One wild night of many stands out in particular. We played a huge toga party somewhere and I'd borrowed an old fire extinguisher that was one of those huge metal types that was just water and air. I charged it with air at a closed gas station and hid it by my drum kit. I was trippin' my nurtz off and during the drum solo I pared it down to just my foot on the bass drum. I grabbed the fire extinguisher and fired a "warning shot" over the crowd just to make sure they were cool with it, and at the insistence of the girls I hosed them all down in their togas, and most of them weren't wearing anything underneath, God bless 'em. They all walked up one by one and stood in front of the drum kit waiting to be sprayed. It was like a "Wet Toga" contest and the place went nuts. That was fun.
One night I was at a place called the Wooden Nickel and it was again during a drum solo when I was tripping. It's funny considering I didn't care for soloing much, but sometimes the guys would just stop all at once and make me do a solo, and tripping was always a little bit of a different story. The ripples going across the drum heads and the colors exploding from the cymbals added quite a show, if only to me. There was a framed stained-glass head of a Native-American (an "Indian" at the time, with no disrespect ever intended). I'd seen him a million times but for some reason he caught my eye during my solo, and while I watched his head slowly grew a body and then started dancing to the drum solo. That was interesting and pretty heavy actually.
I'd hit a drum and purple ripples would go from the center to the edge and back like the drum head was a pond. Auras of color would burst from the cymbals. That was intense in itself but the colors would vary with the different sounds of the cymbals. The harsher cymbals like Chinas and such would put out spikey waves of reds and oranges, while the sweeter-sounding crash cymbals put out softer waves of blues and greens. The Ride cymbal, which gives a "Ping" sound and carries the beat in certain sections was releasing "sound bubbles" that matched the hits. The hi-hats were sort of a combination of everything. Oh wow, I just remembered...when I'd step on the hi-hat pedal to close the cymbals together for a "Chick" sound often used to help keep time during a fill, a "smoke ring" of color would shoot out all around the hats like the rays of the Sun. The bass drum shot out a burst of color like a cannon. A+ for special-effects.
It was vivid and consistent. It made perfect sense at the time and still would now if somehow I could see it sober. It was like seeing auras, which everything has. The ripple thing was a nice touch. The colors and shapes of the waves coming from the drums and cymbals fit the sounds perfectly. Even tripping heavily generally doesn't make someone lose their mind temporarily or forget shit or whatever, and I knew at the time that I was experiencing a condition called Synesthesia, where people can "hear" colors and "see" sounds and such, in real time. It was beautiful and fascinating but again it could be too much for some people to combine with playing music in front of people.
To me it was like drumming in another dimension or being in an ultra-intense video game. I could even blend the colors by hitting two adjacent cymbals at the same time. My big China cymbal would explode into color like the Mothership in Galaga or something, and I didn't even have to keep stuffing in quarters to play, like we had to do back then. I'd get to the end of a big drum fill and I'd be like "Red cymbal...FIRE! Cymbal bubbles...LAUNCH!" I could completely control it, like being in a lucid dream. Doing a fill around the toms was like skipping a stone across a pond. It was so much fun.
That's one reason I say that most people wouldn't want to play tripping. That kind of thing can be distracting to say the least. It's one thing at a party or in your room or whatever but it's quite another when you have to concentrate on your playing or you'll make a fool of yourself. It's not for everyone, but that's the fun of it. I'll never forget...that night I'd given a hit to my friend Mike, who was known for his ability to take superhuman amounts of drugs. During the solo and dancing stained glass Native-American time, Mike walked up in front of the drums and just stood there looking at me with a very bemused grin on his face. He didn't need to say a word. That was some good shit. It was called Green Pyramid, just as in this image.
One night we were playing a frat party on Halloween in Columbia, SC. Greg had some liquid acid, which was as good as it gets, and we were planning to dose. We pulled up on a beautiful afternoon. A few of the first-year frat boys, or "pledges," came over to help us load. One kid was moving his jaw all around or "chewing 'air gum'" as I say and I knew he was high as a kite. He was either doing tons of blow, which I doubted, or he was taking Ecstasy, which was more likely. I said. "Dude, what's your favorite letter of the alphabet?" "X" he replied. "I thought so" I said. I asked him if there was any more and he said yes but it was here and there, which I understood, but he'd look for some. I thanked him and asked him if he needed any money and he said not to worry about it.
He took off and we set up and had dinner and goofed around and put on some costumes. A few of the guys went ahead and dosed but I waited. Something about the kid told me he'd live up to his word but I still hadn't even seen him at the party by the end of the first set. I'd held off on tripping because I thought I might get some X, but by the time we started second set I figured the kid wasn't going to show so I took three drops of the liquid. Like we often did we played nearly a two-hour set. I was really starting to get off on the acid around five songs in, and wouldn't you know it...up came another drum solo. What's with the drum solos? Sounds like I only did them when I was tripping. Maybe that's how it was.
Anyway the stage was set up against a wall with several windows and I'd set up as near to one as I could get. Even in freezing weather if you get 350 or so warm bodies in a room it instantly becomes a sauna. I was right in the middle of the solo when a hand reached in through the window. It was facing up and it was holding a tablet. The kid had brought me a hit of X just like he said. For free. I never saw his face; only his hand. I kept playing with my left hand and reached over with my right hand and took the tablet; thanked the kid and gobbled it down dry and kept on playing. I could barely make out the wispy shape of the kid running off into the night. That was like a movie and we all lost it laughing. Needless to say taking a hit of X on top of a triple dose of good acid made for an interesting evening. DON'T DO DRUGS! Anyway that was fun too.
There are so many stories...it was a total blast for me but it just wouldn't be the thing to do for many people, and it's totally understandable. Playing music demands so much of your brain that sometimes you can't even look at the hot chick bending over a pool table to line up a long corner-pocket shot or you might completely blow a drum fill (true story), so think what adding psychedelic drugs to the mix could do. It can be downwight scawy for some. No dishonor there. On top of playing music some people didn't like to trip around people they didn't know, or crowds, or didn't like tripping indoors. I certainly preferred tripping in Nature whenever possible but none of that bothered me.
Honestly the hardest thing for me to do when I was tripping and playing was simply to keep playing. It was so cool to watch my hands doing their thing that it became almost an out-of-body deal and I'd dang near forget it was me playing. I'd see those hands moving and sticks flying and tracers and colors and all, and it was so entertaining that I'd just want to stop and watch the hands play drums. I'd literally catch myself at the last split-second and remember that those hands belonged to ME and I'd better keep them going if I knew what was good for me.
It was sort of like when the hippies would go blind from staring into the Sun while tripping because it was so cool. That really happened. I knew what could happen if I looked at my hands and I tried to avoid it but sometimes I couldn't resist. Nobody ever knew I was tripping unless I told them, but stopping dead mid-song with a grin of wonderment on my face might've given the game away. It happened more times than I'd have liked but luckily I caught it. It's funny really but at the time it'd have been an almighty train wreck. Apparently I thought that if I stopped to watch, the hands would somehow magically manage to keep on playing. That's not how it works. So yeah, that was the hardest thing for me anyway, but it'd probably be the least of some folks' worries. Don't trip and play. This has been a public-service announcement. Have a nice day.
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