November 12, 2004 - Friday
Harry still says he wants to play the drums and as a musician I'm really torn between wanting to support him in any musical pursuit and the reality of a boy having a drum set in the house. I came close to buying him a toy set last Christmas, but his mother tends to lean toward the practical in this regard. Admittedly, I'm kind of a sucker for the music part, especially with Harry whose intense nature has a way of making him sound so serious and committed. Now that Christmas approaching again I've tried to push the idea one way or another with Harry, trying to see whether he's really serious about drumming or just wants to bang, by scanning radio stations during our seven-minute drive to school for songs that might have some noteworthy drum part. Admittedly, "noteworthy" drumming for a young boy is not the understated elegance of Joe Morello on Brubeck's Time Out (although if this drum talk keeps up Harry will be listening to that for sure), but rather something with just a more audible drum part that changes through the course of the song. This morning I turned to a station that was just starting to play Linda Ronstadt and Aaron Neville's "All My Life," in which the drum has a very overt set up to the chorus.

"Harry, listen to this, hear the the groove the drummer is playing while the song is quiet?" I said lightly beating on the dashboard. "Now, listen to how the drummer is going to change the whole song and make it all more exciting, listen, here it comes..." Then, to Harry's delight, the drummer came down heavy on the snare on 3, followed by toms and cymbals going into the first bar of the chorus.
"Did you hear it, Harry?"
"Yeah," he said with an excited giggle.
" Can you hear how the whole song is different now, much fuller, much more exciting? That's what the drummer can do."
"Yeah."

We'd heard another song that followed a similar pattern early in the week, but "All My Life" takes such a dramatic turn between verse and chorus, and through the bridge, and it really got his attention. I'm not saying Harry is a budding Buddy Rich or anything, or really even that he knew what I was talking about, but it did have enough of an effect on him so that he tried to explain it to Rip once we got to school.
"And Rip, the drummer was playing quietly, then all of sudden he banged on the cymbal and the whole song got louder..." Rip, of course, had no idea what Harry was talking about, but that didn't seem to bother Harry.


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