The Barn - Rodrigo

Completed Drums

	Remember when Rod was dreaming of England?
	"I'm planning to move to the U.K. shortly. Can you give some directions to get to your workshop from Bishop's Stortford?"

	Suddenly Rod's in town! Rod's started work just outside of "the smoke" that is London town. So being fairly local Rod popped into the Barn for a chat and to check out the Bits and Bobs We've been collecting for his beloved Gold sparkle kit. Rod's crazy about his kit as he explained:
	"This is my kit, I don't know what make it is. I have asked many people and I don't have a clue. There are no marks or badges on it. It's a mystery. I don't know how old it is. Probably early sixties, who knows? I bought it in 1995 for 90 pounds, from a very old man. He used it to play salsa, boleros and so in a club every saturday night. The kit came with a really old 18" crash ride and a 14" hit-hat, with no marks on it, and a primitive drum throne and a bass drum pedal. I still have the pedal, the snare stand and the cymbals in my shed. They're not handy for gigging. Someday I will clear them, as I told you I do not collect vintage drums. I just what to improve it."
	What are those cymbals Rod ?
	"I've used Paiste for years, and I'm very pleased with them. I think that the Alpha series have a great ratio value / quality. I like to use all the cymbals from the same maker,and the same series. I've tried to mix them with sabian, and paiste 2000 and the pitch and the volume are not the same, I don't think they match very well. One of these days, I will buy myself a Zildijan K set. But It's so expensive in Spain... and I'm just an amateur player."
	So we asked - How can BDB help?
	"I'd been looking at your web site, and thought maybe you could give me some help. I have a really old style vintage snare drum, probably early 60's, and mostly all the hardware, but the shell is..out of order."
	Well that tiny piccolo is still under the Doctor - More on Rod's vintage snare build soon. But meanwhile he treated himself to a new drum and it's no ordinary shell, it's a Tesselated Piccolo. Rod's gonna translate the whole build into Spanish and spread the word in that lovely warm country...Brrrr

	Like most BDB customers, Rod knows exactly what he wants - so he has vintage die cast hoops, offset Olympic lugs and snare throw. Next? - well probably a 14" Tom - but first he's taking the new snare to Spain for the new year. And if he catches up with his old mates, he's gonna sneak some gigs in!
	"Our band is named Bourbon Boulevard, as you see on the front of the drum. We play British Blues-Rock, like Cream, Led Zeppelin, Ten Years After, The Jimmy Hendrix Experience and so on. We do covers and also do our own songs, singing in Spanish. We were a trio: drums, singer-bass player and guitarist, but recently we added a keyboard player. You should be a really good player to play just with another two musicians, and we're not that good."
	But is the music scene alive and well in central Spain?
	"There's a lot of groups where I live. The professional ones gig almost every week and they usually are jazz, latin-jazz or fusion with flamenco (flamenco-rock, flamenco-jazz). Amateur ones are pop-rock and the youngsters usually play crap-metal or political punk-rock. Now and again there are groups that play some other things such as ourselves. For example, we share the rehearsal room with a progressive rock band. Anyway, I think that the average level is quite high, especially in drumming and percussion. After all, we have a huge cultural background in percussion with styles such as salsa, rumba, flamenco, etc..."

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