Once my stepfather had paid his dues on a small boat off the coast of Brittany trying to catch a living, we came back to my little village close to Switzerland. It was a very small and charming place where you had the lower part and the higher part of the community divided with one bridge climbing over a cute but furious river complete with a waterfall feeding an abandoned watermill.
We remained broke but with a grand standing as the house was one of those oddities sheltering 9 bedrooms and one toilet.
I took a few drum lessons with a friend of the family who wasn’t equipped at all to provide them. He was a very sweet fellow and a great drummer to boot but with no ideas on how to pass on his knowledge. Strike 0: I didn’t learn zip. It did sharpen my appetite though. On the rare occasion I would see a band, I would contemplate with what I was sure to be an expert eye the drum kit set up on stage, and once the guy started to play I would spy his every move. It was more of a drooling exercise than anything else since I didn’t even possess a pair of sticks. If I wanted to play, I would grab some wooden spoon from the kitchen, a few pots from the same kitchen and whip myself into an obnoxious frenzy for a few minutes. I called that practice. I was already a funny man.
In passing, I advise anyone interested in drumming to use the same method because I am, to this day, convince that you find the best percussion instruments in a kitchen.
I had to wait our second trip to Brittany to get my first drum kit. I was sixteen years old at the time. My parents in the meantime, were on more solid ground financially and had merely suggested to buy an instrument if I wanted to pursue my hobby, and, maybe, who knows? transform it into a job someday. Castles in Spain if ever, nonetheless I didn’t let that frying pan get cold and as soon as they were done talking I was combing the local ads to find, drum roll, please: the best drum kit in the world.
I landed on a Stephenson. What is a Stephenson, you might ask? Oh, boy, we are talking about the best looking, sweetest drum kit you have ever laid eyes on. Stephenson, at the time, claimed to be an under-brand of an under-brand of Tama, or was it Pearl? Anyway, I didn’t doubt one second the pedigree of the beast because it looked and sounded just like a drum kit. Anyway, even if history has swallowed whole the poor instrument, it will live in my memory until the day I die. It sounds like some sort of oath because that’s what the young man I was at the time whispered anytime he grabbed his stick to bash the crap out of it. Us drummer are a rough kind.
