The band

In high school, I played drums in a rock band. We were three girls (me, D and A) with old instruments, taking our best shot at "Smoke on the Water" in a scummy practice studio. It was great fun.

The building with the practice studio was completely ridiculous. It was a run down building with loft size spaces up five flights of stairs. There may have been an elevator, I don't remember. There were walls of rusty exposed pipes, and everything was covered in black paint. The restroom I recall vividly - because it wasn't really a room. It was an open, dark hallway with a dirty seat-less toilet smack in the center. A bare bulb swung from a cord about 15 feet above my head while I did my business (and you can be sure I did it really, really fast in that place).

The practice rooms themselves were pretty good, although I wouldn't go so far as to call them 'nice'. Most of them had usable drum kits (again, not 'nice'), they all had amps and mic stands, and for $10 an hour I could make as much noise as I wanted. I could do paradiddles for half an hour, badly, and nobody would mind. I could pretend to be Larry Mullen, Jr., or Ringo Starr, and it felt real.

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We started meeting there for our practice sessions. After some of our sessions, we would all go back to A's place (she was our guitarist) and hang out. We could talk about our insecurities, dream about the bands (and guys) we liked, and revel in how amazing it felt to take off our bras at day's end and just be sweaty chicks.

One time, we were walking back to A's place when our bassist D cornered me. She wanted to tell me her story. I couldn't believe her at first, because her life was so different than any life I'd known.

Her family hated her, she said. "They want to kick me out. I don't do drugs, but they keep accusing me." I asked her why and she said she didn't know. Then she said, "Sometimes I feel like I'm not myself. It's like I blackout, and have these missing times where I don't know what's happened for hours."

I thought about how well I knew her. Did I think she did drugs? Did I think they were falsely accusing her? Should I be the supportive friend? She was clearly upset, and when I didn't immediately say anything she said, "Never mind, forget it." and skipped ahead to talk to A.

Back at A's place, after sitting on the floor and chatting for a bit I saw that some of A's left arm was covered in little marks. They looked like scars. She saw me looking and said, "Sometimes I cut myself, y'know? No big deal."

D rolled up her sleeve. "Yeah, me too." they looked at each other and laughed. It blew my tiny teenage mind. I was scared, and confused. Who does that? Who hurts themselves on purpose, and then laughs about it?

I must have had a crazy look on my face, or how I acted the rest of that night threw them off, because a week later they kicked me out of the band.

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Now I wonder what happened to them, and where their lives took them.

Janet

Is an artist an expert? A discussion of High School and Drums

I've spent time trying to become an expert, and I really enjoy the feeling. In high school I wanted to become a drummer. I took the only lessons I could find, at a local music school, from a fantastic guy. His first lesson to me was 'forget Ringo, you need to listen to Steely Dan'. He taught me how to hold a stick, and how to listen to the drummer and not just the singer, he taught me how a drummer is supposed to be. I learned respect for the craft from him, and no matter where I go if I see a drummer playing I give him my full attention as a result of the time he spent teaching me.

I remember one day I was waiting for my lesson to start, and I had been sitting outside, tapping my left foot for half an hour. Just tapping, trying to build up my calf muscle so I could play the high-hat really, really well. A weak left foot means a weak sounding k-TSHHHH and I wanted it to be STRONG.

I had practice pads at home and a drumkit, but I couldn't play my drums at home because it bothered the neighbors. Something about living in an apartment building made it impossible no matter how many pillows I stuffed into the bass drum. So instead, I hoofed downtown to a practice space that was mostly used by the local bands. My memory of the place is a little hazy but I do recall that there wasn't really a bathroom so much as a urinal in the hallway. Yeah, eeew.

I paid a few dollars to the scummy guy at the counter to use the drumkit in one of the rooms (always a piece of junk, but at least it was LOUD) for an hour. The rooms were supposed to be soundproof, but when I wasn't pretending to be Larry Mullen, Jr. I could hear the metalheads banging away next door and the In-Living-Color wannabees around the corner. It was really, really great, and totally worth the time. I closed that door and I was a rockstar!

After a time (a year or so, I think) I stopped lessons with the music school, and started taking a class from a guy at NYU. He was really focused on technique, and we worked quite a bit on reading music and jazz drumming. One time he took me to the Bitter End to see him and his friend's band play. It was a great, great night full of weepy bluesy singing and loud times. And amps. Big, big amps.

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I really wanted to be good, I really wanted to be in a band. My first band was a group of girls that liked to play Deep Purple and compare each other's bra sizes. We called ourselves Crimson Tempest (yeah, Steely Dan influence). Oh and I was the small one, comparatively. :) We played a few practices together and sang and had fun. That was all until they kicked me out - I'm sure I deserved it since I've blocked the memory of why they did.

I was in another band (the Keys) with some close friends, and we really had a great time but mostly spent time writing songs. I still have them locked away in a box, friends! I can get them out anytime you want!

I tell myself that one day I'll play drums again. We'll see. I think I was close to being a really good drummer, and one day I'd like to be there again.

Have you ever gotten really good at something? Did you consider yourself an artist, or an expert?