My Story of Deadheaded Ego Death and how I found the balls to play rock drums
By Aaron Sperske
I grew up in a musical household, my mom remarried after leaving my dad on a commune in the Santa Cruz Mountains because life in a treehouse was not for her as I was told sometime later. The man she married when I was 4 years old was an Australian jazz saxophonist who was part of the dying west coast jazz scene of the mid-seventies and part of Warne Marsh’s inner circle. I remember lots of late night smoke filled airless jam sessions with so much goose honking it would put me in a terrible mood as I lay in my bedroom trying desperately to fall asleep for the following schoolday. One of the benefits of this situation though was that upon returning from school in the early afternoon I would find the jam room empty except for two instruments; one was the upright bass which was too cumbersome to lug home daily, as well as a trap drumkit. Ev- eryone blew horns and those as well as any guitars would have been taken home with their respective players. So I would sneak in and start banging away on the drums as any young active five year old boy might do especially one raised on a steady diet of Saturday morning 1970’s cartoons that all seemed to end with a superhero musical ensemble of some sort. So eventually this became an obsession of mine and the family realized I meant business and instead of yelling at me every time they caught me banging away on some jazzbo’s kit, they opted to buy me my own kit and get me some lessons. Well fast-forward a few years and it was now that much romanticized period of new wave and punk rock when anyone could start a band and so, being 11 years old, me and my two best friends decided to start our own punk band and we named it Utter Kaos. We auditioned for our 6th grade talent show and not only did we qualify, we ended up being the headliners. We had gone up against pop lockers and break dancers and won the esteemed top slot. We performed the black flag version of “louie louie” and I remember a lot of the student body with their hands raised clapping and singing along. Well, over the next few years I started many a punk band with many a friend and played lots of shitty house parties and shittier pub gigs around the greater L.A. area until around the age of 16. When I was 16 I discovered acid rock and soon progressed to the ultimate acid rock band the Grateful Dead. I soon became a full-blown Deadhead following them around the state and soon the country and this was right before their 80’s peak better known as the “touch” years referring to the hit song “Touch of Grey” they had in the summer of ‘87. I saw them many times from ‘85 to ‘88 and over that period something had happened following the Dead and being part of the collective hive-mindset. I no longer felt comfortable separating myself from the group whichever group that may be. I felt awkward trying to attract attention as an individual but at the same time when I would participate in the all too well known drum circles that have become part of the Deadhead ritual, I was always annoyed by how no one seemed to care about syncopation or playing with any sense of rhythm for that matter, and it somehow lead me back to being interested in playing the trap kit once again. I had really given up on drums during these years as an individual pursuit until around ‘89. That’s when I got back into it hard and ended up auditioning for the one local band I thought was any good as they were a 60’s style band called The Miracle Workers. Low and behold I got the gig and got to make an album and tour it with a proper label etc. Well, eventually I was totally trans- formed back into a band dude with band dude goals and really into everything that entails. I eventually went to a Jerry Garcia show and saw all of my old Deadhead comrades and all they kept saying to me was that I seemed to have a big ego and that I had changed but I couldn’t really see it that way. I just thought I had succeeded at making music as opposed to following someone else’s. The point if there is any in this rambling of mine is what it takes to be a good if not great drummer, and there’s lots of really great drummers, but it only matters that you know something they don’t and this is what it comes down to. Ego - I discovered - it’s what sets us apart from one another and the loss of it is what joins us together in a puddle of freedom. Ego sets us free of any need for subculture to identify to one another who we are and what we’re about.