Excerpt 2, FINALLY

Alright here we go, forward motion. This is the second excerpt from the much larger something I'm working on. I think it's probably time I started calling it a novel; for whatever reason I get anxious when I see the look on people's faces when I say "I'm writing a novel." I think it's because everyone inevitably asks what it's about and while I know what it's about, it's also about quite a lot of things, and so I get sort of halfway through explaining what it's about and I start to get all self-conscious and blah blah blah so that to the next person who asks what I'm writing I just say "Oh this longish thing" and don't go into much more detail, and oddly still kind of end up feeling the same way. So here's excerpt 2 of my NOVEL! Yay.

DOWNLOAD PDF (it'll be up there for 7 days)

Neglect

Oh god I've neglected the blog! Here go read this, it's interesting and written by somebody else: Sigur Ros: Homage or Fromage?

Happy Birthday Mr. Sexton!

One of my all-time favorites turns 40 today! And while I have to admit that I don't listen to much 311 anymore these days (and really, aside from a few tracks, most everything after Transistor was fairly wince-inducing), but I can still see what hit me so hard from basically age 10 - 18 or whatever. And here it is 2010 and they are still a band, which says...something.

This solo is from 1997, the hey-day, when Mr. Sexton still played OCDP drums, when OCDP drums weren't yet completely infatuated with Travis Barker, and when Chad's snare drum didn't sound like a real nasty post-Maine Lobster Fest fart. Listen to those open rolls! And the stick flip near the end! All that drum corps influence really shines through here. Terrible video, but just listen:

Visualsssssssssssssss

Real quick post, though there isn't much one needs to say about these guys: 2010 DCI (Drum Corps International, for ya'll newcomers) champs the Blue Devils of Concord, CA. Have a look at their awards list; basically they win everything, a lot. This is a neat camera view of the drumline warming up in the lot with some tremendously cool stick tricks, and call me a nerd but I'm diggin' the uniforms:

Geeking out on drumlines

Alright I missed a post yesterday, but that was really because I spent most of the day doing what the title of this post suggests. So now I'm ready to unload several videos for the nerd drummer in you.

First one is the Santa Clara Vanguard from 2004 doing what the Internet tells me is Murray Gusseck's version of a popular cadence, pre-show warm-up thing they do called Double Beat. It's pretty much water-tight.



MP3 of the full thing from 2004

And here's the 2009 Santa Clara Vanguard doing a slightly different version:



Annnnnd the 2009 Cadets looking really cocky but, you know, being incredible so sure why not? Be cocksure. (If you're not familiar, there's a whole kind of messy and convoluted underbelly to the drum corps world, and sometimes drumming in general. Certain stereotypes do exist for a reason. It's hard to even really begin to describe. I'm not trying to say these Cadets are jerks or anything; that would be stupid, I've never met them. It's really just one or two guys that look the part; there's always that one guy.

But there is definitely pressure from day 1 of drumline camp to basically be a cocky asshole. It's weird, and I don't feel like getting knee deep in it right now, possibly sometime later. I've been fortunate enough to have some phenomenal percussion instructors, two in particular from elementary through high school. But I've played in drumlines with some interesting people, people you sometimes want to shake or slap their foreheads and explain the reality that most of the world could care less that you can play like 240+ hybrid rudiments and thinks you're a complete nerd for thinking that's cool.)

But, yeah, the video - the Cadets really are incredible here (and so are the equipment dudes in the background in matching "uniforms" of bare chest and blue shorts):



And finally this one's fantastic for two tiny things. The center snare drops his stick at 00:10, and the judge picks it up and throws it back to him! But while you're watching that happen, you're likely missing the poor horn player who face plants at 00:19.

ODaD: "the percussion just raped my mind"

The above youtube comment sounds violent and unpleasant, but I promise you Chris Ward's drumming is definitely not the latter. Though I suppose if you'd stood where this cameraperson was standing you'd probably feel like yer mind had just been R'd:



Chris Ward is the bespectacled, bearded man in Pattern Is Movement and is probably tired of being referred to as such, but it's Tuesday and my own personal mind has been getting R'd all day with end of the month work stuff so...alright you don't care, I don't care, I'll stop.

Chris is a phenomenal, powerhouse drummer with the feel of a gazelle in its prime. Or maybe an impala, I think I saw one of those on a Planet Earth re-run the other night. It didn't get away from the lion. And Chris was the lion. Wait. Ok, another video!



That most youtube comments about these guys fall somewhere along the lines of "drummer is sick" or "man, drummer is a beast" should not be a surprise.

One drummer a day: Antonio Sanchez

So...this next drummer...Antonio Sanchez. I'm really not even sure how to articulate, other than to say that he's so good it hurts. I've been fortunate enough to see him live with Pat Metheny four times. The first time I had this grand idea of interviewing Antonio after the show for my college newspaper, but couldn't come up with anything but "What planet are you from?" and so I never mustered up the courage to approach him. In the vid below there's a point where the camera focuses on Metheny waiting in the wings during the drum solo and even he can't believe what he's watching. That's how good Mr. Sanchez is.