[drumming diary] It's Easy Being Green

I finally got around to swapping the live kit and the practice kit. For those of you keeping score at home -- admittedly a tough prospect given how infrequently I've posted on the subject -- I had this notion that I would minimize the "footprint" of my main live kit by mounting the two toms off the kick drum. The hitch came when I found out that Premier didn't make a bass drum mount that fit my seven-year old Genista kit. Or my Signias.

So the new configuration was with two toms mounted off a cymbal stand to the left of the kick drum, as you're facing out. This worked really well in the rehearsal space with the Signia kit, with its 20" kick and relatively small mounting hardware. Which is saying a lot considering how bulky it actually is. Anyway, the point being it didn't work so well with the Genistas, so I had been playing that kit mostly as a four-piece.

Which was fine, but just not optimal. And something about it just bugged me. I don't know if it's a sense that the green Signia kit is mine and the red Genista kit, which I bought used from Steve, isn't. Or maybe it's a byproduct of gigging more than I'm practicing. If I were practicing more often, I'd want that to be my "primary" kit, but I'm barely practicing at all these days. Which is the subject of another post.

Anyway, last night on the Diver gig, it felt almost like coming home. I really enjoy playing these drums, and don't have quite the affinity for the others. I should be able to set the Genistas up better in the rehearsal space, where I'm maybe not so concerned about aesthetics.

The gig itself was a trip. No stage this time, so there were some boundary issues between band and crowd at various points, including a drunk woman completely crashing into Avi midway through "Spin" from Lifehouse. One of the guys from my soccer team enjoyed the heck out of the show, so say the least. He was a fuckin' riot. A couple of dodgy beginnings ("Ziggy Stardust" in particular), one or two songs learned on the fly and an actual addition of a tune that I had put on one of the oft-ignored "songs to learn" compilation CDs. At this rate, we may have another set of material in, oh, I don't know, 2007.