|
 Urban white-boy beat.
by Sean
 Every day I get off of the bus across the street from the Virgin Mega-store at the Hynes T stop (and yeah... I wrote "the Tower" first... similar to the way I say "Great Woods" to this day) and walk the rest of the way to work, it's my concession to physical fitness even though I seem to be a lazy bastard regarding everything else these days.
Today there was a very, very, messed up young man on the sidewalk surrounded by four of Boston’s Finest. He smelled of feces and cheap, rotgut, booze and even from ten feet away I couldn't see any colour in his eyes; he just sat there sweating and mumbling on the sidewalk next to a backpack full of textbooks.
Drugged up, wasted college kids aside what this column is really about is drums.
Drums and nostalgia.
When I was younger I was something of a musician; I could play a small variety of instruments but mostly I sang. I did the whole All-State Choir thing and when my school had a barbershop quartet I was their baritone, it was fun. I also played bass with a couple of friends in a band (jazz and some blues-y classic rock... think early Clapton... who, even though we covered a lot, I still can’t remember any songs but ‘Brave Ulysses’.) This was all well and good but the one thing I really wanted to do, you see, was play the drums.
It had nothing to do with wanting to imitate a famous musician, or that I thought they looked especially cool. No, I wanted to play drums because it meant that I got to hit things. With Sticks. On Purpose even! Sadly my parents weren't interested in supporting this particular interest, maybe it was the fear of the "practicing" in their basement that would occur late at night, and maybe it was just because they didn’t want to have to hear them at all. Regardless, I didn't have enough money to do it myself (my fortune having been sunk neck deep into a 1985 Buick Century) so I was content to long after the "hitting things with sticks" part of music while I filled in elsewhere.
Skip ahead to college. One of the first friends I made in college was "Dave".
Dave (pronounced 'Duh-ayeee-vuh') was a freshman, though he was older than me (maybe twenty) and infinitely cooler. Dave was from Hawaii and was the first person I had ever met who said ‘Dude’ and wasn't being ironic, or post-ironic, or pre-post-ironic... or whatever it was people were doing in 1993 New England as a backlash to the rampant "cool surfer"-ness of the 1980's. Outside from being a really interesting person to hang around because of cultural weirdness, Dave had three key things that made him, and his place, party central:
1)An Amazing Room - Dave lived in the old observatory with 5 other guys. It was the closest thing to off campus housing that could be had as a freshman.
2) He was Rich - Not 'well off', RICH. He never acted weird about money or tried to show off, but there was never a shortage of pizza or booze or, well, anything really at Dave's parties.
3) He liked to share. Allow me to break off for a moment to talk about this last one. I remember seeing "Point Break" when I was a kid and thinking: "What the fuck? No one acts this way. This kind of hippie “What’s mine is yours…” mentality died thanks to an overdose of Quaaludes and Cocaine in the late seventies."
All right, I admit it. I didn't think that. I was a little too naive, but it was that sentiment, albeit without the Copeland-ian turn of phrase that I so desperately want to imitate. Anyways, this guy actually acted like that, and wasn't trying to be a funny or make fun of you or come across as “the cool guy”. He was going to go off and have a good time and wanted you and everyone else he cared about to come have a good time with him.
A common night over there was like something out of a movie-set. The room was decorated in a sort of "hippie-chic", if you went to college in the early nineties you know what I mean; Lots of statues of Indian goddesses, tapestries on the walls covering crappy plaster jobs, lava lamps, incense, the whole nine yards. There averaged maybe a dozen people in the room at any given moment all drinking and smoking and having intensely serious conversations about Kirkegard, James Joyce, evolutionary theory and ‘Tom and Jerry’.
The first time I was there for one of these "not-a-party" get togethers I sat very still and tried not to draw attention to myself; I was 18, I was awkward, I didn't really have much of a tolerance or taste for booze. Add to all of my baggage the keenly notable fact that for the most part the people in this room were that one percent of the population that are a remarkable combination of incredibly talented artists, smart and very, very, pretty and it becomes clear why I was content to simply bask in their presence. Or at the very least try to not get thrown out.
Eventually someone produced a bottle of tequila. Good tequila, not Jose Cuervo, the kind of tequila you sipped. The kind of tequila that was brought back from Mexico by the senior anthropology student who had been there last term, and was most recently in the corner of the room surrounded by beautiful women and holding forth on the virtues and cultural impact of Tom and Jerry Cartoons.
Yeah, that kind of tequila.
I had a glass. It was a small rocks glass; maybe half full, with a couple of ice-cubes in it. I didn’t know how to drink; I just tried to look cool here amidst the pretty people and commenting on the “okay-ness” of the drink (I don’t think I knew what that meant, but I had read it somewhere, it didn’t matter, someone else went along with me so I was safe.) As I said before I didn’t have much of a tolerance so after a glass of this my head was reeling a bit. Dave, being ‘sub-zero’ cool, takes my slight problem sitting as the cue to produce a pair of drums, one of which he hands one to me and waits expectantly
.
"I can't play this.... I've got no idea what I'm doing." I think this was what came out of my mouth.
"Dude, you totally can... just feel the music." he said. Again, this is just how he talked. Especially when wasted.. Did I mention there somewhere along the line things had gone a bit around the bend? I'm not sure I noticed it that night myself, to tell you the truth, at least I don’t in retrospect because it was then that he started playing.
We were set off a little bit from the rest of the group, and he was playing softly. The din and animation of the conversation kept people from paying attention to us; at least this is what I thought to myself. I started to imitate him (I maintain that the only real gift I have is that of physical mimicry) and eventually to try different combinations from the movements that he had showed me. And just like that we were playing, drumming to some made up song in our heads (or livers as the case may in fact have been) and it was, as Dave would say, goooood. I guess we played for a while but I was in one of those zones where you attention only extends to the moment between the beginning and ending of an action; re-instantiating itself in time for the next action, but with no direct sense of continuity. I also guess we got pretty loud because the next thing I knew everyone in the room was staring at us... and they were smiling. When we finally stopped my hands were beat red and sore, and people in the room were grinning and nodding their heads in time with the last beats that we had played.
That experience, though never as intense, replayed itself across four years of college. It was never a regular thing, never something you could plan on happening, and sometimes I was the one nodding in time and grinning at some shy, awkward, eighteen year old playing a drum for the first time.
I have no idea where Dave is now, he graduated a year after me and like so many close friends from college we lost touch. Hopefully he’s still out there and still trying to "Be Good" and make sure everyone is having as good a time as he is.
After college I now not only continued to have the desire to hit things for musical purposes but I knew that I could, in some very basic way, make music when I did so. I found a posting for a drumming circle and went. This proved to be a mistake as it was all showboating in a very non-aggressive, planet-humping kind of way. It was made painfully clear that if you were not part of their little clique than you really weren’t welcome, and if you wanted to be part of it you would have to do some serious sucking up.
Then my friend R. talked me into coming to a Capoeira class with him at Brown University, and my desire to drum cam rushing back. I mean sure there was playing Capoeira, but there was hitting stuff too! Specifically there are three instruments (all percussion) that are used, the berimbau, a small hand drum and larger congo style drum. I never got the knack of really being able to rock out on the berimbau, I could hack out some of the more rudimentary songs but really, I was more about the drums there anyways. When I was playing them four years of learning how to handle a musical instrument while very deeply fucked up on various chemicals came rushing back, and even though I was, usually, stone cold sober I could still play and keep things interesting for people.
So now everyday I get off the bus across the street from the Tower records (nothing personal, but "fuck you" Sir Branson. I'll shop there but I just can’t get behind the name change) and walk by the cops, and the various fucked up students with my headphones providing a sound track to my commute. Lately Boston has been grooving (unknown to the City) to Karsh Kale, Bill Laswell and Jah Wobble; and I stop and get my coffee grinning at Aziz, who always seems to end up with me in his line, and nodding along with the tabla then continue down the road. There’s a “Daddy’s” music store that I pass, and I usually pause for a moment to look in the window at the drums they have there, and long a little for something that isn’t directly in my life anymore.
Maybe I'll pick on up someday; for starters I have no idea what kind of drum to pick up but even more certainly the lack of a community to play with holds me back. Maybe it was just one group of people and maybe there are some good groups out there but that one super-New-Age drumming really ruined my faith in being able to find another good environment.
What it really comes down to those is that in many ways I'm sure if I do pick up drum, and try to play around other people then that the shy, awkward, un-attractive eighteen-year-old version of myself will come to bear. And now I do know what I like to drink, have quite a tolerance and I don't smoke weed anymore. I'm more set in my ways, I’m judgmental and unsure of myself, and really am I willing to take the chances that there will be a Dave there to tell me to feel the music? I don’t know, all I can come up with is a conclusive “maybe”.
If there isn’t someone there than maybe I’ll just have to remember for myself.
(photo by Allison Perkel)
|
