Yes we're geeks and proud of it.
I've been officially playing the drums since the fourth grade. Unofficially, I've been tapping out beats since I was born. Some of my earliest memories are of me sitting atop my Dad's shoulders, watching the drum core of the local marching band stomp by. I'd try to imitate the rhythm, using my Dad's head as my first snare drum. Thinking back, he must have had bruises from my 'sweet' beats, but he never complained. Always a supporter!
In high school I mostly just played with the school bands (marching, jazz, and orchestra) under Band Director Bob Lassonde. I'd occasionally play a school musical or with fellow students (shout out to Four Green Polo Shirts). Back in those days I was obsessed with playing Zeppelin, namely Kashmir or Stairway to Heaven. Couldn't get enough of that heavenly bass drum sound. In college, I branched out a bit. My other drummer friends and I would go down to this park with our sticks and knock out rhythms on anything we could play on. This is what I'd like to call my "creative/hippie" phase. Later years at Colby saw me playing in a band with a good friend of mine, Leif. We did a lot of covers and had a blast together, though we didn't really practice that regularly.
My drum playing reached an all time low in the years immediately following graduation. My grad school program sucked me into a dark abyss and I didn't do much besides study and run. I kept thinking to myself that I'd get back on those drums soon, once I got some more free time and motivation. However, I 'all of a sudden' found that three years had passed and I still hadn't picked up a drum stick.
In June 2007, all of that changed. A childhood friend of mine and fellow drummer died unexpectedly. Just as his own band, Ra Ra Riot, was starting to get momentum and start a tour that summer, Johnny Pike's life was suddenly taken away. Apart from feeling an immense sorrow for the loss of such a talented and outgoing musician, I was reminded of how quickly things can end and how important it is to take advantage of the moment. Don't put off things until tomorrow because a) you'll most likely put it off again to the following day, etc, or b) shit happens, you may not be around tomorrow.
*You can't wait around for that magical free time, good timing, and/or motivation to suddenly appear. It's not going to come. Stop thinking about doing something and just go do it.
And thus, the day I returned from the funeral, I sent out an email to the Penn listserv and asked if anyone wanted to get together and jam; I explained that I hadn't played in a couple of years, but I really wanted to get into something consistent.
Matt and Jeff replied quickly; eagerly saying that this is exactly how they felt too. Jory got recruited through Matt; they've known each other for a while and had discussed getting together, but never got around to it. We've met pretty much every Saturday since then (ok, we have periods where life has gotten in the way, but overall we've been consistent).
And that is the story of how the band got together.
I cannot express how happy playing with the band makes me. The first level of pleasure comes from the mere act of playing and making music. It's great to be inside that beat and feel it easily flowing from you. Second, I feel happy because this is something that I actively sought out. I could have just as easily kept on slogging through my schedule, still claiming that I just didn't have enough time. Activities like this make me feel alive and that I'm living to the fullest. There's a jubilation in that knowledge.
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