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Looper's Delight
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In my first year of college , I went and saw the group Three Dog Night play up at the fairly recently constructed Oakland Coliseum (the first of many shows I'd see there over the years). The drummer was playing a double bass drum set of the brand new released Ludwig see through Vistalite drums. I had never even heard of such a thing and it was so wonderfully modern and psychedelic I became obsessed with them. I had been drumming for about 4 years at this point on the first drumset that my parents had purchased for me (a decrepit blue sparkle Stanford brand) and these things were like a spaceship to me. As chance would have it, I dropped out of college that Winter quarter (much to the chagrin of my parents) and the next summer got a job working graveyard, 6 nights a week, 10 hours a night at a Tomato canning factory in Eastside San Jose. My station at the canning factory was about 20 feet above the canning lines where mostly hispanic women in hairnets picked through freshly boiled whole tomatoes were two very long lines (the length of two football fields in this enormous tin sheds) that carried two different sizes of empty cans that flung by my face at an amazing rate of 7 per second. These cans would then hit can diversion machines that would send a number of them down to each individual canning station with a dozen or so women at it. On the average of every 20 minutes a can would fall over, jamming the machines and making an even more horribly loud sound than that of thousands of empty cans make hurtling down a line. My job was to pick up the can. On my station (and I was the only person up above the canning lines) the rising steam from the boiling tomatoes was so thick that I could not see the ground and the women (and more importantly, the supervisors) could not see me. The sound was so loud that I was able to play for hours each night on the big metal canning lines with enormous 2S drumsticks (the closest thing in the drumming world to small tree trunks). Mind you, there was NOTHING to do at this job for 10 hours a night. I would play for 4 hours with my left hand and for 4 hours with my right hand each night and I did religiously for the whole summer. Lol, I thought it would make me a stronger drummer to do so (and I knew nothing about good technique or the ergonomics of sticking at the time). Well, I was being paid the ungodly sum of slightly over 5 dollars an hour (this was close to three times minimum wage) and at the end of 10 weeks of this, I marched to the store and proudly bought a huge six piece Ludwig Vistalite drum set, with a 22" kick, 13", 14", 16", and a custom 18" floor tom with a deepshelled 14" X 6 1/2" chrome Supraphonic snare drum (that is still my favorite snare drum in the world). For the first year I owned it, I was embarrassed to play in public with it because I thought it was a way better drumset than I was a drummer. As the years went on (forgive me, this was the early 70's) I added on to that drumset (and even had Metheny drummer, Danny Gottlieb send me a 14" X 14" floor tom shell that matched it for free when he heard I was looking for one) and even ended up replacing the toms and built 8 octobans out of clear plexiglass shells so that by the time I sold it, it consisted of 2 22" kick drums 2 10" toms 2 12" toms 1 13" tom 2 14" toms a set of concert toms (6",8",10", 12") 8 6" octobans of various lengths 1 14" snare drum When I finally sold it, I did so to a friend of mine who had been a big fan of my band Tao Chemical for $600 and a Purecussion flat drumset. This was about 2 years before Vistalites suddenly became huge collectors items. I would have made four times that much had I waited as it turned out. I wish I had it to this day but I have to content myself with my custom maple drums with vintage Leedy art deco hardware on them............probably a vastly better drum set. I tell you though, there's a reason that John Bonham played that huge kit of Orange Vistalite Ludwigs with Led Zeppelin. They sounded like GOD on big rock and roll numbers...................just enormous!!!!! But we had entered the era of small drumkits and they were dinosaurs and had to go. I miss that kit. ******************************** Here's what it looked like except that I had an extra 16" X 18" floor tom on mine. http://www.ludwigdrummer.com/Other%20Peoples%20Drums/kevin%20masterson/clear%20vistalite.JPG
