Monday is for drumming

So, post-hurricane life has been kind of crappy, I can't lie. Spanky was violently ill during the storm, and is still moderately sick, including some sort of icky ear infection that she's just now, a week into this mess, getting treated for. I caught her sickness on Friday, and was laid out all weekend through today. I'm just going to be venturing back to Manhattan tomorrow, so we'll see what happens.

My whole neighborhood was flood-ravaged, and we're all still digging out. My apartment is over a garage, which completely flooded, and consequently, we have no hot water. The heat is out too, but the landlords brought us some space heaters, so we're not freezing. We just can't shower unless you want a bracing, freezing cold one, which is unpleasant, especially when you're sick. They have been letting us go upstairs and use their shower (the landlords conveniently live upstairs), but it's still not a great situation. Plus, they're still ripping out the garage drywall and all that stuff that happens when you get inundated with six feet of water. There is nothing that puts you off owning property like a natural disaster, you know?

Anyway, I've been thinking about starting to write again. I have just been so insanely busy and/or exhausted this year that every spare moment is spent doing something a bit more urgent, or just staring vacantly into space, and I just never get around to blogging. But I am going to try to break it up a bit so that I have defined days for everything. I've tried this before with no success, but let's just see, shall we?

Monday, my friends, is for drumming. I take my lessons on Fridays, and each time, my teacher, David, gives me a little history lesson to research. Right now, we're studying different types of drums. This week's drum manufacturer is Slingerland Drum Company. Boy, Wikipedia makes research so easy, doesn't it? Cooper's Vintage Drums has another interesting history of the company, complete with tons of pictures.

Slingerland is a company I've always thought seemed really cool. Their Radio King drums were endorsed by Gene Krupa and Buddy Rich, two of the best drummers to ever live, and the company just seems so awesomely retro--I mean, Radio King drums. Sounds like something that should be backing up a rockabilly band, right? David says that Slingerland drums are very collectible as well, especially their "Rolling Bomber" drums, manufactured during WWII, when metal was at a premium, so the company used wood in place of metal for the rims and lugs and so forth. Here is another page that shows a variety of different Slingerland snares as well as the Slingerland logo and the shields affixed to the drums through the years. It's amazing that a drum from 1929 could still be playing great now. I guess that's not that incredible, considering there are violins that are hundreds of years old still being used regularly, but I think it's pretty impressive considering the wear drums get.

The Slingerland company started in Chicago, which seems like the place a lot of drum companies started, for some reason. I guess Chicago was a big music town back in the mid-20th c. Is it still? I'm not very familiar with bands and/or styles originating in Chicago nowadays. Just blues, and that's not new. If anyone can enlighten me, please do. I'm from the South, so I'm much more familiar with that area as a music-producing region.

Anyway, I love how Wikipedia says that one of the problems with Slingerland drums is that there were no consistent manufacturing processes, so if you have a set from 1963, and you lose a lug, you might not be able to replace it with one from even the next year, because they would just use up the stock of the previous year they had at the same time as introducing new styles, so even though a part might have been officially discontinued, like any small business, they wanted to use up what they had so they didn't have to write it off. Makes it harder for folks now, but it's also adorably quirky and practical instead of being corporate.

Slingerland drums even have their own Facebook page, where you can see lots of great pictures of the sets people have kept and/or found.

Sadly, the brand has basically been discontinued. In the 1970s and 1980s, the company had a few different owners, and now the brand is owned by Gibson, who tried to promote it by requiring music stores to order a set of Slingerlands when they bought guitars for their store, and that didn't actually go over very well, so I guess Gibson's pretty much stopped making them. I don't know if they'll ever really come back, but I guess that just means that the existing Slingerlands will be that much more special.

Tuesdays we'll be back to knitting. I'm going to do upcoming projects on Tuesdays. Wednesdays will be for progress on what's on the needles. Thursday I'm going to do some sort of review--either a movie review or TV or something like that. A show of some kind. And then Fridays will be for FOs. I suppose that if I don't have one of those things on that particular day, I'll just skip it. Plus, all the posts won't be this long.