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This is a tad offtopic but it is one of the things that led me to the love of repetition in music, as I've been a groove drummer all of my life and I'm proud to share this announcement with my family here at Loopers Delight 40 YEARS of DRUMMING (12/15/1966 - 12/25/2006) ********************************************* Exactly 40 years ago, on Christmas Day, I received a snare drum, sticks and a practice pad from my parents for Christmas and started a lifetime of drumming. I was, frankly, really disappointed that they didn't get me a drum set (as I'd asked for one) , but I had been sent through 2 years of piano, a few months of cello and 5 years of clarinet and had dropped each instrument one by one. I know my parents were skeptical about whether I would last with this instrument or not. LOL, so much for skepticism. For four years, we had lived in San Jose, longer than anyplace we had ever lived in the first 9 years of my life. My father had been a doctor in the United States Air Force and had been through residency and medical school as well so we moved almost once a year during my early years. We live in California, Texas and Tripoli, Libya before we settled in San Jose when I was in 3rd grade. Consequently, I had never formed any lasting attachments with friends until I met Bob Murphy a couple of months before this. He became the first 'best friend' that I'd ever had in my short life. In a very white suburban school where the Beach Boys won popularity contests against the Beatles and that's as funky as people's musical tastes got, Bob Murphy and I sheepishly confessed a love for Motown and James Brown (who I sadly, just learned passed away today at the age of 73) and we had decided that we would ask our parents for drums and an electric guitar, respectively; start a band and become famous Rock and Roll stars. We were dead serious. His parents bought him a Fender Mustang guitar and a Fender Champ amp and I had my little snare drum kit. I ran over to his house right away that afternoon, which was several blocks away and we started my first band, by learning how to play "Sonny" which was a light R&B hit of the day. I just tapped out the hi hat pattern on the rim, playing the two and the four on the snare drum. We practiced every single day for almost three months, learning "Just Like Me" by Paul Revere and the Raiders and other Brit pop rock and roll songs. I practically lived at Bob's house because we practiced so much. We were so into it that my mom prevailed upon my dad to go out and buy a $300 Stanford (no name Japanese) drum set and I was off to the races. Bob and I played together for three years in the "Concave Image", the name of our new hippy band. I made bass drum artwork that had a big blue eye with the letters looking like they had been projected by a , well, concave lens. A little later, David Handloff (who had true talent and now owns More Music in Santa Cruz) joined our little band on Fender VI string bass. We had no vocalist and everyone was to scared to sing much. All of this happened right at the very inception of the hippy era. It was a magical time........... an intoxicating time..............a time when it felt like music could change the world. I was just in love with music. The band broke up two years later when Bob walked home one day, holding hands with my first ever girlfriend, A Mormon girl whose name was Linda Brammer. She had broken up with me the day before after 3 months of blissful and magical record listening, handholding and light kissing. She broke up with me because I had tried to 'feel her up' (as we used to say so innocently in those days) at a Janis Joplin concert at the San Jose Fairgrounds. She called the next day and broke it off because we were 'getting too serious'. Bob walked home holding hands with her the next day and I had my first ever romantic heartbreak of my life. I stayed in my room after school for several days and cried and cried. As it turns out, three years later, Bob came to me and confessed that she dumped him the same way and that he realized that he had lost the best friendship he had ever had because he wanted to go out with her. For the last few months of high school, we laughed and referred to her as 'The Spoiler' but the damage had been done and we were never close again. He gave up music and became a Dentist and I haven't heard from him in 32 years. I never really stopped drumming and I can remember every single instruments part in the song 'Sonny' to this very day. Happy Western New Years, everyone! Rick Walker