Look at yer man.

Note: I apologise in advance to the ladies present that all of the anthropomorphising of things here are male based. I’m just a man and, as such, not all that smart.

Characters, they’re all characters I tell you.

   Have you ever looked at your drums and thought, I know you. Maybe not even your own drums. Just a set of drums, a friend’s kit, a kit sitting onstage before the slaughter, a picture in a magazine and you think, I know who you are.

You have, haven’t you?

I see you......

   Like people, like most animals too really (Except for Hagfish, but that’s a story for another day) drums seem to have their own characters, their leanings. A certain innate…...thing. Right? Stay with me.

   Like Pearl. You know Pearl. The elder statesman. He’s reliable, a solid friend who likely helped raise most of us. He’s dependable, and while some might consider him boring, they underestimate the rigid dedication to mastery that simmers beneath. The resolve. He was in a war somewhere, probably. He’s secretly a fifth dan black belt in Bushido. He has artist friends but you’ve likely never heard of them if you were born after 1985. Some people chuckle because his idea of reinvention is taking an old sweater out the closet and putting on some shiny new cufflinks. But hey, that sweater always worked.

Continue to work it old man

   How about DW though, at the other end of the scale. Flashy. Youthful still even though he’s been around for a while. He definitely learned how to play himself at church (Ahem). I’m pretty sure he’s heading off on a stadium tour soon, something R&B based, which will be punctuated by clinic events. I’m also pretty sure his best friend is called Roland. But for all that, he’s kinda closed. Safe. A pink muscle car with airbags. He doesn’t like things too freaky and largely avoids talking about the past. Maybe it was the church upbringing. The man can certainly wear a suit mind you…

As ever, just hanging around looking a bit swish

   Have you met Tama? Bloody long hair. I’m not sure what is up with his music collection but it seems to be mostly murder based hell filth. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s nice to change it up. All Tama’s artist friends are either Japanese art noise superstars or that Swedish guy who hangs around screaming about dragons. He’s sneaky, though, and occasionally very charming. He might pop over with a new recipe he’s been trying and you’ll be genuinely shocked that something so delicate could have been born from those scarred, gnarled hands. If he’d just, please, stop talking about bpm though….

But how does he manage such delicate pastry.....?

   What about yer man Mapex? I’m not entirely sure why, because I’m pretty sure he’s a snappy young Taiwanese chap, but I’m fairly confident he’s wearing wellies. He’s an excitable sort, the word overzealous has been used, but you can’t fault his enthusiasm. He thinks himself rather loud, but sometimes it’s easy to forget he even lives here. And he’s been in Drumshanbo for ages. He does have a sort of everyman vibe to him, which is probably the wellies.

Wellies are just out of shot.

   You certainly know uncle Ludwig well. You’ve seen him on TV, and someone you know definitely has an uncle just like him. Brash fella from across the pond. You’ve never seen him in any footwear other than snakeskin cowboy boots, which is just weird cause he seems to live in Nobber now. And that moustache. That’s bravery. I think. You can’t fault his occasional bouts of generosity but I’m pretty sure that’s because, secretly, he’s totally skint. It’s entirely possible that he is ashamed of his secret love of tickles, and makes up for it with all the shouting.

He might still be angry cause they used to call him Jellybean in college.

   Old man Gretsch. He’s sittin’ out on the porch, rockin’ chair making dull sounds on the aged deck of his ancestral home, wreathed in pipe smoke. He’s telling us a story………..he speaks……quite slowly. 

“There was a time……..back yonder……..when my family……….invented the Huckleberry. Now…….not many folks……..that I know…….ever even used the Huckleberry……..for its intended purposes. But no matter………..once the estate……was truly established…….I had time…….and lots of it……..to learn the guitar. That became…….my second love…….right after…..the Huckleberry….”

Bless that old man. He keeps showing us a new thing he invented, but it’s just an old thing, something he found in the shed, on his afternoon wanders.

It's good to listen to his stories....

  Sonor wears latex underwear to charity events.

I have nothing further to add.

   Yamaha is that golden child you know from school. Annoyingly good at everything and a lovely person to boot. You want to hate him, you need to. Look at those teeth, the eyes! But you just can’t. Even now you can’t. He’s grown up to be a wildly successful hedge fund investor, with his immaculately groomed fingers in just about every pie on earth. It’s all the more annoying because he never brags about it, and he isn’t too ostentatious with his gifts. He just gets on with it and does everything, extremely well. We should all be a bit more like Yamaha.

He's just a good guy.

   It’s not only drums is it? Cymbals? Zildjian is hairy isn’t he? Wearing clothes that were fashionable in the 50’s, probably from the 50’s, and smelling a little too heavily of rose water and cinnamon. He keeps banging on about the old days when family was everything and yet, there’s still that feud with his brother, Sabian. His brother looks the same, also very hairy, but he’s taken to wearing lycra and has a noticeable twang to his accent. He’s got old family recipes but with a Canadian flair, like Bakhlava with Poutine flavoured ice cream. Sounds like it shouldn’t work, but it does.

   Have you met my cousin LP? He’s from this tiny village in Bolivia where they eat South American Mountain Badgers and make shakers out of their ankle bones….

That’s probably enough. 

You get me right?

I know you do. It’s probably because we love these things so much, are so completely invested in them, that they begin to have real characters. Real personalities. They speak to us in unique ways that those not of the rhythmic persuasion, might find odd.

But you know.

Rev. Nathaniel Cassowary