Blog Viewer

Franks Drum shop, cont.

I am so behind on my Monday posts! We’ve just been super busy here at Rhythm! and PAS so I’m just now able to finish my Franks Drum Shop Post. I guess you all just had that much more time to get excited about it, right?!

 If you haven’t already, read my first post about Franks Drum Shop so you have some more background.

 I wanted to do another post about it because we have so much in the boxes Maurie Lishon donated, I couldn’t do just one! So here goes number two:

In my last Franks post, I included what I think is a great quote from Mike Balter in which he says walking off the elevator into Franks is like “’The Wizard of Oz’ where the movie is in black and white until you get to Oz, then everything is in color.” I love that image and found myself wishing I could have seen Franks in color, all the photos I’ve seen are black and white. Well folks, I finally found one in color in one of the donation boxes and it looks like it was just as magical as Balter describes!!

=
Going through all the pictures and posters has been one of the best parts about researching Franks. Every other picture I pick up has another famous drummer in it. So many big names came through here! Here are a couple flyers I found for clinics. Check out the lineup!

I love this handwritten poster!

Another one of the coolest things I've found about Franks is that some of the early PAS meetings were actually held at Franks! In the words of Maurie Lishon, "The Percussive Arts Society, when it was first formed, had many of the early meetings at Franks Drum  Shop after 6 o'clock when we closed. All the guys would come up and we'd have our meeting there. We used to get into some very interesting and violent arguments... PAS became the biggest factor of it's kind in the percussion world. Today it's THE biggest and we feel that we are responsible in many ways for the early days. Caroll Bratman, Bob Yeager, and I subsidized it the first couple of years before all the other guys got really involved financially. They jumped on the bandwagon because it was the coming thing. I served on the Board of Directors as Instrument Specialist for over ten years. "

Not only was Franks Drum Shop influential for Chicago-area percussionists, it helped lay the foundation for PAS and therefore has influenced percussionists all over the world. That's pretty cool, to say the least.

I hope you all enjoyed today's post and Thursday I'll have more information on some of the resources PAS provides, so check it out! Next Monday I've got something super cool to post so stay tuned for that as well.

Percussively Yours,

Side of the Pacific Islands Slit Drum we have displayed in the Time Tunnel:
http://rhythmdiscoverycenter.org/onlinecollection/pacific-islands-slit-drum/