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I had the surprise pleasure of being treated to a performance by Jason Bonham with Foreigner at the Mountain Winery concert venue in Saratoga this week. The invitation was for dinner and a show with Foreigner. I didn’t even realize until moments before the show that Jason was a current member of the band. The band paid homage to the recent announcement of Zeppelin’s forth coming reunion by playing a few bars of Rock & Roll and The Ocean, but it was a full version of Misty Mountain Hop that  showcased Jason’s affinity for playing like his Dad–The Great One. Preceding the show, a pair of tickets for the upcoming Zeppelin show was auctioned for $10,000. I should have so much disposable income. As a side note, Foreigner was impressive. Mick Jones can still play quite well, the current line up did an excellent job with backing vocals and new lead singer Kelly Hansen leaves little to be desired in signing the Foreigner catalog.

~r

Over ten years ago I purchased a great drum kit made by Premier. I’ve used it at live gigs and for studio work, always receiving compliments on the greatness of its sound. Not that I haven’t heard better sounding kits, but as I’m fond of saying, “it doesn’t suck.” What does suck is the fact that parts have proven to be somewhat difficult to get in a crunch. I did a recent demo session for my latest band, Redwood, and had a considerable amount of tuning issues with my snare. A couple of weeks following this session, I was re-tuning a new batter head and one of my tension lugs went loose. The mounting brackets had broken.

It wasn’t hard to find a parts source and distributor (San Jose Pro Drum), but getting the replacement quickly will cost me the price of the replacement parts. I can truly say that I really like my kit, but the moral of my story is to consider replacement part availability when purchasing a drum kit. Better yet, be one of those guys who has at least two snare drums, just in case.

~r