Drums in the distance

So, I've been hard at work on this 1968 Ludwig kit. I thought, in the absence of any meaningful posts, that I might put some pics up showing the rack and floor toms. Anyway, here you go ... I'm off to North Carolina to mountain bike for the weekend, so I'll be back next week, hopefully with a completed kit. Wish me luck.

12" rack tom and 16" floor tom
16" floor tom

The finish is Psychedelic Red, if you're wondering. Pretty cool stuff.

Classic Cool

So, I've not been posting as much as I would like. Even though the blog challenge that sparked my flurry of activity is over, I was still hoping it'd be an every-other-day type thing.

It's not going to get any easier now that I have a pretty sweet vintage Ludwig drumset to fix up. The original hardware has some pitting in the chrome and, ideally, I would replace it all. However, I wonder if it wouldn't give the drums a little character to leave the original stuff on there and just clean it up as much as possible. New heads, tension rods and a few missing pieces later, I might just have a drumset resembling these:

Needless to say, I'm a little exicted about how they'll look. I'll post pics of the drums once I have the finished product assembled.

Measuring Up

I always find it awkward when I'm approached after playing a show by someone telling me how good a drummer I am. So, part of it is definitely that I don't know how to take a compliment, but another part of it is that I'm not sure that I believe them all the time.

There's a part of me that is searching for that point at which I feel like I'm worthy of praise as a drummer, and it doesn't matter to me who else is impressed until I reach that point for myself. As a test for myself, I decided to throw my hat in the ring to be the next drummer of Smashing Pumpkins. It's an opportunity to see how I stack up against other drummers and to see if what I do stands out. I recorded a video of myself playing the song Cherub Rock as part of the audition process and it turned out pretty okay, all things considered.




I wouldn't say I set out to make this blog some official account of what I've been up to, but I'm not sure I have anything else to blog about at the moment.

The Appleseed Cast is at The End tonight and I think it's safe to assume this might be the only chance I have to write something. The Blog Challenge must go on ...

Oh, also ... You might want to check out To Die For by Hell is for Heroes.

Good stuff.