Played drums over the weekend! Got together with Richard at Banana Row for a couple of hours. It’s the first time I’ve ever played with anyone, and Richard hasn’t played with anyone else for some time. We were both extremely nervous, sweating in the heat of the practice room, and I couldn’t keep my foot from shaking on the bass pedal.
We’d chosen a couple of cool tracks to try and play, “74-75” by The Connells, and “Call and Answer” by the Barenaked Ladies. They were a mixed success… It was only in the last five minutes, just before we packed up, when Richard spontaneously launched into the opening of INXS’s “Never Tear Us Apart” that we finally actually clicked. I didn’t have any charted music to pay attention to, so I just tried to pick up the beat of the song from memory. And at that point we were actually playing together rather than each playing separately, and hoping that the two songs would somehow mesh.
Hella good fun, though! Despite the nerves, we both came out of the session grinning and jazzed from the buzz of playing. We’re going to try and do that again some time–soon!
Related to this, two other things:
- Friday evening I found an excellent way of quickly switching heads on my Rhythm Traveller drum kit: power tools. I found an attachment for our power screwdriver/drill thing that exactly fits a standard drum lug. So now, rather than it taking three minutes or so to change a head, I can do it in almost thirty seconds. (I kind of felt like the guys changing tyres in Formula 1…)
- I saw my first warchalking sign as Richard and I were walking to Banana Row. It’s right next to Banana Row in Eyre Place in fact, on the side of the building the Leith Agency used to (still do?) occupy. It’s an open node, with half a meg of bandwidth. Cool!