On the beat...

Apparently, and I’m only quoting a line from a boy in the film ‘The Commitments’ here, "drumming takes skill, precision and control."

According to him (I can’t remember his name) that meant that Deco (he was the singer) was ruled out from ever being a drummer.

I don’t know why Deco (Andrew Strong) would ever have wanted to be a drummer anyway.

He had some voice and I was reminded of it as I watched a re-run of ‘The Commitments’ on Christmas night.

But it was the drummer line that really stuck in my head after the film.

You see over the past few months I have spent several hours playing in front of a packed house at Slane as a stand in drummer with a whole host of bands from Green Day, The Gaslight Anthem and Fall Out Boy.

Naturally, these drumming sessions were in large part imaginary.

Well the whole packed house thing was, but the actual drumming, well, I was actually drumming. Well okay sort of.

And the packed house? Well, if truth be told, they mostly did take place at times when there was no other residents in my house, (my packed house performances usually take place in an empty house) but if there were people in it wouldn't have mattered that much.

That’s because I have one of those fancy electronic drum kits that, when I plug in my headphones, nobody else can hear.

Well, okay if you were in the house you might hear the odd dull thud, but nothing like the boom, boom, bash that you’d expect to hear if it was a traditional kit.

When I was growing up we had one of those kits in our house and for some reason its usage was tolerated a whole lot more than it probably should have been.

Perhaps this was because there had been a line of drummers in my family that included my father and a couple of older brothers (they could actually drum and were in a pipe band), one of whom owned the kit that I used to love bashing.

Unfortunately bashing was about as good as it got for me and when my brother grew up and moved away to college, the drum kit made an exit from the house too.

Not that it stopped me from bashing around with a pair of drum sticks, battering on old books or on an old wooden block that had one of those stick-on shoe soles glued to it.

Oh yeah, I took some lessons too.

Learned all about triplets and paradiddles and rolls, but I’m not sure if it was just lack of practice or that I was simply just no good, but, well, I was just no good.

I did make it to the pipe band for a couple of years, but only as a tenor drummer - they are the ones with the fluffy sticks - but even when I left the temptation to batter along with the music never left me.

In fact I’m thinking that the battering along to the music with fingers or pens or wooden spoons or a couple of knives prompted the rest of my family into thinking they might get some peace if I had a drum kit.

And it would be even better if I had one that they couldn’t hear!

After all they had persevered a few years ago while I had painfully learned a few rudimentary beats on the bodran. And then, there were the guitar lessons, (I’m still practising away at the few chords I know). Come to think of it all I need now is the mouth organ and I’d be one of those one man band thingys.

Well, I would be if I could actually play any of them, but I’m not going to let a wee thing like that stop me.

After all there are footballers out there who will go kick around in a five-a-side pitch and imagine they are Messi for an hour, even if they never played a competitive game of football in their lives.

Using the same theory I reckon I should continue to play my live gigs in front of packed houses in Slane or Wembley safe in the knowledge that, compared to at least to the 5-a-side footballers, nobody knows when those impromptu performances take place.

Well, apart from two neighbours who might possibly be able to see into the room where I have the drum kit.

But I will close the curtains the next day because I do have the skill, precision and control at least to manage that…