Hugekit

THE ENLARGED DRUM KIT

By Johanne James

Hello there my friends.

The enlarged drum kit. Are you kidding me?
The size of some drum kits today looks more like a construction site than a drum kit! Seeing as I do my own teching, I keep it simple. I must say that there was once a time when I had a 27 piece drum kit. Yes that’s what I said a 27 piece kit! There wasn’t much room for anything else on stage, I can tell you. It was a complete nightmare, what on earth was I thinking? I guess I was just trying to impress the girls. Can you sense an inadequacy here? I had to make up for my rather diminutive stature, hence all that metal. Plus it made up for what I couldn’t do as people were so impressed with the size of it they didn’t notice how badly I was playing! Lol. I had gongs, cowbells, bar chimes, splash cymbals, china types, 6 toms the lot. Anyway, to cut a long and boring story short, my brother and myself were setting up this monstrosity when we all of a sudden looked at each other and in a moment of telepathic communication I then said, I don’t need all this, let’s get rid of it. Consequently I ended up with just 4 drums, 3 cymbals and 2 hi-hats and discovered that I in fact played better than I did when I was surrounded and consumed by all this stuff! It ended up in a skip.
Things go in circles and cycles and the return to a 4-piece kit was in fashion for a while and then bang, the return of the Jedi or enlarged kit. It would take an up-to-date satnav to negotiate your way round some of these monsters and I have the utmost admiration for those who can, I can’t! In fact the less I have the more I can do and seeing as I’m only little my sense of self-esteem has now been restored. No more inadequacies!

Thanks for listening.

Johanne James

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