The Dr. Rhythm Drum Machine Broke

One time, my rap group’s Doctor Rhythm drum machine stopped working. That stressed me out, so I began chain-smoking cigarettes and cried: “What shall I do to make rap beats, now that our drum machine is down?” 

Here is what ended up saving the day: I went out to the corner store and bought a machine called Doctor Sample, model SP-202. Then, I copied and looped a whole bunch of snippets from existing songs illegally, for the next seven months, and we rapped over those.

You ask: “Why seven months?” Because that is how long it took my rap partner to get tired of rapping over sampled loops.

“I’m tired of rapping over these sampled loops,” said my rap partner Stegz. “Let’s go buy a new cord for Doctor Rhythm 660, our drum machine — maybe that will solve the problem.”

So we purchased a new cord and plugged it in, and behold: the drum machine now worked! So our rap group became friends again; and Stegz wrote the following verse, to commemorate our struggle:

O Doctor Rhythm, thou physician of percussion, heal thyself! / I say this because you, our drum machine, lost your ability to produce banging noises: / No more kicks, no more snares, no more click-tracks; / Your mind was gone without a trace. / I thought machines were immortal: Why did you expire? / That was quite a big mistake that you made. / My rap partner Bryan and I browsed up and down the aisles of many instrument wholesalers; / We looked high and low, all over the electronics marketplace: / We traveled around the world and back again, searching for a replacement power cord to help bring you back to life. / But every store that we visited claimed that they did not have the requested item in stock. / O how we miss your boom-bam sound effects! / Roll up that wheelbarrow, tip it over and let Doctor Rhythm drop into the grave. / However, wait a moment — I think I see that we have now found a working electric cord: / Don’t shoot a dead horse; turn its power on instead. / Ah! Ha, ha! We are sorry that we ignored you for so long, and spent so much time rapping over sampled loops instead of fresh drum tracks. / Boy, you can really feel that good beat thumping! — pardon me if I dance. / Doctor Rhythm model 660 has emerged from retirement.