When we left off, I had destroyed my toy drums and was drawing pictures of ridiculously large drumsets & hanging them on my wall
My parents knew that I was ready to play an actual instrument so, on Xmas day 1981 at 13 years old, I was given REAL DRUMS!
The set consisted of a 20″ bass drum (w/pedal), a snare (w/stand), a 12″ mounted tom and a 14″ cymbal that was stamped “KRUT”

It was red sparkle and came from a department store like Sears, JC Penny and Montgomery Wards
They were made with cheap plywood shells and the tom arm was a crude ball joint with hex sided arms
I later learned that KRUT cymbals were nicknamed “KRUD” cymbals and the mickname was accurate
It also came with a woodblock, a cowbell, a pair of sticks and a pair of brushes (which I never even bothered to try to learn how to use)
Although this was only half a basic drumset, I was elated to have something that was a real instrument and not just a toy that I played pretend with
So what if I didn’t have a floor tom or Hi Hat or even a throne (I sat on a folding foot stool and later sat on my old toy box)
I would have to improvise, which is something I think helps an early creative person become a better artist
There is something to learning on the bare minimum of equipment so that you can’t hide behind all the clutter, although I have to say just a snare drum probably wouldn’t have been as exciting
I could beat out something that resembled what I was hearing on my basic kit and I started out with KISS because I had already memorized the music and it was relatively simple rock drums

There was another gift I got that year that wasn’t as expensive but was just as important
It was a tape of Rush’s “Exit Stage Left”, which expanded my musical palate exponentially
Peter Criss had a big drumset with all of the sizes of toms and a bunch of cymbals but this guy from Rush took it up a couple of notches, both in the size of the drumset and the proficiency of playing

Neil Peart didn’t just have more drums but he also had multiple sets of bells, woodblocks, chimes and even tubular orchestra bells
Not only that, but the rest of the band had multiple jobs as well
This appealed to the part of me that pretended to multi-task to Queen albums with toy drums, a toy air keyboard and a plastic toy guitar

I learned drums the way most kids do and that was by playing along to records
I can remember being humble and/or realistic about my abilities but I can’t remember being intimidated by the thought of trying to play at that level
This was different than any other thing I had tried in my life
I was good at sports but Texas football was clashing with my budding individualism by the time I reached Jr Hi
I had tried acoustic guitar lessons but I didn’t have the patience
I bought a generic Jazz bass with a Kalamazoo amp at Vikon Village for something like $25 but I didn’t take to it like the drums
The drums came easy to me
I’m not trying to be arrogant but I felt like I truly understood drums and my untrained muscle memory (along with lack of equipment) was the only true thing in my way

This is as good of a time as any to bring up what things were like in 1980
Most kids did not have musical instruments and by that I mean Rock instruments
KIds did not have electric guitars, basses or real drums
They had toys that were made of paper and plastic

There wasn’t a Guitar Center down the street and REAL instruments cost the kind of money that you couldn’t really understand as a kid
Someone’s older brother might have an instrument but none of my 13 year old friends had anything real
The only rock instruments most kids could have access to were the ones in departent store catalogues

This is earlier in the 70’s but the quality stayed pretty much the same

The guitars, basses and drums were still made of wood but most were far from professional quality, although some of the higher priced stuff does have its’ share of fans

I would sit for hours and study every line and curve of the guitars, basses and drums
I also spent the same amount of time and effort in the ladies lingerie section
Both went well with a KISS album in the background

Now that I was hearing Neil Peart use those little toms in a more musical way, I was trying to emulate some kind of way to play multiple notes, so I started to tune the top of my tom higher than the bottom
You could get a couple of different notes if you played the edges and the middle
The other thing I found out was that I could sing while I played so I started hooking up a Radio Shack mic through the tape deck on my stereo and used it as a PA
I also got Synsonic Drums for my Birthday

My Father built a bass drum and hi hat trigger from a diagram in Modern Drummer
Oh yeah, I also had a subscription to Modern Drummer Magazine and I was expanding my knowledge even more
But mostly I was looking at the dumsets and studying how people set them up
That was my setup for a year or so until my it grew bigger one day

My Father had been paying attention to how much time I was spending playing the drums so he found a Blue Sparkle 5 piece in the newspaper and he took me to buy it
This set had a bass drum, 2 toms and a floor tom with 1 cheap cymbal with a stand, and a Hi-Hat with a stand
My drumset now had 2 bass drums, 3 mounted toms, a floor tom and two snares
I immediately took the bottom off one of the snares and turned it into a timbale-like tom that I used for higher notes
I wish there was a picture to show you but I never took one
This is also a point where I had to figure out how I was going to set up my drums

I can remember older people talking about left handed kids being forced to learn everything right handed but my generation didn’t seem to have to deal with it
I had lefty scissors in school and wrote left handed
I and instinctively used my left foot as the bass drum pedal with the 3 piece so I figured that I would just set everything up as a mirror of a right handed set
I still crossed over my body with my left hand to operate the hi hat with my right foot but, in retrospect, I wished that I had known about open handed drumming
No one in the pictures I saw played open handed so I just assumed a lefty had to play a backwards kit
The sizes and colors went (from right to left) 14″ red sparkle converted snare/timbale on a snare stand, 12″ red sparkle tom on top of red sparkle 20″ bass drum, a 12″ and either a 13″ or 14″ blue sparkle tom on top of a 20″ blue sparkle bass drum ending with a 16″ blue sparkle floor tom
As a side note, I never bothered to develop much of an independent Hi-Hat technique with my foot because I had a double bass kit the same moment
Most drummers develop some kind of accenting ability to chick their Hi-Hats together as they play the ride but what’s a kid to do when he suddenly has TWO bass drums?!?!

The electric Jazz bass copy got traded for an “SG” shaped electric guitar
I had also just discovered Kraftwerk’s “Computer World” and I was playing along to it on the Synsonic Drums
Singing and drumming were the things that came easiest to me so those were the things I concentrated on
My set grew one more time with the sparkle kit and that was my first REAL cymbal

The kinds of cymbals that come with budget drumsets are stamped out of resonant sheet metal and tended to sound pretty one dimensional
I can remember having to be a bit gentle with my Hi-Hats because if you chicked them together with your foot too hard, the cymbals would bend inside out
At 15 I got my very first real cymbal and it was a pretty expensive one too
By now, I had ditched Peter Criss (although his posters were still on my walls) and was emulating Neil Peart
I already had crashes and a hi hat but didn’t have a ride cymbal so I got a Zildjian 22″ Ping Ride just like the one Neil Peart used and a Tama boom stand to mount it

This was also the point where I started bringing friends over to jam
Coming up 1984 and THE WHITE PEARL KIT