Bloggin’, sloggin’, and when drums aren’t king.
August 26th, 2010
So, apparently having a workspace dedicated to writing and drawing doesn’t make any difference when neighboring drummers and bass players are rehearsing at the same time that you’re trying to work. My iTunes is blasted, and I still can’t drown out the sound of a poorly tuned bass drum.
No matter, I must slog on, for this is why I’m here!
This week, Adrianne proposed the “Yo La Tengo Late-Summer Blog Challenge, wherein all us blog-type-persons, beginning on September 1st, start putting words out there for people to read. Every day. Is this my worst nightmare? Outside of the one I had the other night, when I quit the job I love for one where I toiled for years? No, there are still worse.
Perhaps if, every day when I wanted to write, I had to blast Cougars’ Pillow Talk over neighboring noodling musicians, it could become my own personal hell. Only because I’d prefer to listen to music at a lower volume, if at all, while trying to put words into pixels. Not because Cougars are, y’know, a bad band – they’re actually pretty great. That Brian Wnukowski can drum.
And now that this post is apparently going nowhere, let’s talk about drumming, shall we? I was listening to Radio K the other day, and a song was playing by a bass-and-drum band that sounded not unlike my old friends and Snackbag Records labelmates, V9R9D. I waited for the DJ to announce who it was, and it turns out it was a different (but active) local band, Falcon Arrow. A new band to check out, how cool is that? I’m told by those that are familiar with the band that they’re much mellower than the song I heard on Radio K, but to be honest, I was relieved to hear drums on the station at all. I’ve been a huge supporter of Radio K over the years, but much of my drive-time listening has been diverted due to the increase of electronic/ambient (re: no drummers) on-air presence. I did stay tuned through three more songs and was rewarded with actual drummers before they returned to their regularly-scheduled programming. ‘Twas nice.
All things considered, kudos to the K for playing music with drums at all. The more they do it, the more I’ll stay tuned.
In other drum-related news, I celebrated my 14-year anniversary of the purchase of my very first drum set this month – an ocean blue 5-piece Tama Rockstar. I was 17 years old and working at a McDonald’s in Eagan, and had it not been for some very gracious friends, I might never have tried my hand at playing music. For as inactive as I’ve felt for the last year, I can’t begin to imagine what my 20′s might have been like if I hadn’t dedicated myself so strongly to the craft of song. And now, with a new band underway and a few more in the works, 2011 might find me busier than ever behind the kit, and I’m looking forward to it.
But for now, I’m looking forward to the neighboring drummer taking up new interests so I can focus on some other ones as well.
Onward!
For the record, he stopped when I clicked “publish post.”