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[bradrn]

With one major exception, I name my drums after what they look like—I used to have a nine-piece Superstar Classic in Indigo Sparkle called "Big Blue"; the Cardinal is a deep red/maroon color; my first-ever Big Boy™ drum kit was a plain black-finished Rockstar that I called "Black Beauty"; and the Irwin, a Vox Telstar reissue, is finished in "silver croco", so I named it after the late Crocodile Hunter. The exception was the First Act, which was a First Act-brand set that was bought from Wal-Mart as a trial before I got Black Beauty. (Incidentally, the very first time I played the First Act, I had visibly dented the cymbal. By the time I got my first Paiste hi-hats, the First Act hi-hats looked like a dog had digested them. I also scuffed up a Magic Brass crash/ride pretty good before, again, upgrading to Paiste. [Incidentally incidentally, the Paiste Alpha 20" metal ride in brilliant finish is the best ride cymbal I've ever used. Fight me.])

Big Blue ironically provided me with a white whale. As I mentioned above, it was a nine-piece kit, but it didn't start out that way: I purchased a second kick and 13" rack tom for it. The last thing I toyed with getting was an 18" floor tom, but when I had the opportunity I passed on it for some reason and never found another one until after I had sold it.

I’ve actually never heard of someone naming their drums. Maybe it’s a jazz vs rock thing. (Or maybe it’s just that I don’t know enough drummers… well, actually, now that I think about it, I don’t know any drummers. I probably should.)

(Out of curiosity, what are the long black things in the lower-left corner?)

Octobans! Just like my favorite drummer, Stewart Copeland, used during his tenure with the Police.

Ah, of course! I knew they looked familiar.

(Even if you don't want to shell out big bucks for Silentstrokes and L80s, they do sell drum mutes/muffles for drums other than kicks. I was in a band back in college that practiced in an apartment and no one ever complained [that I know of] while using them. In Amniote, we used to dampen the kicks on Big Blue by putting bath towels or blankets in them.)

Now this is something I somehow never even considered. I really should get some sort of mute. (A kind drum teacher once gave me a ring for the snare, but it isn’t nearly the same thing.)

I describe the Cardinal as "big, loud, and dumb" because that's exactly what it is. You could very likely find a Granstar on stage at a thrash metal show in the '80s or '90s; Lars Ulrich appears to have used either a Granstar or (possibly an Artstar?) on the …And Justice For All tour. The guy who sold me it claimed that at least one thrash album was recorded on it back in the day but was unable to elaborate further. Unfortunately, it was bulky to the point of being unable to ergonomically set up. As I related above, it was a tight squeeze on the rack system, and the increased depths of the toms conflicted with the increased diameters of the kicks, so my options were either a) use impossible angles on the heads or b) position the heads in the stratosphere. You couldn't arrange cymbals around it very well either, particularly the hi-hat and ride. Even less wide cymbals (12" hats, 18" ride) defied ergonomic placement, and over the hi-hat, if you wanted to keep it in a reasonable position, you had to jack up at least two of the toms. The 16" rack tom couldn't be put vertically at all using the standard mounting system and it was so heavy it often settled on the surface of the drum and led to damage to the finish. The size of its footprint in the basement was, and remains, also a concern. Miking it up was difficult when we were recording Fully Formed. And it was heavy—it's an absolute unit of a kit. All of this meant that the Cardinal was never going to see the outside of the basement again as I knew from prior experience that the guys in Amniote would refuse to lug it around (and quite frankly I didn't want to, either).

This all sounds horribly familiar… my single drumset (some sort of Pearl, though I forget the exact make) is fairly big, and trying to squeeze it into the corner where it stays most of the time is a little painful. After several years I eventually managed to get it vaguely comfortable, though indeed the toms are at impossible angles and the cymbals never quite land up where they should.

[Raphael]

To be honest, I'm a bit surprised that people still manage it to come up with new band names. You'd think that, with all the bands that have existed both in real life and in fiction so far, all the possible band names would be taken by now.

Anyway, lots of fun and success with your drums and your band, Man in Space!

[Linguoboy]

To be honest, I'm a bit surprised that people still manage it to come up with new band names. You'd think that, with all the bands that have existed both in real life and in fiction so far, all the possible band names would be taken by now.

Except we keep coming up with new words!

My latest choice for a bandname is "Paedophile Groomers". It got it from an insult someone flung at a friend whose employer sponsored a drag brunch. It's not a word combination that existed even a few years ago so I doubt it's been used yet.

[Ryusenshi]

I’ve actually never heard of someone naming their drums. Maybe it’s a jazz vs rock thing.

Neither have I. The drummers I know have just one drumkit (or, at most, one acoustic set and one electronic set), so it doesn't need a name. Even for celebrities, I can't remember a famous drummer having a drum set with a name. It's more common for guitarists or bassists: B.B. King's Lucille, Keith Richards's Micawber, Eric Clapton's Blackie...

Edit: part of the reason is that drum sets are rather modular. You may easily keep the same drums and change the cymbals, depending on the band you're playing.

[Raphael]

Would that be one of those pedophiles who try to "groom" children, or someone who, for whatever reason, tries to "groom" pedophiles?

[Ryusenshi]

I think that's the point.

[alice]

Obligatory Peanuts reference, from just over half a century ago

[Moose-tache]

My latest choice for a bandname is "Paedophile Groomers". It got it from an insult someone flung at a friend whose employer sponsored a drag brunch. It's not a word combination that existed even a few years ago so I doubt it's been used yet.

I'm glad your friend has a sense of humor about it. I'm really struggling to keep my cool over the way "groomer" has been repurposed as a homophobic slur.

[fusijui]

"Pedophile groomer" has been around as long as I've been in the US, which is going on forty years now. I first heard it during one of the recurring struggles to boot (or 'deplatform', I guess we'd say now) NAMBLA & co. from the gay rights umbrella. (Having been re-branded as 'queer', and becoming a wastebasket taxon for weird sex of any kind, it's harder these days -- practically pointless, really.)

[Moose-tache]

Woah, woah, woah, let's not besmirch the good name of weird sex.

[fusijui]

Wanting weird sex doesn't mean you have same-sex attraction, is all the stake I'm setting out.

[Linguoboy]

"Pedophile groomer" has been around as long as I've been in the US

Citations please. Most of the Ghits I can find for this compound are from this year and the oldest dates back only to 2018. Many are actually for "pedophile/groomer". I followed the NAMBLA debate and I don't recall ever hearing it. In fact, I don't ever recall hearing the term "groomer" in that context. ("Pedophile", yes, and "chicken hawk"; perhaps also the term "grooming"--though I recall hearing this much more frequently in a heterosexual context--but not "groomer". At the time, the only "groomers" I knew about were dog groomers.)

I'm glad your friend has a sense of humor about it. I'm really struggling to keep my cool over the way "groomer" has been repurposed as a homophobic slur.

I'm not thrilled with it either. Mocking it is how I deal with it.

[Travis B.]

I've heard "groomer" a number of times in the last few years, which strongly implies "pedophile" (on the part of the alleged "groomer") and that gay people in general are pedophiles, but I'd never heard "pedophile groomer" (i.e. someone who grooms other people into being pedophiles) until, well, yesterday, in Linguoboy's post.

[fusijui]

Citations please. Most of the Ghits I can find for this compound are from this year and the oldest dates back only to 2018. Many are actually for "pedophile/groomer". I followed the NAMBLA debate and I don't recall ever hearing it. In fact, I don't ever recall hearing the term "groomer" in that context. ("Pedophile", yes, and "chicken hawk"; perhaps also the term "grooming"--though I recall hearing this much more frequently in a heterosexual context--but not "groomer". At the time, the only "groomers" I knew about were dog groomers.)

Why would Google be tracking, accurately or at all, spoken language events a decade before the internets were even really a thing?

You're right in that I'm not certain about the exact phrase "pedophile groomer"; I do clearly remember the two words being used in combination pretty freely by the mid-80s, if not in that precise search-engine collocation.

"Grooming" was absolutely a term used then to talk about pedophile activism, though not not necessarily in the circles or media you followed.

[Moose-tache]

Obviously “grooming” has been around forever, in relation to pedophilia. But tossing out “groomer” like a self-explanatory epithet is relatively new.

[Raphael]

Why are there only one Vitamin A and one Vitamin C, but a whole lot of Vitamin Bs?

[Raphael]

Obligatory Peanuts reference, from just over half a century ago

Belated comment: now I wonder about the plot of a novel for which all three of these names would be fitting.

[Ryusenshi]

Why are there only one Vitamin A and one Vitamin C, but a whole lot of Vitamin Bs?

Presumably because one person discovered what they thought was "a vitamin" and dubbed it Vitamin B, and later other people realized there was more than 1.

The situation is similar with supernovae: at first, astronomers divided them into supernova type I and supernova type II. Then the first group was subdivided into type Ia, Ib, Ic. Eventually, it was discovered that type Ia supernovae have a completely different mechanism from the others (accretion on a white dwarf), while type Ib and Ic supernovae are actually similar to type II (core collapse of a massive star).

[Raphael]

Thank you! But how can someone mistake several chemical substances for one chemical substance?

[alice]

Thank you! But how can someone mistake several chemical substances for one chemical substance?

By being human?