The Sand Drummer

Well, as mentioned in my previous blog, I made it to the Queensryche show at the House of Blues in Myrtle Beach Sunday night.  I had never seen them live, so it was a treat.  Even though they were playing in a relatively small venue, they put on a great show.  Their lead singer, Geoff Tate, had one of the most charismatic stage presences that I've ever seen.  Good to see that his 4 octave voice is still in fine form after all these years.  They played a "Greatest Hits" show, so a lot of the material was from their Empire album ("Empire", "Jet City Woman", "Anybody Listening?", and "Another Rainy Night Without You") but they played a good mix of even older stuff like "The Lady Wore Black".  The two big surprises were a couple of great covers from their latest covers album Take Cover - Pink Floyd's "Welcome to the Machine" and "Synchronicity II" by the Police.  I may try to catch them again soon when they tour playing Operation Mindcrime in its entirety.

As great as that show was, the most memorable part of the weekend was going out on the Beach (it was 70 degrees this weekend on the coast of SC) and seeing a drum kit set up in the sand.  It was a fairly nice kit, so at first we thought maybe it was there to film a commercial or something.  But a few minutes later, I witnessed a toothless wino come down off of the boardwalk (with brown bag in hand) and sit at this kit and drunkedly bang out some beats.  Not good beats, mind you, but beats that my 4 year old would find simplistic and erratic.  He was also playing with one drumstick and one twig of some kind and wearing a Trixter 1990 US Tour T-Shirt.  But to his credit, it was very windy, so the guy would have had a hard time playing even if he knew what he was doing.  But still, it was a wino playing drums in the sand at the beach, so it's a given that it would be awesome.  The only way it could have been more awesome is if there was another wino there playing the air guitar.  But it was his show - I doubt he wanted to share the spotlight. 

I've seen many street musicians play for booze in my time, but I've never seen someone with a full drum kit set up in the sand at the beach.  It left me with many questions - How was he going to get all of his gear off of the beach before the tide came in?  Where does he keep his kit when not on the beach playing for money?  Were the drums even his?  I did take his picture on my mobile phone, but unfortunately it didn't come out very well.  He started yelling something at me while I was taking his picture and I didn't want to stick around trying to get a good shot.  But at least I have my memories.