MIDI in with Basic Stamp II

I'm making an automated drum machine for my senior design project and so far I have it set up to simply play off a loop of high/low commands programmed onto the stamp...

I want it to be able to read from a midi file (each drum component can be on a separate channel) and play the drums accordingly. I'm trying to use the m-audio Uno USB to MIDI cable, which has an LED that seems to trigger in concordance with beats on midi files, but I'm having trouble translating that to my solenoids.

Here's my questions:

1) Can I simply stick wires into the female MIDI (5 pin DIN) port when connecting it to my optoisolator circuit or is there some barrier there that I'm not seeing?
2) I'm new to BASIC and found some code online and altered it to this... snare con 1 bass con 2 hihat con 3 crash con 4 midiString var byte(3)

main: serin 8, 12, [midiString] if midiString(0) = 144 then pos1 if midiString(0) = 145 then pos2 if midiString(0) = 146 then pos3 if midiString(0) = 147 then pos4 goto main

pos1: high snare pause 10 low snare goto main pos2: high bass pause 10 low bass goto main pos3: high hihat pause 10 low hihat goto main pos4: high crash pause 10 low crash goto main

it seems to make sense...for all I know. However, this isn't working for me...should it?

I can't wait to get all this working and throw some LED rope lights onto my drums (connected in the solenoid firing circuit) and rock in a calculated and efficient manner.

any help would be great. Thanks.

-Tom