Thank you to all those who entered the contest.. we really enjoyed reading some of the creative stories you all came up with for your old beat up snare drums.

The winner is Bob Sparhawk.  We will be completely re-doing his snare drum for him.  Check back soon for before and after pictures of the process!

Here is Bob's entry..

Dear SJC Drums,
It has come to my attention that you are having a "Pimp Out My Drum"
contest to completely change a snare drum.

My snare's life began in the Starion manufacturing plant in
Sri Lanka, near the coast of the Indian Ocean, in the year 1930. A young
girl named Chao’quin Mohammed was the chief assembler of the snare,
along with the rest of the kit, and it was her life’s work to finish the
set before her ninth birthday (if she did not reach her quota, she would
be fed to hogs by her foreman). From sunup to sundown she toiled
tirelessly to complete the kit, often not stopping to eat, simply
surviving on the carcasses of rodents and rotten breath mints. As she
drew closer to her ninth birthday, she came to a realization: she had no
head to place on the snare!! She improvised, and used cream-colored
construction paper, which gives my snare drum its uniquely crappy sound,
and remains there today.

Towards the end of the 30’s, the dark cloud of war began to drift over
Europe. Hitler and his German war machine began marching over the small
republics of Europe, and the future looked grim. The snare drum, drawing
from his great sense of service and bravery instilled by his matriarch
Chao’quin, enlisted in the Sri Lankan air corps. After its officer
training, the snare reached the Sri Lankan equivalent of the American
rank Lieutenant, and began flying missions against the German Luftwaffe.
Lt. “Starry” Starion, as his wingmen referred to him, flew over 120
missions over central and eastern Europe, with over 200 confirmed kills.
This drew the attention of the American Office of Secret Actions (OSA),
and he was enlisted as a covert operative. Although the actions he
carried out for the good of the world are still classified, it is highly
rumored that Hitler’s suicide was a cover story for the brave actions of
one selfless percussion instrument. He was knighted by the English
royalty and received dozens of American awards for his brave actions.

After the war, Starry decided it was time to search for a better life
than what Sri Lanka offered him, and that he would move to America.
Unfortunately, the ship he was traveling on, the USS Orange County, was
caught in a violent storm, and sunk. The sole survivor of Orange
County’s progressive but inevitable failure, Starry washed on the shore
of an uncharted island, where he would spend the next fifty years. After
building a satellite out of twigs, a coconut and a crab, he managed to
broadcast a distress signal to nearby ships, and was picked up by a
sausage freighter leaving Bolivia. After finding out they had the
legendary Lt. Starry on board, the crew was happy to divert from their
trip to Sydney to bring Starry to Boston.

Upon his arrival in Boston, the intrepid snare was introduced to an
entirely new world; in the past fifty years, seemingly space-age
technology from the 40s had become ubiquitous, and life was nothing
close to what it was before. In this new lifetime of unknowns, Starry
had found one reminder of his former self: the rest of his kit!! He had
stopped into the local Guitar Center to see if he could find a family to
live with, and lo and behold, his brothers were there! They had left Sri
Lanka years before after Chao’quin was diagnosed with Down’s syndrome
and subsequently offered her own show on the E! network. Life was good
for Starry, and he and his family were picked up by a generous aspiring
drummer named Paul Clotar.

Paul was the man that introduced Starry and his life to a stable
American life. A wholesome, good-hearted, all-American kid fond of
paradiddles, Paul showed Starry and his brothers that although
strikingly different compared to the life they lived before, American
life is a great thing. Unfortunately, only after a short time together,
Paul decided that the drums had found their place in American culture,
and shortly thereafter sold the kit to Dominic Campana. Paul sent the
money to Sally Struthers and her Save the Children foundation.

Dom was everything that Paul was not. A thick-skinned, gangbanging crack
dealer from the mean streets of Amish Country, Dom was a very tough
cookie indeed. Often abusing Starry and forcing him to whore himself to
two-bit session drummers for extra drug money, Starry and his kit lived
a very tough life. It was at this point that I found him on the street,
tattered, broke and alone. I picked him up to give him a ride home, and
we found Dom lying on the floor in a pool of his own vomit, dead from an
overdose.

After finishing counseling, Starry and the kit have lived a great life
with me. I have taken my first steps as a drummer with them, and they
have bonded with the CB crash I purchased for $10 because it was made
out of beer cans. Starry now spends his spare time helping the elderly,
doing community service and generally being a peachy guy. He has lived a
fuller life than most people, and it is for that reason that I believe
he deserves to be pimped out to the maximum. If you do pick me, please
put a Gamecube with a DVD player in him!!!

Thank you very much for your time.

Sincerely,

Bob Sparhawk

PHOTOS:

My snare has dolla bills flippin on all you fools.













My snare had a brief career as a Calvin Klein model, showcased by this shot taken circa 1996.





















My snare studying Intermediate Macroeconomics








 

My snare exercising his Tony Hawk skillz and totally kicking my a** while I cry