12:35 a.m., 10.12.03
A Percussive Lullaby

Wanna hear something amazing?

I'm sure I've mentioned before the extremes with which Nous can sleep. Maybe I haven't. One of my favourite examples is when she fell asleep in the hard drugs room at a party in a city apartment. Dudes snorting, shooting up, popping pills... Deals being done, high fives and "whoo!"ing all around, and there's Nous curled up under the doona catching a few z's.

Well, she outdid herself this afternoon.

I'm a drummer. I've just got myself a brand new, gorgeous, all-maple-shell kit, plus a battery of cymbals and twin bass pedals. It's been a few years since I played, but the moves are still there.

Back when I was doing it full time, I got myself a reputation as the loudest drummer in Melbourne. Dudes who had played with Virgil would play with me and say "Dude, you are fucking loud."

I didn't want that reputation, I just knew how I liked the drums to sound, and worked out how to achieve it. It's not about hard hitting, it's a flick of the wrist rimshot issue.

Nonetheless, I have fond memories of LukeH, a local keyboard and piano wizard, onstage with me in an acid jazz cover show we used to do. He was used to playing with jazz guys who take it pretty easy, so our first couple of rehearsals left him severely shaken.

He used to come on stage with a set of those yellow foam earplugs in, and construction-style earmuffs over the top. It was quite a look. To quote Ford Fairlane, he was "killing rockin' rapin' roll. Keith Richards was turning over in his grave, and the man isn't dead yet!"

A pub I played in Footscray - with a band called Wine, Women and Schlong (it used to be a girl band... get it?) - got fined $7000 for noise pollution after a show I did there.

I stress, I'm not a metalhead or noise junkie, I just like the sound of drums hit right.

So today, I sit down to do some practice, with Nous lying on the bed a metre from my snare drum. She has plugs in.

Midway through a complex tom/double bass drum exercise I've been shedding, she falls asleep. I notice. I think that's a bit odd, but I stop to give her some peace for her nap.

An hour later, I reckon it's time for her to get up. I sit down at the set again and launch straight into a Virgil Donati style thrash metal groove. The bass drums are pumping so loud that my wardrobe is shaking noticeably. Photos are falling off the wall and I can see my reflection shuddering in the TV screen's reflection.

She doesn't stir an inch.

This, mind you, from a woman who sleeps so lightly at night that if I tiptoe out of bed for a piss, she'll tell me where my shorts are before I realise I'm looking for them.

That is some twilight zone shit.

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