The passing of a poet

The passing of an artist is always a sad occasion. I've been disturbed these past two days, learning about the untimely death of LeRoi Moore, one of the founding members of the Dave Matthews Band and a saxophone master of our generation. He was an artist,yes; but in his music, on his instrument, he was a poet writing out immaculate verse. Strange things, as they say, happen to good people. And LeRoi was a good man. It showed in his music.
His lines are embedded in my memory. I have been listening to the band's back catalogue and all the bootleg tapes that I had rabidly collected in my university years. LeRoi, along with drummer Carter Beauford and violinist Boyd Tinsley, firmly held up the jazz end of the jam sensations. It's a little ironic that the song that plays over and over again at this point is a LeRoi showpiece called Lie In Our Graves. He was only 46.

I embrace my desire to
feel the rhythm, to feel connected
enough to step aside and weep like a widow
to feel inspired, to fathom the power,
to witness the beauty, to bathe in the fountain,
to swing on the spiral
of our divinity and still be a human.

One concert, a hundred people

30.05.08

23.02.08
Eastwind Festival , February '08.

[We played Day 2 and had a blast, going on after Blend from Delhi and being followed by Bangalore metal maniacs Myndsnare. The stay was too short (blame my work) and we couldn't catch Avial. What we did catch was Pentagram and crazy dancing ensued, yet again.]

Well, long weekends are finally over and here I am at work on a tuesday afternoon ; blogging because. Just found a great blog http://stratoblogster.blogspot.com/
I am not a guitar player, but I still love reading up about a bluesman's axe. Probably more so this week as I borrowed a few of Allan's John Mayer DVDs (no reference to the "bluesman" part ; always tread with caution, I have learned) and given that I Can't Stop Myself (From Lovin' You) is in constant rotation on my inward radio station.
If I do have the dough one day, I will spend it on some vintage drums and cymbals. Have a nice palette, so to speak. Warm tones. Not necessarily jazz-tinged, but warm, nonetheless.

Return

Back in school, my best friend and me spent hours listening to music. While he always loved pop and had a great music system, which’d play everything from George Michael to the Pet Shop Boys to A-Ha, I was always interested in music that had 'real' drums — The Police, for one (even at that point of time, I liked a resonant, 'real' drum sound over the flat, reverb-fed 80s glam sound).
It wasn't until a year later that I actually mustered enough courage to tell my father that I was gonna spend Sunday mornings at "drum class", under this guy who was playing with a local rock band called Fahrenheit. They nailed a very cool (or it seemed at least at that point of time) version of Eat The Rich, and I was very impressed.
In any case, after that fateful first sitting, my Sundays weren't ever the same again.
I loved walking to the class, in Mandeville Gardens, from my Dover Lane residence. At 14, I was pretty sure that I'm gonna be playing drums for the rest of my life. There was a curious pity at my mates watching Mahabharata; I liked to imagine, as always, that I was gaining entry into this strange and mysterious world of rhythms, melodies and harmonies which fellow-mortals my age weren't even aware of. At least the non-musical ones at that.
The following year, just passing my Class X boards, I walked into Kochuda's (http://theorientexpress.tripod.com/) class. That was another big event as far as my drumming life goes.

The first-ever kit that I played on with the band was a see-through fiberglass kit, built by Bapi Music Company — otherwise known as 'BCM' — Calcutta.

'Em drummers

I just came across the Kumu Handmade Drums website (http://kumu.fi ). Beautiful drums, aren't they?

In the history section of the site, founder-owner Pekka Helanen talks of his childhood and how he started out playing drums. It gave me enough inspiration to take a peek back into mine and just blog about some serious fun we had, back in the last century.
I started getting interested in the drumset as an instrument at the age of 12 or 13 — relatively old in comparison to prodigies like Eloy Casagrande. Back in school, me and my best friend would spend hours listening to music.

I didn't have my own drumkit till I was about 21 years old. I started playing friom age 16. I have played in two semi-pro bands through college, for all three years, on someone else's drumkits. Yeah, that makes me a strong contender for WFPD ('World's Funkiest Pillow Drummer').
As a kid — why, even when I was about 16, I used to hang bedsheets and towels from the bed posts to act as 'cymbals' and had multiple cushions stacked up to act as 'hi-hats'.