OK this is a long one - I have plenty of time to write and you probably have plenty of time to read if all of your gigs and rehearsals and students have cancelled like mine. :-) I know many of you are stuck inside and are isolated for the duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, and hopefully this reading and viewing material may provide some escape from it all.
My wife, Georgetta, and I are ok. She works for the legal department of FedEx at the headquarters in Memphis which has asked her department to work remotely, from home. FedEx is essential and she is working overtime as are the package handlers, drivers and pilots. I worked from home during the week anyway on not So Modern Drummer and DrumSellers.com and, while all of my bar gigs and students are kaput, I still have the two church gigs - live streaming. I have gone through periods of not playing before, so I am mentally prepared for this. We take daily walks with Wade, our dog, in the beautiful park across the street here in East Memphis and enjoy seeing Spring bloom. We ride our bicycles. But we are enduring the same uncertainty that many of you are. I am in the at older at-risk age and medical condition bracket so I’m not going near anyone but Georgetta. But I want to reassure all my friends in the drum world that we will get through this. I encourage you to not be scared. “There is nothing to fear but fear itself”. (Who said that? Buddy Rich? :-). Of course we should be vigilant, careful, mindful of others, and stay abreast of facts about this new disease. But being scared and worried all day long is not healthy. I made two decisions this week about how to keep mentally and physically healthy that I want to pass on to you.
#1 Don’t watch the news so much! Watch the news headlines on tv or the internet or your phone at the first of the day only and/the end of the day, then don’t watch it again until tomorrow. That will keep you up to date enough on the latest developments. Make your decisions about your actions accordingly, then leave the news alone. The news is the primary source of fear, both left and right biases. It is designed to scare you. Watching it too much will literally hurt your physical and mental health.
#2 Walk it off! We already know to wash our hands often, to avoid close contact with others in public, and to be mindful that we may be carrying the virus ourselves, even though we have no symptoms of the illness. I recommend that you take a walk out in the fresh springtime air every day. It helps keep the cobwebs out of the mind and will invigorate you and cure some of that cabin fever. We’ve been through this before, and this too shall pass.
I may be preaching to the choir here but, because this virus has a long incubation period, you can be infected and not show symptoms for days. So, get ahead of this thing. Go ahead and lock yourself down as much as possible. “Act as If” you ARE infected: just assume you are infected because you DO NOT KNOW whether you are or not unless you have tested negative, are having the symptoms or already had it and are immune. Don’t let other people’s droplets and germs be near you and don’t you go near other people. Physical distance and separation is the rule of the day. It’s no fun, but pandemics do not go away quickly. I predict, and I hope I’m wrong, that we will be into Fall before it begins to really subside. Now, on to drum stuff:
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We have three new impressive monthly content contributors joining us this month.
Well known vintage drum expert, Mark Cooper, has graciously contributed his writings and images to the Not So Modern Drummer site. I have uploaded the first part of his Guide To Vintage Drums and will continue to add all the content from his site, ww.coopersvintagedrums.com. Mark started his site in 1998 and it has a lot of important documentation. Mark may update some of the articles and perhaps write some new ones.
Also, I just heard from Bart Van Der Zee who said YES when I asked him if he would allow Drum History Podcast to be the official podcast of Not So Modern Drummer. This is so exciting. Barts’ podcasts about drums and drummers and drumming are ridiculously thorough and well done. He has real cool videos on his site too. There will be a link on the NSMD site to his podcast site and Bart will have a column featuring different episodes. Also we plan on doing a podcast episode with me about Not So Modern Drummer, DrumSellers.com and preserving drum history in general.
Historian and drummer/singer Kelli Rae Tubbs has some unbelievably great videos about drum set history. I’ve been promising to put her videos on Not So Modern Drummer for the longest time and I should kick myself for not doing it before now. She is a very welcome addition to our growing roster of writers and content creators. i know Kelli personally and will get to see her often as she will coming through Memphis on a riverboat every two weeks for her new gig, once the virus restrictions let the riverboats run again. I plan on posting at least one video a month in her column, or if you want to go binge watch all her videos they are up on YouTube and the link is in her column,
I will be asking other known vintage and custom drums/legendary drummer sites to let me publish digitally and archive physically their content. Not So Modern Drummer’s mission is to preserve the history of drums and the drum set in the “modern era”, which I loosely define as starting at military rope drums as far back as the 1300s thru today . There are many sites out there with great information about drum history but I’ve been noticing that some of them are not around any more. What happens to those images and that content, some of which may be unique and irreplaceable? What happens when the corona virus stops some of these people from maintaining the sites and content? Some sites end because the person running it died or is incapacitated in some way and didn’t arrange for anyone to continue it in their place. Some sites end from neglect and there are many other reasons. I’m also noticing that images and information about vintage and custom drums are very fleeting on social networks: FaceBook, Instagram, Easy, Pinterest, etc., There is no hard copy for most of this information and no guarantee that those sites will be there forever. If you have a site that has vintage drum history content please contact me about possibly archiving in the Not So Modern Drummer repository.
Our mission also includes collecting vintage drums and sets to display in a physical museum and virtual museum online. We have already have a donated WWII Slingerland Rolling Bomber kit and a Walberg & Auge Perfection Carry-All Bass drum with matching toms and many bass drum attachments. (looking for matching snares for those kits). You can donate your instruments and take the tax write-off tax through our non-profit Parumpapumpum Charity and Museum. We also take cash donations and we need them right now. The profit from the charity goes to help drummers who need instruments for legitimate financial or emergency reasons. We have been doing this for twenty years and just now made it an official registered charity. Please give. I predict there will be drummers without drums or cash when this crisis eases up and the bars re-open. It is a terrible thing to have work, but no drums to do the work. This was the case with the Houston flood in 2017 when we delivered five kits to drummers so they could work.
With so much of the country out of work, this virus will affect values of vintage drums in the marketplace. We are definitely going in to a recession and possibly a depression. There will be many out of work drummers in need of cash selling their vintage, used and new-ish instruments to pay bills. Should you feel bad for taking advantage of this and buying their drums at sacrifice prices? I say no. I have talked to a few sellers in this situation and they would like for you to buy their drums so they can pay bills and buy food. They know they will have to cut the price drastically to sell quickly. They are glad to get the money and, if you have the money to buy with, you are helping them. I plan on buying a few things, but I also know that I won’t be able to turn around and sell them for a decent profit anytime soon. As sellers, we will be competing with those sacrifice prices and putting our wares out in front of drummers with no money. I plan on holding on to whatever I buy low and wait until the market becomes more normal. If you are having to sell your gigging drums at a very low price due to the work stoppage, I will forego the 4% commission if you want to list them at DrumSellers.com. Just contact me and let me know what your situation is.
I plan on writing in this column more often now, so please check back if you need some remote drum community fellowship.
Drummingly yours, George Lawrence