Great drum! Glad you were able to get the photo's sorted.

I'll vote yes for clogging the forum with wild stories from the mid 50's :-).

When there is vintage drums with history and photo's makes my day.

Thanks!

Creighton

Thanks Creighton! I have learned so much over the past two weeks about this instrument. I had dinner with my dad last night (he is 78 so his memory is sometimes not razor sharp) He was the clarinet player in that band. My uncle(his brother) was the drummer.

They played until sometime in the early 60's in that format. They used to gig around Brisbane and the Gold Coast and were all very good musicians. In fact, my dad taught me Clarinet, Piano and Sax, all of which I am proficient at although I have played the axe since 13, which is what I play now.

They moved their rep away from semi-Trad jazz of that phot era to more dreamy Jazz ala Oscar Peterson and even some Monk, Brubeck and Miles Davis type stuff. Dad calls it "Drift Jazz" but I think that is a term all to himself lol.

Anyway, the story goes, in the early 60's they were playing the "Bigger" places on the Coast like the Cheveron Hotel, The pink Elephant bar and the more "bohemian" joints. One night they were playing a place called the "beachcomber" in Surfers paradise. The Beachcomber was famous for its "pajama Parties" at that time.

The Police despised these parties and raided them with military precision on the theory that lots of scantily clad young people and wicked music etc etc was a scourge and needed to be stamped out! (as a side note our constabulary in the early 60's were very old school and very anti-fun....nothing's changed lol)

My Dad's recollection of these parties was they were great fun and semi-innocent (whatever that means). He was a bit cagey on his definition of "Innocence" but he is a gentle soul so I don't think it was a Hendrix type experience.

The night the played this party, the cops raided it, covered up all the Naughty girls who were in Pyjamas and....found the Drummer smoking a erm...roll yr own cigarette. SHOCK HORROR!!!! A Jazz drummer on the end of a doobie.

This is where is gets a bit dark. Dad said they closed down the venue and marched the Band off to the lockup. Ken, the drummer was beaten up and they were told to p*** off back to Brisbane and they would never play this town again etc etc rant rant.

By this time 3 of the guys were married, and the whole experience took all the fun out of it. Sort of like surfing the Gold coast now with all those wankers in the water. The experience had been tainted, which I find very sad.

After that, I inherited the Drum Kit. I had the snare the high hat cymbals foot pedal and the bass drum. I am sure there was another drum but I cant locate it, but I know what happened to the Bass drum. Continued....

Ill try and keep the next bit shorter so as not to bore the tripe out of you.

In the late 70's I played in a myriad of bands (a few successful...even recorded) and as most of you would know the lineup was a procession of players , some good some not so good, but all fun and some decent part time coin.

We played a lot of rock then, lots of exile on Main Street type stuff and trippy Rock. We had a drummer who was a bit of a transient guy called Riffraff (no joke).

He always asked me if he could use that Drouyn Kit and I always said "NO"

One afternoon in rehersals he asked if he could just use the Bass Drum that night as he had some drama with his kit, so I said yep ok. So he lugged it up kicked it a few times and all was good. Actually, we killed em that night it was at cloudland in Brisbane which sadly was demolished in the 80's. The largest sprung dance floor in the southern hemisphere and an awesome place to play. Absolutely insane natural acoustics...I would give my left.........finger.......to play there again! Actually make that a toe.

So after the gig we were all hyped up and Riffers packed up my drum with his gear. I didn't notice and trusted him. Never saw him or the drum again.

Lesson....There isn't one lol I can't stop trusting people but I hope Karma kicks in where need be. I have some photos of the original band (dads) if yr interested and Dad reckons he has photos of the pjama parties which I am encouraging him to find.