Band Camp

Upon graduating from high school, I made up my mind to give up on continuing to play the drums. Bottom line; I wasn’t very good. Then my drum instructor talked me into trying out for the marching band at the university I was headed to in the fall. He said all I needed to do was learn the rudiments.

I spent the summer learning the rudiments. They consist of 40 (actually less since many of them are redundant) basic sticking combinations from which modern drum playing is derived. They have nifty names, many of which are onomatopoeic, like paradiddle, flam and ratamacue.

Auditions for the marching band drum line were held the Monday before school started. If you passed the audition, you got to stay for the week and rehearse. When I got there, we were quickly reassured that everyone would most likely pass, and that the audition was mainly to determine which instrument you would play. I only wanted to play the snare drum. Not only does it play the most prominent role in the drum line, it is also the lightest instrument, except for the cymbals, which is an important consideration since you have to march around with them for hours at a time. Of the twenty-two people auditioning, approximately fifteen wanted to play the snare drum. I know because I took an informal poll. There were six snare drums.

The two guys who would be auditioning us quickly established that they were intimidatingly incredible drummers and veterans of drum corps, a highly competitive marching organization. Eric, a Ken doll look-alike who would be our drum instructor for the semester, auditioned us one at a time while his friend taught the rest of us cadences (highly syncopated drum parts). I auditioned early. Alone in a room with Eric and a snare drum, he asked me to play paradiddles, which I did. He then named off a bunch of other rudiments and I played them all. That was it. I was relieved and elated. Upon returning to the fold, Eric’s friend played a rhythmic pattern and asked if anyone could play it back. I confidently raised my hand and proceeded to play something that was not even remotely similar to what he had played. Some cringed, others guffawed- I wanted to die.

While the auditions continued, Eric’s friend had us switch between the instruments, which included six snares, five or six basses, three quints (five small toms) and four cymbals. By the time the auditions were over, I was holding the cymbals. The only thing lower than the cymbals was the pit, which is where they threw the mallet players (who didn’t need to audition at all since there were only two of them) and the percussive sound effects.

Eric conferred only briefly with his friend before announcing the results: I made the snare line.

I was the only freshman in the snare line; the other five had been in the snare line the previous year or longer. They immediately decided that we were going to hold the sticks traditional grip. I didn’t know how to play traditional grip. They told me I’d better figure it out fast. We began by sight-reading some sloppily hand-written parts we were to learn. They could sight-read the parts in real time. I could barely read the parts at all. I assumed the others already knew the parts, having played them the year prior. When I asked one of them if this was the case, he scoffed and shared my ignorance with the others so they could have a good laugh.

The whole premise of drum corps style drumming is that you combine all the rudiments in the most difficult ways possible and play them as loud as you can just to prove your playing prowess. In addition, drum corps players have invented all kinds of new sticking combinations, called contemporary rudiments. The snare heads are made of Kevlar, the same material used to make bullet-proof vests, and are tuned to sound like amplified table tops. It’s a very macho and masochistic way of playing the drums. Unfortunately, Eric and the rest of the snare line balanced this by sadistically making my existence as painful as possible. They ridiculed my lack of skills. Eric apologized to the others in front of me for letting me play the snare, explaining that he had let me in only because I knew the names of the rudiments. He would often ask me to stop playing with the others so he could hear how it was supposed to sound, and when I did play he’d shake his head in disappointment in the exact same manner that my junior high basketball coach had shook his head at me.

I suspect they wanted to intimidate me into quitting. Instead, I became singularly determined. The week consisted of at least eight hours of group practice every day. The drum line remained mostly segregated from the rest of the band, and we practiced longer than they did. The drum line usually divided up into sections, and the snare line scheduled extra practices in addition to the drum line practices. In the evenings, while the rest of the marching band went to parties in which they got drunk and tried to figure out how to get in each other’s pants, I went back to my dorm room and practiced some more. I bought a pack of band-aids to put over the blisters.

Roy Bailey, a veteran quint player, took me under his arm. He encouraged me, putting things in perspective by telling me to always ignore opposition and reminding me that drumming was supposed to be fun. Roy had a bunch of videos of Buddy Rich playing the drums using traditional grip, and I taught myself how to play traditional grip by watching those videos. One night Roy, a couple bass drum players and I got together and I learned how to play the card game Spades. Little did I know that much of my first year of college would be spent with Roy; drumming, playing Spades and listening to jazz.

The week mercifully came to an end. I called my mom, and when she answered the phone a terrible thing happened: I started crying uncontrollably. How embarrassing. I realized that a new chapter in my life had begun, and I’d better buck up if I were to survive it.

Zebraman

Japanese film director Takashi Miike gets it. The attraction of the concept of the superhero is the premise that you can become someone else, and that that alter ego is way cooler than you are in real life. Well, hopefully. If your superhero secret identity is Zebraman, you might be hard-pressed to believe that you can be less of a loser than your public self.

Zebraman (2004 but only now being released in the US) is probably the greatest superhero movie ever made. I consider myself somewhat of an expert on the subject, having spent my childhood creating super powers for myself, my sister and my imaginary friends and enemies while devouring Marvel comic books.

Zebraman is a satire, but it’s also legitimate or deadpan or whatever the antonym of satire is. It is not like Batman: The Movie (1966), where intentionally bad acting is combined with intentionally bad special effects and an intentionally horrible plot to successfully amuse us. It is also not like Batman Begins (2005), a dark and sober but gripping epic about a man on a mission to become a superhero. It is kind of an indescribable gestalt of both ideas minus Bruce Wayne, thankfully. Instead of a rich and talented businessman and ladykiller, Shin’ichi (Sho Aikawa) is an inept schoolteacher disrespected not only by his students, but also by his wife and children. Alone at night, Shin’ichi sews himself a costume unimaginatively modeled after his favorite childhood television show, a flop that was cancelled after seven episodes. Realizing the absurdity of an adult dressing up like a Zebra, Shin’ichi almost gives up on his dream, but then is encouraged by Asano (?), a new student who has discovered the Zebraman television show on the web. Meanwhile, aliens have landed in Shin’ichi’s town, and Zebraman just might be the only one who can save the world from being taken over by them….

Zebraman is far from the most impressive superhero ever conceived, but he has two things going for him: heart and Zebranurse (Kyoka Suzuki), who is quite probably the most advantageous sidekick of all time, even if she does only appear in a dream sequence.

Aztecs and Optimistic Fear

The Aztecs believed that if they didn’t strengthen Huitzilopochtli, their god of sun and war, by nourishing him with human blood, the world would end after a 52 year cycle. The prospect of the world coming to an end is a frightening one; scary enough to prevent the Aztecs from testing this theory, which they could have easily done by testing their gods and doing away with human sacrifices to see what happened. It took the destruction of Aztec culture at the hands of Spanish warriors led by Cortez to end their religious practices. This occurred in 1521, exactly at the end of a 52 year cycle according to the Aztec calendar.

Aztec religion was polytheistic, and they recognized many gods that they discovered from other cultures. The existence of anything is impossible to prove, but especially the existence of a god, which exists in a dimension or reality apart from our own. The Aztecs understood this, so they hedged their bets by worshipping (seemingly) every god they came across, including the gods and saints of Catholicism. There are thousands of gods in hundreds of cultures, and any one of them, including Huitzilopochtli, could truly exist as far as any human knows. The logic of believing in every god from every culture far surpasses the short-sightedness of Pascal’s wager, which does not consider the possibility that a god other than the god of Christianity can exist.

Pascal’s wager does demonstrate that the fear of the existence of a god is a major incentive to do whatever that god asks to avoid being punished by it. The success of a religion relies on its ability to inflict fear deep enough to prevent humans from opposing it. The all-powerful premise of monotheism has a built-in intimidation factor of literally infinite proportions. The Jewish god condones genocide and the annihilation of all who disobey his orders. The Christian god goes even further, torturing for eternity all who refuse to acknowledge his existence. Islam, building on the ideas of Judaism and Christianity, is unabashed in regard to the fierceness of god. The vivid depictions of punishment in hell in the Qu’ran surpass the more flippant references found in the Christian New Testament.

The promise of a reward for obedience seems weak in comparison to punishment. Let’s face it, the Christian promise of living for eternity in some sterile environment telling some megalomaniac how great he is isn’t anything most people are going to go out of their way to attain. However, it is demonstrable that rewarding behavior at random unpredictable intervals is extremely effective. A fundamental aspect of animal flourishment seems to be its inbuilt fascination but fundamental misunderstanding of the laws of probability. We’re so impressed with the fact that something perceived as good happens every so often, it completely eludes us that the occurrence is inevitable. Thus, miracles, or unexplained phenomena perceived as being positive or beneficial, are a major aspect of every religion. Many Christians laughably but optimistically claim they prefer Christianity to other religions because the god of Christianity is so loving, despite all his atrocities. Our illogical elation at the fact that one person survives a disaster despite the fact that many others were killed by it, for instance, is an instinctual trait attributing to our continued existence. If we were to succumb to the hopelessness and absurdity of existence, our depression would prevent us from having any reason to continue to struggle to survive. The will to live is fundamental to continued life; any being not possessing it would quickly become extinct. In other words, delusion (a.k.a. hope and blind faith) is a coping mechanism essential to our continued being.

It turns out, then, that optimism coupled with fear is the ultimate motivator. Extreme logic seems dangerous to humanity’s very existence, since it eschews desire. (Take that, Plato!) Therefore, given my pessimistic view of gods and my fear of wasting my life away trying to appease them, I will be perfectly content in deluding myself with the belief that they do not exist.

Stranger Than Paradise

Must entertainment be a distraction from reality? Can entertainment be found in reality? These are the questions posed by Stranger Than Paradise (1984), written and directed by Jim Jarmusch. The movie begins in a claustrophobic apartment in New York City, where Willie (John Lurie), a small-time gambler seemingly annoyed by existence itself, finds out his cousin Eva (Eszter Balint) has to stay with him for ten days. His family is from Hungary, and his real name is Bela, a fact Willie has presumably spent a long time trying to forget.

Eva is a cute, clever and aware girl with a mischievous undertone. Willie, like the movie itself, goes to great pains to make sure that it’s understood that life in America is as miserable as he is. Just when Willie and Eva start getting used to each other (“It’s really too formal to say you want to vacuum the floor…” “Oh, what do you say?” “Well you say, um, ‘I want to choke the alligator...’”), the ten days come to an end and Eva goes to stay with Aunt Lotte (Cecillia Stark) in Cleveland.

Willie and Eddie (Richard Edson), probably his only friend although Willie might not even concede that much, grift some money and decide to borrow a car and, for lack of a better place to go, drive to Cleveland. There, they find Eva restlessly working at a burger joint. It turns out Cleveland sucks as much as New York City (“While we’re in Cleveland, Willie, why don’t we see the Cavaliers?” “Oh, they have a terrible team.”). Willie, Eddie and Eva take off to Florida (“Florida? It’s beautiful…They got pelicans down there and flamingos- all those weird birds.” “You been there?” “No…”).

While the boys spend their days at the racetrack, all Eva sees of Florida is a cramped motel (“This looks familiar.”). Then Eva lucks into what, to echo the satirical tone of this movie, is probably one of the more likely ways to get rich in this country. The movie ends as Willie’s worst nightmare is about to come true….

The cinematography and dialogue are both outstanding, not for any technical wizardry but for their stark believability. The clever humor is rooted deep in interpersonal verbal and non-verbal communication. Especially poignant is the scene where Willie and Eddie sit between Eva and her date Billy (Danny Rosen) as they watch a kung-fu movie. They seem to find the movie they are watching a bore, daring us to think the same about the movie they are in. Speaking of which, I’m going to have to go get the Criterion Collection DVD, as it has a bonus disc containing Permanent Vacation, Jarmusch’s first movie.

Slavery

If you were to walk from Northern Europe south to the Equator, taking pictures of native populations as you went, you would find, upon lining up the pictures, that skin complexion would generally gradually move from pale to dark. There would be no obvious break where skin tone suddenly jumped from lighter to darker. That there are white people and black people is totally a myth. You cannot reduce people to white and black any more than you can reduce the rainbow to red and violet.

Slavery has been around on every continent since the beginning of human history. Slavery in the United States was abolished, at least on paper, in 1865. Importing of slaves to America was banned in 1808. Before that time, most slaves came from Africa, followed by Ireland (Irish Catholics) and Scotland (Highlanders). Native Americans were kept as slaves in California until 1967, but were generally exported as slaves to other countries instead of being kept as slaves here. Native Americans were undesirable as slaves mostly because so many of them died from illnesses introduced from Europe.

In the beginning, American slaves came mostly from Africa not because of their skin tone, but because the African slave trade was already so well established; slaves having been a major commodity throughout Africa for centuries. Here is how people typically got to America from Africa: Coastal African tribes and kingdoms such as Yoruba and Dahomey raided other African tribes living further inland, capturing anybody they could and taking them back to the coast. There, the captives were traded to mostly British, Dutch, Spanish, Portuguese, French and, later, Brazilian traders, who took them to America, where they were sold into slavery. During this same time, Europeans, mostly those living along the Mediterranean in Italy, Spain and Portugal but also from France, England, the Netherlands, Ireland and even Iceland and North America, were being captured by Barbary pirates and sold into slavery, largely in Algeria, Morocco and throughout the Ottoman Empire. Males and females were bought in equal numbers by Americans in order for the slaves to be a “self-reproducing labor force.” Lighter-skinned slaves were generally treated better and given less physical jobs than darker-skinned slaves.


“If you know your history, then you would know where you coming from.” – Bob Marley, a Jamaican whose father was of English descent and whose mother was of African descent.

Competition

While playing tennis with my girlfriend last weekend, a man and his approximately 7 year old son arrived and went to the court next to us. For the next hour or so, the father competed against the kid, trying to defeat him both physically and emotionally.

When they arrived, the dad told the kid where to stand and how to hold and swing the racket. Then he went to the other side of the net and smashed a forehand past the kid, who tried in vain to hit it. The dad corrected the angle of the kid’s racket and explained to him what he had done wrong before knocking another one past him. The kid fetched the ball and tried for about ten swings to hit it over the net before the dad advised him to just throw it over.

The dad eased up and gave the kid some slow volleys, but every third shot or so he’d hit a winner or put some crazy spin on the ball. Eventually, the dad decided to try some serves, again telling the kid where to stand before smacking the ball for an ace.

….

I remembered how much fun I used to have playing football with my peers at recess. I considered myself a pretty good receiver, an average runner and a horrible quarterback. I was comfortable with that. Catching the ball was the most fun part anyway. Then one day, in fifth or sixth grade, the PE teacher joined us. He was the quarterback. The ball was hiked. I ran to the end zone and stood there all alone. He saw me but threw to someone else. I went back to the huddle and exclaimed that I had been wide open. He told me that I couldn’t just stand there- I had to move around. I knew he was lying and that really he just didn’t want to throw to me because he didn’t think I could catch.

Around that same time, I went to a basketball camp. I had never played basketball in my life- I had never tried to dribble, had never tried to shoot and had no idea what the rules were. The first day, the teacher tried to show me how to dribble. Soon, he was shaking his head and mocking me, telling me his daughter could dribble better than that when she was six.

Baseball was the sport I liked most. My dad taught me how to pitch (although he was incorrect in showing me how to grip the ball), and I spent hours practicing at a target he had painted. Unfortunately, I had no idea what the rules to baseball were. I was in Little League for three years, and nobody ever bothered to tell me what they were. Nobody told me where the ball should make contact with the bat, how to bunt or what the heck they were talking about when they yelled “Force at every base!”

In Junior High, I learned how bad I was at sports. In football, I was the guy who ran the plays out to the quarterback from the sidelines. We always ran the same play, the one that took the ball furthest away from wherever I was, and we always lost. In basketball, I was the kid who, every time I got the ball, everyone in the stands would yell “shoot” and laugh. I quit playing sports. I quit watching sports. I didn’t like anybody who liked sports, except for Charlie Husack, the most affable teammate I’ve ever met.

It wasn’t until I got out of high school that I realized not only did I like sports, I wasn’t really that bad at most of them compared to a lot of other people. It hadn’t occurred to me that bad coaching, going through puberty, jeering crowds and always wearing over-sized uniforms and shoes were major factors in my poor performance.

….

I got really annoyed by the dad and his boy. I hoped the kid noticed that my girlfriend and I weren’t competing; that we were just playing for fun. But I wasn’t having any fun. I wanted to switch places with the kid so the dad could compete against someone more his age. Even if I couldn’t beat him, which I wanted very much to do, at least I’d make him have to earn it.

I asked my girlfriend why she thought the dad had to prove he was better than the son. She retorted by asking me why I thought I was better than the dad. I suddenly remembered a time a few years back, playing tennis with an ex who had rarely played before, when a gentleman on the sidelines advised me to stop trying to hit the ball so hard to give us both a better chance of playing longer volleys and having a more enjoyable time. Although slightly chagrined, I had followed his advice- and he was right.

Perhaps while we’re here, we should enjoy each other instead of trying to worry about who’s better than who. It’s a lesson I’m far from learning. It’s great to push ourselves to be the best we can be, but who we are cannot be judged by or in comparison to anybody else. Perhaps maybe someday I’ll pick up a basketball again….

Bourbon

Bourbon is an American whiskey that is made from at least 51% corn, and usually includes wheat and/or rye and malted barley. Most bourbon is “straight,” which means it has been aged for at least two years, but probably longer. Kentucky is regarded as “the place” for bourbon to come from.

Bourbon is generally smoother than Irish whiskey and not smoky like Scotch whisky (The Scots drop the “e”). I opine that bourbon is best appreciated neat (straight), on the rocks or in hot water or herbal tea. Drink bourbon like wine: sniff it, sip it, savor it, swallow it. Don’t throw it down your throat. My understanding of the characteristics of bourbon has greatly benefited from having participated in several blind bourbon taste tests. Below are some observations on various bourbon brands (prices are more or less current for fifths in Oregon):

Jim Beam and Jack Daniel’s are horrible. Jack actually gives me an instant headache. If these are the only bourbons you’ve ever tried, you have no idea what bourbon is supposed to taste like. Another undrinkable bourbon is Elijah Craig.

My guess is that the biggest bourbon distillery is Jim Beam. Knob Creek is medium shelf Jim Beam. It is not that good, always scoring very poor in blind tests, and certainly overpriced at $35 a bottle. Booker’s, Baker’s and Basil Hayden’s are all top shelf Jim Beam. I’ve only had Basil Hayden’s, and it is an interesting blend of smooth yet strong, but not worth the hefty $45 price tag. Jim Beam also makes Old Crow, Old Taylor, Jacob’s Well and Old Grand-Dad. Of these, I’ve only tried Old Grand-Dad, which isn't very good.

Evan Williams is the “well” bourbon in a lot of bars. Just kinda blah. The cheapest bourbon I have found that I like is W.L. Weller Special Reserve. It is slightly harsh and a little thin, but is a great deal at 17 bucks. It is certainly better than other bourbons I have tried in its price range, which includes Rebel Yell, Old Forester, Dickel and Ezra Brooks. I have not had Old Charter, but my girlfriend could not differentiate it from Maker’s Mark in a blind test.

Called “Dirty Bird” on the street, the “classic” Wild Turkey is 101 Proof (50.5% alcohol), whereas most bourbons are around 90 Proof (45% alcohol). It has a surprisingly good, woody flavor. Wild Turkey makes several varieties of bourbon, but they all taste very similar. On a side-note, their over-proof rye whiskey (whiskey that is at least 51% rye, although Canadian whiskey is also often confusingly called rye whiskey) is just as good at the same price, although my favorite rye whiskey is easily Sazerac, with a very distinctive rye flavor that makes it worth the $30 price tag.

The best bourbon for its price is Buffalo Trace. At just over $20 a bottle, this is the bourbon I generally buy. It is very smooth, with a great flavor (perhaps a little thin) and no bitter after-taste. Blind tests have continuously demonstrated that Buffalo Trace could be the best bourbon for under $40 a bottle.

Maker’s Mark, which runs $25 a bottle, is very popular these days, and rightfully so. It has a very full flavor, with a slightly harsh aftertaste. Maker’s sets the bar for bourbon, and no blind test should be without it, but participants are always surprised that it’s actually not as smooth as they think. Maker’s with hot water, a lemon slice, some cloves and grated ginger is a great hot beverage. Or just have it with Peppermint or Ginger tea. There’s a restaurant/bar called Savoy’s by my house that makes a killer Maker’s Manhattan. (Purists will tell you a Manhattan is supposed to use rye whiskey, not bourbon, as well as sweet vermouth, Angostura bitters and a cherry.) I’ve tried making Manhattans but with only limited success.

I have tried several $25-$35 bourbons, but it’s hard to justify the price. At $35, Woodford Reserve is too sweet for me. At $27, Corner Creek and Rip Van Winkle are average. At $30, Eagle Rare is delicious, full and smooth, perhaps more like what people think Maker’s tastes like (although I’ve never compared the two side by side). The fad $25 bourbon (at least in Oregon) right now is Bulleit. Don’t believe the hype. It is super-sweet, like brandy (distilled wine), and thin. If I am looking for a sweet after-dinner style drink, I’d much rather drink Hennessy, a Cognac (which is what brandy is called when it’s made in the Cognac region of France).

The greatest bourbon ever made is possibly Blanton’s. It is over $40 a bottle, so I can only afford to buy it once a year. For some reason, I keep an empty bottle on display in my bedroom. Smooooooth. Don’t insult this drink by adding anything to it, other than one ice cube if you must.

Walden

Henry David Thoreau conducted a two year experiment on Walden Pond. The goal of the experiment was not to live in isolation, as most believe, but to attempt to determine the difference between the necessary and the desired, and how much he could get from how little. He wanted to whittle life down to its simplest form. He wanted to find out what he was and wasn’t capable of. He wanted to know how much material he could get for how little pay, how much beauty he could find in the most mundane, how much knowledge he could gain from the most trivial, how much enjoyment he could get from the most tedious.

Solitude was part of the experiment, and Thoreau found much wisdom and enjoyment in solitude. But Thoreau also found much in his fellow man. Thoreau did not live in isolation; he walked into town almost every day and had frequent visitors. He sought a balance between solitude and the company of others, and a comfortable distance between himself and the opinions of others.

Although I know the idea of actually reading a book instead of spewing your thoughts about it is pretty outlandish, for a much more thorough understanding of this topic I recommend reading Walden, by Henry David Thoreau.

Education

What is the goal of the American free public education system? It is certainly not to help children become healthy, competent and capable adults. Rather, it is to teach us to respect authority, conformity, follow instructions and take direction.

Why? Because the corporations that rose during the Great Depression and have run this country since World War II rely on our ignorance and dependence. If we were taught basic survival skills such as sewing, carpentry, metalworking, plant and mineral identification, food preparation, combat, first aid, agriculture and livestock raising, not only would we not need to rely on corporations to provide us with these services, we would also not need to work for those corporations doing menial tasks for just enough pay to buy those services from them. If we were taught basic history such as government, actual world history, religious origins, fine arts history, philosophy and anthropology we would be able to recognize we live in a feudal system where money (and God) is a tool designed solely to confuse us into volunteer slavery, with bonuses proportional to the amount of stress we allow them to inflict, while being placated by a lottery which promises the possibility of escape. And if we were taught basic social skills such as politics, logic and reasoning, accounting, rhetoric, and foreign languages we would have the means to overthrow these powers that own us.

One advantage of our country having been founded by Protestants is that we are taught to read. Before Martin Luther, the ruling Catholic Church only taught the clergy how to read, guaranteeing no possibility of being self-informed. Unfortunately, most are too unmotivated to become self-informed, especially while being worn down by long work hours and then distracted by the mass media and entertainment owned by the corporations, which unsurprisingly have the frequent theme of reminding us that it is possible to win the lottery- while never giving us the odds. The few that do learn how this country operates and demonstrate effectiveness in attempting to do something about it are simply assassinated.

I am aware of accounts that have been shut down after making postings like these….

Drums Unlimited

Max Roach: January 10, 1924- August 16, 2007

It was 1993. My drum instructor, Woody Smith, had been pestering me to go out and buy some jazz albums. I didn’t understand why. I had been playing in the school jazz band since I was in seventh grade. I knew the swing ride cymbal pattern (splang, splang-a-lang) and could consistently close the hi-hat on the 2 and 4. What else was there?

One day I found myself in a store with a small tape section and bought two cassettes out of the “Jazz” section that had pictures of drummers on the cover. I played the first tape during the drive home from the store. It was a 1970’s recording of Buddy Rich. I had actually heard of Buddy Rich. The music was exactly what I had expected to hear. Pompous noodling. I felt vindicated.

I played the second tape when I got home. It was all marbled and muddy and slow. I quickly pushed the eject button but was relieved to find the tape was not being eaten. Then I was confused. Was it supposed to sound like that? It did sound pretty cool, like a slow motion freight train. I listened to all of one side. I liked it, but surely something was wrong with the cassette.

After a couple weeks, I got around to returning the cassette. I told the clerk the tape sounded weird. He asked whether the music was weird or if the tape was actually broken. I kind of stammered for a bit, honestly not knowing the answer. Finally, he put it on and instantly recognized it had been demagnetized. I was relieved. I really just wanted a refund but the clerk preferred for me to exchange it with another copy of the same tape so I did. That night I put the new copy into the tape player and lay down on my bed.

Boom, chak-a-chak-a boom chick, boom chick. Boom, chaka-a-chak-a boom chick. I was excited that the tape began with a drum solo. Then, blup-a-blup-a-diddle-diddle-ba-ba- what was that? I grabbed the tape case as I continued listening. “The Drum Also Waltzes.” This didn’t sound like what I knew as jazz or a waltz, and I had definitely never heard a drummer like this before. I had figured a tape titled Drums Unlimited sounded promising, but this guy Max Roach was amazing. By the end of the song I had tears in my eyes. By the end of side one, I was overcome with shame and embarrassment for having pretended to know how to drum. By the end of side two, I had realized the idea that only religious music could be sacred was completely untrue. I flipped the tape over and started it again….

I consider hearing Max Roach’s Drums Unlimited the most pivotal moment of my life.