sticking to it

A proud mom weighs in:

Max, my 19-year-old sonny boy, was one of those babies who loved clutching all things long and slender and banging them on flat surfaces.

When he was very little, we bought him a bright red tom-tom on a trip to Santa Fe, and playing that became his favorite pastime. (Well, after dropping rolls of toilet paper into the john apparently just to see what would happen or putting his face in the dog food bowl alongside our Cairn terrier.)

When he announced that he wanted to play the guitar, we made him take ukulele lessons. We thought if he survived a year of that, we’d let him move up. He began wearing flowered shirts and humming Don Ho songs.

I think his first drum lesson was when he was five or six. He tossed out the Hawaiian look and replaced it with grunge. He wanted a full drum set, but we made him get a single practice pad. We wanted to make sure he was going to stay with it.


He did. This kid drums on everything. (He gives a pretty amazing back massage, as you can well imagine.) He studied drums with the same teacher at the UMKC Conservatory of Music from first grade until his senior year of high school.

Then he trotted off to college at USC and figured he would join the Trojan Marching band as one of its drummers. He decided to audition to play the quads. That is the set of five tenor drums that is worn in front and played in a frenzy of speed and precision. Max arrived at the tryouts without ever having picked up (not to mention worn) one of these 40-pound rigs and never having laid a drumstick on the skins of one of these pups. He even had to ask someone how to hold the sticks. (Oh, and his experience with marching consisted of a few minutes high stepping around our kitchen just before he caught his flight to LA.) He had no clue that scores of kids who had marched and played in high school and who had dreamed of this opportunity for years would be right behind him in the long line at auditions. He had no idea that the competition would be so fierce.

Needless to say, the experience was a humbling one. But, rather than hide his red face in the sand, Max took the position that was offered on the cymbal line. He exchanged his grunge look for a cardinal and gold cape, helmet and plume.

He spent this past year playing cymbals, but on the side he was learning how to play the quads. He basically went into training, studying with a good friend who did make the line and then with an accomplished quad teacher. (I still haven’t figured out why they are called quads when there are five drums on the rig.) He practiced while awake and in his sleep. He used his fingers to practice while sitting at the kitchen counter or while stopped at traffic lights; he used chopsticks waiting for meals at Chinese restaurants, wooden spoons while making chocolate chip cookies, well, you get the picture.

I am very happy to report that his dedication and hard work paid off. Max called late last night to say he had made it. He and four other mad quad drummers will spend the next couple of weeks training up to ten hours a day until they have learned every precise and well choreographed stick maneuver necessary for the first performance of the 2008/2009 Trojan Marching band season.

You’ve seen how proud and excited Michael Phelps’ mom has been these past few days in Beijing? Just wait til you see me in the stands at a USC football game when the Spirit of Troy (aka The Greatest Marching Band in the History of the Universe) hits the field!