Today is 'National Buy an Instrument Day.' How many of you have done that over the course of your life, or bought an instrument or two or three for your child, who then decided to give it up?

My early musical introductions were traditional Country and Western type music. You know, artists like Johnny Cash, Buck Owens, Roy Acuff, Johnny Horton, Tex Ritter, Patsy Cline, Glenn Campbell, Hank WIlliams, Ray Charles and the occasional songs from Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass, who was not Country, but that 'Whipped Cream and Other Delights' album was a favorite for every young man in the 1960s. You know what I mean. This music got me interested in taking up an instrument.

So many of my friends took to the guitar as a musical instrument to learn to play. For me, it was the drum. I began taking lessons in middle school. My band teacher was tough on me. Maybe because I was a slow learner, but I got better.

In high school, I wanted to learn how to play a drum set. I already had mastered every other type of percussion instrument, but the drum set was the ultimate goal. For Christmas and birthdays, the drum set was always on the top of my list. A drum set never showed up.

After high school, my drum sticks were retired, and I never picked them up again. My passion of learning to play on a drum set faded away...except whenever I hear a drum solo in a song, like In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly or Beginnings by Chicago, I think of myself banging away at those drums with all my energy, up on a stage, somewhere, anywhere.

via National Calendar Day

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