777

It's been awhile since I've posted. I'm slackin I admit. I'm also gonna be talking about old news. Bleh.

But hey, it's still fresh on my mind as I hope it is still fresh on the minds of all the other witnesses of the amazing, wonderful, and moving experience brought to us by Vice, JellyNYC, and the now canonical Boredoms.

The quick lodown: July 7th 2007 at 7pm there were 77 drumsets setup in a swhirl in a park underneat the Brooklyn Bridge looking towards the skyline of Manhattan. EYE, the 78th man wielding a trident opus conducts the ring by whacking on a set of super sensitive amplified metal bars. The other members of the Boredoms sit on a platform with amplified drumsets and lead the shifts in drum patterns for the rest of the volunteer drummers to follow. Most of the voluteers are drummers of notable local bands. Friends of friends; friends of friends of friends. I was told that there was a core group of about 7 or 8 drummers that practiced extensively with the Boredoms working on tightening the composition. The rest of the drummers just figured out what they had to do the morning of and made up the rest. It was nice to see that though many drummers were taking the liberty of adding in layers of flourishes, the overall sound was still remarkably coherent, not to say epic.

There was a definite sense of political or at least ideological undertone to the whole project and not in a necessarily straightforward way. A huge group of tribal beats certain reminds us of old slogans of solidarity. The twist here is that it is an improvised solidarity, one not based on theories, constitutions, systems, but rather on common experience. That's the shiney and easy side. Then there's the "brought to you by": [insert hipster think-tank]. And it's all back to the details, weighing this versus that, making choices about which parties to go to, which brands to brandish, which boy to take home.

Where am I going with this? I guess I'm interested in asking the question of: is this gonna work? Creative chaos backed by top notch management and pure refined globalized capital. All I can say is that, I was impressed and sold. Vice knows what the they are doing and if JellyNYC keeps putting up epic underground events, who knows what the future'll hold for DIY culture as well as mainstream commercial media.

It's scary being caressed by the invisible hand; but as long as that hand is blind or at least perpetually enebriated, I feel more or less safe.