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10/25/2002 Entry: "My upcoming weekend, drums, and a lost old friend"

I've almost got a free weekend. I have to work at the office, 9am to noon. Then I'm done. No gigs. For fun, I looked through the calendar to find my last weekend truly off. You know, no gigs, and no MIS work? First weekend of June.

Check out this very ugly Gretsch snare drum. The wrap was put on at the factory upside down! An no one caught it. Quality control at it's finest. Here's a little story of my Gretsch floor tom. I add it here for posterity:

"I was recovering a set of 70s Gretsches. I took of the White Nitron, and used Tony Williams yellow instead. Now, when I got to the floor tom... I took off all the hardware, and noticed that the bottom holes had been misdrilled. They didn't match up to where the holes on the rims would be. E.g., 3 lugs were under the holes in the rim, and 3 were not. So, they just egged out the holes a little.

After removing the wrap, I found that the floor was not plain maple with greenish glue under it. Instead, it had Rosewood laquer on it! On closer inspection, I found a second paper label under the first paper label on the inside. But even more strange? There was silver paint on top of the second sticker! My thought was that this floor was at one point a Rosewood floor. They needed a white floor, so took this one, repainted the inside without removing the old paper label, slapped a new label on--almost lined up with the old label, but not quite, and put white nitron wrap on the rosewood laquer!"

I love it when this happens! This antique dealer finds an old snare, and decides to list it on ebay. $20 opening bid, no reserve. What they have is an old Black Beauty, the most highly collectable snare in the world. And it's in beautiful shape, too. How come I can never find one of these for $20?

I had a friend when I was in school. He was a very talented guitar player. Very talented. He moved away to seek his fortune. I guess he's doing well. Or maybe not. His band was on the Conan OBrien show. So that's good. But I've heard he's hooked himself into a heroin addiction. Not good. He's got a record contract. Good. One of his promo pictures is him lying on the floor of the bus amidst booze bottles. Not good. I hope he gets to the point where his talent can be respected in an atmosphere a lot less destructive.