I think I have found that stick. I can send a pic if necessary. How do I collect the reward?

I have had plenty of stuff stolen. Drum gear, electronics, etc. I loaned a kit to a friend of mine and their entire gear trailer was stolen. :-)

I had a piece of Moongel go missing last week. Can anyone help me, I've had that little gel square since the start of the week before. £250,000 reward for it's return!! Falling Do

I had a WMP kit stolen out of my car while I was loading out of a club we had played. (1969) It had to happen within a 5 minute time window as I was in and out of the club with gear. They got the drums, my cymbals and my trap case with all the stands. The loss hurt like hell for years. I felt so profoundly stupid for leaving them alone even for a minute.

Shoot, now that I'm talking about it, it still hurts! :o

I did get some cymbals for free once - by accident. We had flown down to Florida to do an outdoor wedding gig at a marina. The clients had secured a rental kit locally for me, so all I brought down from New York was my cymbals and my go-to snare drum. When we got to the gig, the first thing I did was swap out their brass and their snare drum for my stuff. After the gig, one of the staff guys told me that he would pack my stuff for me so I could go grab a bite with the rest of the band. We ate, we drank we grabbed our gear and headed back to the airport for our flight back to NY. When I got back home, the first thing I did was to unpack. There were -four- extra cymbals in my bag! A complete set of A. zildjian 14" hats, an 18" crash and a 22" ride. The staff guy had not only packed my cymbals into the bag, he packed theirs too! Next day I called the producers office that had booked the gig and I told him the story. He told me he'd look into it and get back to me. Days went by and I didn't hear a peep about the cymbals so I called the guy again. He tells me, 'They're yours! The client had filed a claim with some insurance outfit and the company was paying for the loss.' (!) 'Don't complicate things, keep the cymbals!' he told me. I did too! I ended up hocking them a few years later during a 'dry spell' when I needed some ready cash. I never bothered to get them out of hock. Nice sounding set of cymbals too. Good example of; easy come, easy go! baby crawl2

John

My cabin was broken into while I was in Albany, $6000 plus in equipment stolen. Every cop in western NY was looking for Bucky Philips, and didn't have time to invest in my situation. I suspected a few individuals that I had in the cabin for a couple of jams. So I posted $500 reward with pics of my distinctive red ripple Leedy set in the local supermarkets. I got a call, staked it out. Had to push the Gowanda cops to follow up. Justin Kubasiak ended up with a six month sentence in Erie County jail...you know what happens to weenies in that hell hole...of which he served three months. He had to pay about $1300 in restitution for damage and missing stuff. I had to wait several months while my equipment was in evidence for trial.

But I got all my K cons back, Leedy (sold to Billnvick), DW, guitars, mics, and other stuff.

You know, I guess I was "lucky." I don't recall anything significant being stolen.

We had a lot of "volunteer" help in loading up after gigs, and we did play in some "shady" places.

Surely someone else on here remembers the Yankee Clipper in Moline, Ill.? It was a pretty unique place, where the band actually setup behind the bar at bar level. The bartenders operated between the band stage and the bar. Well, to make a long story short, it was our last gig before Christmas in 1974 and for some reason I took my car that week and didn't travel in the band. When I got there and checked in (we stayed in an apartment upstairs, and boy was it a dive!), a guy in a suit told me where to park in the alley behind the club and near the back door to a massage parlor. He told me that was "protected" territory and I didn't need to worry about theft or vandalism... and, he obviously knew what he was talking about, as nothing happened, even though there were homeless drunks wandering that alley, the nearly constant sound of police sirens, etc. etc. etc.

Bill

I was in a Christian band.....oh sorry, I should clarify, a band of Christians....and we rehearsed at a church. We were told we could keep our gear there in the corner and some in the cabinets.

One day we went to rehearse and some stuff was gone - all my mics and cables, but more importantly my guitarist's Roland JC. Nothing was insured (we were very poor) especially when we learned about what had happened to our gear. That came in the form of a confession when our bass player ended up in the hospital for a drug overdose - stolen to sell for drug money.

The story does have a happy ending though. Though we never got the gear back (or any money for it) our bass player (who was dismissed of his duties) made a good clean recovery and has been drug free for 17 years now - good career, beautiful family. God is good!

Besides that - never had any gear stolen in 25 years since I started gigging.

Good for him, but with a good career, wouldn't he want to make restitution for the harm he caused through his addiction? Seems like the Christian thing to do.

I've been very fortunate. I've never had any equipment stolen, unless not getting paid for drums which I've sold counts. In order to pay the rent while in college, I sold a virgin 22" Rogers bass and a matching 12x15 tom to a friend who paid me half the money up front with the promise to pay the second half the following semester. Well, he dropped out of school and never made it back the next semester. Never heard from him again. I figured the $100 he owed me was the furthest thing from his mind after having to drop out of school.

I could care less about that $100 now, but I sure wish I still had those two drums.

I was "on tour" and played in New Jersey with 10 pc. band, horn section, etc. playing disco in the late 70s and we all travelled in one Dodge Econovan, as you can imagine quite tight! We were all packed for the road after the gig and one of the guys needed to get to his suitcase to get some meds, at least that's what he said.

Anyway, we had to partially unpack, my cymbal bag ended up leaning against the side of the van when we were all packed again and we drove off without them.

We got to the next gig in Connecticut early in the morning, crashed for a few hours, and went to set up and realized I had no cymbals. Amazingly when we called the club from the night before the cleaning guy had found them and drove 3 hours to return them to me.

A cleaning guy from New Jersey no less!!!!

I've been pretty fortunate to have had only a cowbell taken from my drums (I have had to track-down and recover a few items, while gigging, such as bass drum beater, & sticks though.) Maybe the same culprit who got Mcdrummer's stick?

Drummerjohn reminded me that, years ago, while putting together a one-shot band for a college show, we all left our equipment at our rehearsal space. My Turner microphone (vocal, as this was in the days prior to big PA's and live drum miking) and cables turned up missing. I confronted the guy who owned the practice space about this. I felt he was the only one that was suspect.

He acted as if it was no big deal and offered me, as a replacement, a top-of-the-line, gold plated Turner mic that was worth about triple what mine was. This microphone had a cross embossed on it, so I am sure he had ripped it off from a church (some people!)

Well, I declined his offer and took the loss. But later wished I had reported this incident to the police, with the thought that if he was the rightful owner of that mic...let him prove it to them.

MarkE