the late '80s, having bought it at the old Tower Grove Music, after visiting the store multiple times and staring at the shiny, black kit. It was stored about 12-feet off the ground, high above the packed store's on-floor inventory and it wasn't until I bought the five-piece, fiberglass set that I actually got to slap some sticks onto the brand-new heads. I loved those drums, back then, and they served me well. A better kit than I, a hack player, deserved.
One semi-serious and several not-at-all-serious bands later, the drums became a sort of albatross. Years would pass without play. One rack tom was lost in a storage shed. Little bits began to disappear. On the kick, a rust ring began to appear. They were hauled from house-to-house, basement-to-basement, on a two-decade odyssey through Webster and South City. The most use they got was during the holiday shows of the Dave Drebes Players, when they'd be carted up the block for the DDP's revolving set of drummers to play.
Now, they'll sit in Typewriter Tim's basement, there for his band- and jam-mates to use, allowing them to not haul their own kits over. Actually, they'll sit there, sure, but they'll also be played. Something they haven't been in a proverbial month of Sundays.
Good for them, I wish 'em well.