Tag: Rainbow Beach

If nothing else, free the Left Hand!

Independence can be a way of life too.

(last updated: 4 July 2025)

[Summer – Rainbow beach]

After starting drums in 1991 with teacher Andrew Smith, right after quitting many years of piano lessons, I played in the awesome Wesley Big Band from mid-1994 until early 1996 when I left due to time pressures. Big Band people also had to play in the Concert Band as a rule.

Also, in 1994, my mum bought a:

  • Yamaha Vinnie Colaiuta 14×4.5″ signature snare
  • Paiste 15″ signature fast crash
  • Paiste 13″ signature sound edge hi-hats
  • Zildjian 17″ K dark medium-thin crash

from Manny’s Music in NYC that were all shipped back to Melbourne. Bar Mitzvah money put to good use.  Yet I ended up selling them all except the snare which I play to this day (2025.)

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The Paiste crash was incredible but the hats were awful. It was a punt – the gear was selected from reading magazines. Even my Pearl Masters kit in 1995 was selected by magazines.

I ended up with two tom-toms of the same depth and only a 2″ difference in diameter just like Vinnie’s:

[ src – purchased: red ]

Yet, I think this was a great result as the 10″ power tom sounds reasonably different to the 12″ standard tom and the difference is easy on the ear. Both the guy at the shop and my drum teacher were unnerved with the sizings – was the 16″ x 20″ bass drum really too large for jazz and too small for a rock show?

[ 27 May 2022 ]

Surely, it can be tuned up or down? Yet, decades later, the 14″ floor tom and bass drum have ended up complimenting the 2015 stand-mounted Jinbao bass-drum.

[drums switcheroo + first play] Dirty Diana (1987 + 2020)

I also had a Sabian 20″ HH medium-thin ride (below left) carried over from a few years earlier which was eventually replaced by a 20″ K Heavy.

So I used this gear in the school band competition and we won equal-first (below-left.)

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In November 2018 I remember going into a drum store and trying out the cymbals and realizing within a couple of strokes whether I liked the sound or not, but back then I didn’t really know what I wanted or what I liked.

Get to Sticks (1992 + 2018)

It’s the same with fashion – one look and it’s either on or it’s not – although it was never like that growing up.

In Big Band, Simon played drums before me and set a really “nasty” precedent for me to follow after himself and a number of members left after the band’s Montreux performance in mid-1994. I also saw him play at a Battle of the Bands at the Lauriston Fair and he would’ve been best off playing under Maurice White than anyone else.

I played in the 1997 BotB and ended up dropping a stick after cramping up, and it was a shameful moment for me… wow, that had never happened before. We’d rehearsed at my house too and I was doing a lot of the schlepping and all the carrying of amps took its toll. It was for first-time rockstar vocalist Hezza and in front of a lot of girls.

I am pretty sure Simon was playing drums that day in his band Polyester.


[same school, Out Loud in 2014]

It was such a failure on my part, I think I ended up playing with one cramped forearm for two songs (the other arm was incapacitated.) I barely even knew what a cramp was. It’s like “What the fuck is wrong with my arms!?” For Hezza, this was at a time when being on stage with a rock band was the equivalent of having a new IG account with thousands of new followers.

I really should’ve yelled out to the other band members for timeout. “Sorry peeps, the drummer can’t play anymore. Well he never really could to begin with either. Did you hear about the drummer who finished high school? Me neither.”

Hezza had such high hopes and it all ended up a train wreck of emotion. I saw him years later in the city at night with his friend and things weren’t the same. We were once such jovial pals.

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Trumpeter Ollie T along with Ben, James and Zoe (all above) were playing with me in Ska band Skaface at the time (1996.) Bas and Eden also played in it and there should be a recording from Bakehouse studios floating around somewhere.

I left Big Band in Yr 12, because it was taking too much time – really it was the setting up and packing away of the drums at rehearsals twice weekly which was the deal-breaker. I may have also had fatigue issues regardless because I quit Karate in 1996 too. Jewish Big Band drummer Buddy Rich also did Karate from 48 onward, but looking at his hunch, I think he would’ve been better off with Yoga. And with Big Band a thing of the past, so was Concert Band and I must’ve freed up about 8 hours of my week.

If I am to look back with complete honesty, I suspect my health took a hit from vxccines taken for an 89/90 trip to India – Hep A, Hep B (x 3) and Meningitis.

[ above right – all shot-up with Mr Patel in Ahmedabad at his quarry that he repopulated with wildlife after its end-of-life. In that social group, I talked science with someone. 7 years later, high school physics was my best result. Magic. ]

[ A year or two later: Mr Patel again with Satyajeet (with dogs) (Darbar Shri Satyajeet kumar Shivraj khachar of Jasdan) for his royal arranged marriage. ]

I think Patel was an engineer and I met Satyajeet very, very briefly. My grandfather Oskar knew Shivraj – Satyajeet’s father.

And today new borns are given Hepatitis B shots – all ready for a trip to India!?

So that toxicity was seemingly rectified about 12 years later due to an “energetic-cleansing” type experience.

Also, I had received 4 very large mercury/amalgam fillings from a young age and those off-gassing could’ve also caused problems. Another problem could have been the fluorescent desk lamp (near Hendrix poster, pic further down.) I’ve heard someone say that the lamps dislodge mercury in the body, and of course contain a small amount of it too.

So it’s worth noting that Pranic healing deals with healing on the subtle level before it manifests in the physical hence the expression “real-eyes realize real-lies.” Autobiography of a Yogi spoke about this.

I am not so won over by vxccines because:

  • Weren’t these nasty diseases on their way out anyway due to advances in hygiene? (the Big Kahuna question)
  • Do they actually work?
  • Are they really needed?
  • Why don’t all unvaccinated children drop dead before age 30?
  • Who’s funding the studies?
  • Are there liability exemptions?
  • Is there a profit-motive somewhere?
  • What’s the track record of governments working against the governed?
  • Are they part of binary weapons systems, eg cell-phone towers, body scanners, smart meters?
  • Are there other alterior motives?
  • Have they been mis-named (just like Israel)?
  • Is there full transparency in the production process?
  • On a purely physical level, aren’t nanometals and synthetic biology the enemies of health? Do vaccines add to that?
  • With heavy metals, one can expect parasites to co-exist with them, right? And with that comes biofilms, sludge and brain fog.

Vxccines are no substitute to raising the vibration and that can come through relaxation and flow-states. That’s fine, but what if it takes monthly colon hydrotherapy, lymphatic drainage and ozone sessions to get to that point? Medical students don’t even write a single essay in 5/6 years of study. Only short-answers. After that, they’re worked to the ground so they don’t or can’t think critically. The overwork/underpayment culture is done purposely to remove undesirable mindsets from the system. What am I missing? Probabaly a lot.

Was the late Susan Wojcicki targetted due to c19/vxccine censorship?

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If so, it’s strange to see a “bottom-up” hit – usually it’s done to the small guy for going against the prevailing winds of the industry associations and their consensus before they get traction. As Buddy Rich said:

“I used to think of myself as a tough guy. Looking back now, I wonder what’s so great about being a tough guy.” – src

So I may well have gotten fatigue, but at least I wasn’t paralyzed. I think the fatigue started to happen when more cell phone towers went up later into the 90’s and my learning ability was also hampered – but I had so much to spare, it wasn’t really noticeable from the exterior. But it may have had something to do with my amalgam fillings.

It may be worth noting that at about 6 years old in primary school, myself and all my classmates had to provide cheek swabs for some woman that came through the school. I didn’t mind – I was thrilled that she wasn’t giving us all injections.

We were also IQ-tested a year or two later, and then tested again for the propensity to disassociate as mentioned here.

Sports day was so much more straightforward, even in black shoes.

[ mid-80s, KDS, original Kooyong Rd campus | 2022 ]

Looking back, perhaps having my DNA stored somewhere unbeknownst to me was/is just as dangerous as being turned over to a possible mind-control/transgendering process to serve the beast system. Or is there a clone of me somewhere from whom I can extract something later in life?

So a human clone planet is mentioned in Ormus King 2:

and intergalactic assasinations and human replacements in Ormus King 7 whereby “humans are controlled and dominated from a far-off planet for their eventual replacement by a reptilian alien cult that hijack Earth’s technology systems.”

[March, 2021]

Anyway, there was another recording with myself, Zev, Eden and Matho done at Metropolis that I wish I still had from 1996. We got free recording time and Zev and Eden came up with a track on the spot that day. I think it was called Debowana …give me some water… It sounded a lot like Big Mistake from 1997.

Natalie Imbruglia - Big Mistake Live on Channel 5 UK

We also did a cover of Fire. I ended up giving the caseette tape to Matho at a house party one night. I should’ve given it to a venue – that really was a big mistake yet he would’ve been out of the country for the next year or two anyway so that would’ve been of no consequence. Matho wasn’t even a trained singer but sounded great. I don’t think his heart was in it.

The whole session was done to help audio engineering students and my brother put me onto “Goldsmith” who was looking for a band.

It took 3 phone calls to initially reach Matho, and that would be my 2nd last. Matho knew deep down that he wouldn’t see past his 27th birthday if anything came of the band and just wanted to dodge a bullet. Well I highly, highly doubt that… maybe me though?

So I did vaguely know one fellow Harry who died at 27 who has IG embeds on this blog.

[alike]

He may well have been following this blog leading up to his death, not sure, and none of those names above are on my FB or YT followers lists – are they super-fans or beast-system-leeches? It’s God or the devil, baby!

ANTIBOY - Devil (Official Video)

Harry had some really good insights to share, and it was/is so sad to see him leave so soon although I recently read an interesting quote: “Death is but a horizon, and a horizon is just a limitation of our view.”

He passed away at dwelling purposely setup by his family for detoxing, which is sad but I don’t know the finer details. In any case, still a great loss. His last tweet was so positive.

So back to Metropolis, not sure how happy Eden was playing bass, and Zev might’ve been wanting to sing too. Goldsmith loved the music. The biggest “close but no cigar ” moment ever.

I couldn’t think of a name for the band. Spartacus came up with “Interstellar Overdrive” for another band that had Eden in it. A year later and things may have worked out as long as we owned our masters and I would’ve been able to get a website (with MP3s) and email list going pretty quickly – even in 1997. I probably would’ve ended up hiring a drummer and played percussion or done drum programming. Maybe Zev and Eden wanted to be writing for their own groups.

So back at school, I got along well with the conductor, the late Mr Lee (not everyone did) and he was also the music school head.

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Lee sold musical instruments to students so that was pretty shrewd of him to leverage his position like that.

He played alto sax and I once lent him my Sinatra at the Sands CD that I purchased from Greville Records but I never saw it again – perhaps it flew away! In fact, the shop was up the road from my school and in uniform, I asked the shopkeeper (owner too?) what the best big band CD was and he gave me that one. I also asked for a funk tip and he gave me Curtis.

Curtis Mayfield - Curtis -1970 -FULL ALBUM

He was impressed – so was I!

Then ~10 years later I was back there with Mr Petrie asking him if he wanted to sign up to Moshtix. He was more nervous than anything, but I wasn’t! He was like “come back to me last.” He wasn’t in the ticketing business, it was a complimentary good (like the Moshcard) and it brought new people into the store.

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Petrie was really excited about this swipe card for venue entry – he envisaged it becoming a discount and customizable card for the younger generation – many of whom didn’t even have credit cards. People could’ve been sent MP3s after buying a ticket or had a collection of music attached to it.

Facebook turned down their initial acquisition offer from Yahoo in 2006, and I think Moshtix could’ve pushed off News Corp too. That’s easy to say looking back, and I wasn’t in contact with Petrie in 2008, but the word “Mosh” limited the ticketing scope to music, right? I know there was a cinema using the site at the time.

Wherever there is power, money easily follows, and the power is at the enabling interface between disparate groups or systems that need/use each other. So much money at the interface between yarn and skin. If I owned a newspaper, I’d look at buying a timber plantation, paper plant and a recycling business – keiretsu. If American companies merged with each other, they wouldn’t need such high tariffs, right? I have no idea.

I am not sure if Greville Records were one of Moshtix’s early retail sign-ons where people could buy a ticket and add it to their Moshcard. By mid-2005 Moshtix hadn’t listed their Melbourne outlets online:

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Greville Records were with OzTix by 2008, though:

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But I remember seeing GR on Moshtix at one point. Or did I? Weird. Maybe they switched over to OzTix after the 2007 Moshtix acquisition and didn’t want to associate with Big Business. Perhaps Greville Records gave the ticketer a “cool factor” that lead to greater success in Melbourne, after Sydney, and leading to the rest of Australia as a result. I have no idea.

[ Note Hendrix poster bottom left – from Greville Records ]

By mid-2005, three Melbourne venues already signed-on to use Moshtix were Bennetts Lane, The Corner and The Metro. We met those on-site and a bunch more including HiFi Bar where I came face-to-face again with Kiran (not Haslam) who I hadn’t seen since the school Big Band where he had sung. Petrie was in the dark about Melbourne’s music scene. How much did he like music? Did it really matter anyway? Kiran ended up building out HiFi’s own ticketing system but I’d have to double-check on it.
Getting Metro on board was a big win after Mr Petrie and I initially met Alistair and Anna at the venue in early 2004.

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@dannysrants Do you remember Metro Nightclub? #nightclubs #nightclub #melbourne #nightlife #clubbing #promoter #security #clubs #metro #nostalgic #throwback #rememberwhen ♬ original sound – DannyRants

Alistair, at the opposite end of a large table was like: “who’s liable if the system breaks down on the night.”
Hamish was like: “it’s never failed yet.”
Alistair: “well what happens if it does?”
Hamish: “uhmm, yes…. well…”

[ 2003 ]

It was a raw meeting as we ran through the contract and no one had even yet been short-changed. Anna in the side-office was like: “if you really want to sell a lot of tickets you either need a great act or the cool-crowd present.” Nailed it. They might’ve thought we were uncool. But when I was 13 in the early 90’s, a bunch of us had free entry into TIME underage on Saturdays there at Metro. Someone thought we were cool.

The music could be really upfront, as social media was absent and people were wanting to get accelerated attraction with “randoms.” Little by way of cyber-checkin’.

Well, that’s one theory I read anyway. Also, is it just me or did people actually look physically different back then, like DNA was of a different quality? Less autism too. My brother had a Q-Bar medallion around a decade later… so roll up anytime and then straight in.

[ 2001? ] [ src ]

But Bennetts Lane was the first sign-on, and they got on board pretty soon after the first meeting using their new “tickets direct” page and the chap told us the frequent ticket queues stretching down the lane were a real problem and that’s why he wanted to sign up so badly.

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Who said jazz heads were stuck in the past? More like stuck in a lane!

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In the end, friendships, commission, equity or a wage, nothing really eventuated from Moshtix. Yet due to my newly acquired hearing issues, I think it would’ve been a nightmare getting into the live music scene during 2004 and beyond. Imagine troubleshooting a swipe reader or being invited to late-night drinks and wanting to leave after 1 minute. Free the legs. At least all my Groovetip work paid off… for others! I’d have to settle with karma points and a good story! The whole “kiss up, kick down” mentality and vying to become an apex predator ultimately never works in a co-operative universe.

Mr Petrie went on to build Taxi-app ingogo, but from my understanding was ejected by the investors 7.5 years in, and the app has since shut down without an exit. We had some good conversations and he was talking about taxis and standing desks even back in Sydney.

Real Life - Send Me An Angel '89

Anyway, Sonny Payne – killer drummer. “He was Frank Sinatra’s personal drummer for all of the singer’s live appearances with Count Basie and his big band in 1964 and 1965 and 1966; in fact, whenever Sinatra sang with Basie in the 1960s, Payne was the drummer.” – src

A band is never better than its drummer and Frank knew it.

Frank Sinatra - Luck Be A Lady

The Chairman of the Board backed-up by the drummer. Interestingly, Andrew left me a heap of jazz records and I still have them to this day.

But reading the Mile Davis autobiography during that time – great read – really helped me put Jazz into perspective.

Following on from this, it wasn’t really that cool to be in a Big Band and the drumming is quite challenging – anticipating all the band lines. And in the Big Band, I never really dialled into the importance of “double-stroke roll triplets” until many years later – crucial for jazz playing. It’s a type of poly-rhythm that can really empower a drummer to put all their rudiments into a triplet feel. And that’s what life is all about – seeing the normal things through new lenses!

Also, the “Rock and Roll” style is about switching from straight-ahead grooves to these triplet fills. Going from rock to roll. Think Bonham.

I play a triplet at 45 secs:

[switcheroo drums] Bon Jovi - Blaze of Glory (1990 + 2020)

School uniforms aside, Angus Young has said he even likes the beats slightly swung, not just the fills.

So around 1996 I saw Julian Joseph at The Continental Cafe in Greville Street with Charlie (see below.) After the show, the drummer Mark told me that to be a good funk player it really helps to be a good jazz player in order to free up the left hand.

Mark Mondesir Drum Lessons: You only need 7 Rudiments!! - Heavy Groovin! #drummerworld

My goal is to have it to the point where it almost needs to be attached with a leash!

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related:

Fretless bass player Charlie on the right:

pics
palette.fm
www.vinniecolaiuta.com/Interviews/ModernDrummer1993
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