The Annual NAMM All-Industry Drum Circle 2010 - Part One

Follow up:
This is a follow up to This Post and part of a multi-post series on Drum Circles.
There is also a ToeNail trailer for the video Here
StayTuned! There’s MORE!

So we were leaving the 2010 Winter NAMM convention and we walked up on a Drum Circle that had just begun out front near the John Lennon Bus. Now I have heard that distinctive thump in my chest from a marching band passing in a parade and even Native American drum competitions at Pow Wows where a dozen or so drummers do their thing in unison.  They are amplified and run through a P.A. system which makes it louder and, of course, it is all heavily practiced beforehand.

This drum circle, however, was like both of those examples times 100, without amps or mics, and unrehearsed. As a musician myself, I always feel a rare sense of accomplishment when I can play a song with a thrown-together group for the first time, and pull off a start-to-finish thing that doesn’t blow chunks the first go-around. That makes this really fascinating to me.

Click through for more, including the amazing video.

There were hundreds of participants. Many, if not most, were like me, completely inexperienced in percussion. The beats and tempo were set by a core group that was putting the event on, and they kept the controlled mayhem organized like a well-oiled machine. It’s not something any yahoo can do. These were extremely talented “drum wranglers.” They had total strangers with little to no experience playing like it was their life’s calling.  Don’t get me wrong, there were lots of great and even famous drummers there. If you look closely you might recognize some of them. They undoubtedly helped hold it together, but we are talking hundreds of players, starting and stopping on a dime.

The video we are leaking out comes in phases. Turn up your speakers, my friends… the first was to tease you… The second (this one) has 9 minutes and 59 seconds of great footage and audio that is intense!

For the finale, and 3^rd video, Dan Grigor boldly enters the MIDDLE of the drum circle of hundreds (unannounced and uninvited, I might add) and captures some of the most awesome drum circle footage ever filmed. (No, he didn’t pay me to say that!)

We have been selfishly sitting on the video, drinking hard liquor straight out of the bottle and laughing maniacally that only the admins of BFMN have had this video all to ourselves. We have to let you in on it or start going to AA meetings… so check out this killer video and stay tuned for the insane one!  I can’t do any more meetings!

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