Thought you guys would get a serious laugh out of a couple of these pics. The third is the only pic I have left of my dear departed drumkit. It lives with a musician friend of mine in a functioning studio...thinking about getting at least a small jazz-kit portion of it back if not just for the exercise.
The pics are me, probably, oh, 8 years ago, playing bass in a six piece rock band. We did pretty well, spent some time in Nashville, TN while a few independent labels courted (aka: tried to screw) us, but hey...looking back, those were some good times. And, those were some fucking awesome pants - leather tie-fly lowrise, drool. And the hair, whew. Took me an hour before every gig to get the barbed-wire look right, not to mention the 3 times/month bleaching. I think my hair actually started breaking at one point. And I wouldn't change a minute of it. The poster you see behind me is our radio-station sponsor...think it sold out to electropop last couple of years.
Anyway:
Two basses: Warwick Corvette 5-string in the B&W pic (still have that one, it's a tank). You open up this 7''x 4'' plate in the back and it looks like whatever R2-D2 drags outta the Millennium Falcon to fix the warp drive. It's not a real high-end model Warwick (you can drop 5k easy on an Infinity or similar) but the damn thing will literally knock you down if it's running through speakers any bigger than 10-12''. It's my best friend, musically.
The red flamed-top 4-string is a Spector passive double-bucker, neck-through. That was generally my pop-slap showoff bass, since I could just about wrap my hand around the neck twice. I ended up giving it to a friend to cover a couple months rent around the time I downsized - at one point I was running an SWR superstack (about 6' tall including the amp head) and had three bass guitars on stage - the third was a Peavey maple neck 4-string, basically same as the Spector without the rosewood. The maple neck was a little too Flea for my playing style (Flea's playing Modulus now - graphite composite necks, superslap design), so I traded it for some Shure wireless gear and a CryBaby wah.
The drums are a set of Tama Rockstar Custom, gunmetal grey...let's see...6, 8, 10, 12, 14, 16 inch toms, 22x22 kick, DW 7k series double kick pedal, a Pearl Masters Series Birch 14x5.5 snare with a 13x3 Nickel-plated side/effect snare, 14'' timbale, double hat setup (not in pic) 14'' dark set on left 13'' light/crisp on right, I tried to keep my cymbals to A-custom Zildjian but at 2-300 bucks each, my gigging rig had either used crashes or cheapies like Sabian AA or B8 if desperate, 8, 10, 14, 17, and 18'' splash/crashes with a 20" china. That's an '84 Paiste nickel silver 22'' shimmer ride (the precious)...and...I think there's still some giant cowbell in there that I never used. ProMark sticks, Evans heads, Gibralter rack. I'd started really working in some LP twinkle-sticks (drum sticks with tambourine chimes built in) whenever the beat got spacey. Carter Beaufort is my drum idol, so a 20-piece kit at the time was just getting started in comparison.
All in all, I spent 4 years building that damn kit, and god knows how much money. I'll see if I can't mix down a drum solo and get it posted somewhere. So yeah, background musical info on Droo that doesn't involve singing, songwriting, and very little bitching. Most fun I've ever had was as a gigging drummer, but I had a mohawk by then, lol.
Take care guys, thanks for the trip down memory lane
Droo
So great to hear from you, and yeah, can't wait for Spring either. I've got things probably about 70% ready to go...down to the little technical details, like a monitor wall-mount and either shelving or a rack for outboard gear...I can do that sort of stuff, it's just the last thing I want to make a mistake on at the moment. Have a microphone worth more than my car buried under a poorly installed shelf...*shudder*.
