What possible connection can this photo (above) of my electronic drumset have to this current lockdown? Answers on a postcard. Ah those were the days. The answer is well in a couple of ways actually. First, it’s a further example of my spending money in a spirit of we’re all going to die so why save our money? Second, we’re keeping the British retail sector going. Third, it is one of those digging out old things, things. And finally, it’s an exercise in nostalgia. Yes, I know that’s more than a couple.
My view of nostalgia has changed somewhat over the last few weeks. After all when the future looks uncertain and the present untenable then the only place left to be is the past. Nothing like a touch of nostalgia to get you through. This strange chain of events started, innocuously enough, with Mrs Summerhouse and myself watching a long programme on Sky Arts last Saturday night all about drumming and drummers.
Now not many people know this but I like to think that my musical talents many years ago began with me as a drummer. During my adolescence and teenage years it was the drummer in the group that caught my interest. Well more like an obsession really. Ringo, Charlie, Ginger, Keith, Mitch, how easily the names come floating back over the years.
Even before the above there was Gene and Buddy (American of course). So it was clear in my tortured adolescent psyche that it was a drummer I wanted to be. It was also clear that I hadn’t a hope in hell of owning a drum set. They were an expensive item. Unlike a guitar or even an old piano which you could pick up cheap. They would be unplayable true but cheap. There were no cheap drum sets.
I had to make my own. Good as I think I am with using words to describe my experiences this one almost defeats me. Don’t say you weren’t warned. My drum set consisted of a pair of my grandma’s wooden knitting needles, as drum sticks obviously; a fireguard off an old electric fire as a cymbal and a magazine laid flat on the sofa as my snare drum. Well, I told you. It might take more than your imagination to conjure up an image of a young Mr Summerhouse bashing away to radio Luxembourg with that ensemble.
Time moved on, I went to grammar school and took any opportunity of playing the school drum set. Badly of course. That option was closed to me when myself and the music teacher’s son were caught by the Headmaster rolling out a spirited version of Wipeout by The Surfin’ Safaris. Me on the school tom tom; music teacher’s son on piano. The head-teacher had never been fond of yours truly. I mentioned before I was stripped of my prefect’s badge for lounging.
He may even have caned me for missing a day’s school. I may have imagined this but I don’t think so. My self and another friend had decided we would go to Liverpool from our home town in Derbyshire (by train) to watch Nottingham Forest play Everton. We arrived at the ground (Goodison Park) at 9 o’clock (in those days the game started at 7.30, had ten minutes for half time and finished at ten past nine). By the time we arrived Forest were losing 3 nil.
Although we had a return ticket we managed to miss the last train home and after, trying to sleep on the station and being moved on by the police, we had to hitch hike home next day(we had no money). We didn’t get back to Derbyshire until the afternoon having walked practically the whole of the East Lancs road. Having explained to the head teacher why we had missed the day’s school he rewarded our honesty by caning us. All in all not a great success as an idea.
Anyway he never liked me and so I was banned from ever touching the school drum set. In the meantime the school had given birth to a rock group of its own. Called the King Bees after the Rolling Stones ‘I’m a king bee baby buzzing around your house,’ or something similar. Did opportunity knock at this point for this aspiring drummer?
Alas no. The problem was Richard Iliffe (Sac) who had his own drum set. This on account of his dad having been injured in an industrial accident and received compensation. With which he bought his son a bloody drum set. What a pillock, why couldn’t he have bought him a motor bike or new set of winkle pickers?
Sac wasn’t a great drummer, certainly not as good as I was on my knitting needles and fireguard. But that didn’t matter he had the set. I pretty much gave up my ambitions to be a second Ringo or whoever and started to play piano. Which we had at home on account of my grandma being a music teacher. I didn’t want to play piano in the group. This was long before the days off Hammond Organs or similar portable keyboards. The upshot being, if the venue didn’t have a piano (which most of them didn’t), then I didn’t ‘appear’. Hey ho.
I’ve never really returned to playing the drums. True there was a time a couple of years ago when the summer-school I attend looked like it was going to be short of a drummer. I bought the kit in the above photo more as a practice thing than to actually perform on in public. To cut a long story short, thank God (or whoever) you’re thinking, I didn’t perform at summer-school and I’ve never really touched this set since buying them.
Until now and the programme last Saturday night about drummers. Brought it all back it did and, in these crazy times, with me left to my own musical devices, I thought it might be fun to include the drums in my extensive list of instruments I can play badly. But I’m not content to just play through the headphones. Nope, I have decided to spend another £250 on a drum amp / loudspeaker. This way everybody can hear me.
Don’t run away with the idea that I’m going to be anti-social. We live in a detached house and I won’t have it cranked up to the max. In fact the likelihood is it will never get used. But in these crazy times …