Catagory: wood-shed
The epic of the Community Drum Project began as many edrumline features do, with a long pointless story based in the corner of a second rate, smoke-filled, pizza joint on the wrong side of the tracks in a bad part of town. Strike that, a not-so-bad part of town, which is actually an o.k. part of town, but none of us would be caught dead there in the dark, alone, with money taped to our chests – not even with a protective Kevlar jacket.
Anyway, as the story goes, there we sat – with Jimmy balancing ice on his nose. Roger was calculating the division of the bill, and Boom Boom was trying to bend a metal spork with his mind. The other guys, including myself, were just kind of sitting around exuding boredom.
As Jodie-the-waitress brought out syrup (who knows why), we heard a voice- Jimmy’s voice. “There should be a kind of drum where people, all people, can just play. There should be one on every corner, in city parks, in malls and…”
Boom Boom then burst out of his chair and stuffed a bent spork into his mouth. He put his hand over his heart (on the wrong side) and reverently declared: “When in the course of human events you have to ask not what your country can do for you, but to the republic for sandwich it stands, one nation under bombs bursting in air, the flag was still there, damn the torpedoes, I have not yet begun to fight, not ours to question why, where did I put my metal spork, make some other poor bastard die for his country. Amen”
Naturally we clapped, but none of us had any idea what Boom Boom said. Even so, it seemed exhilarating.
“Then it’s settled!” Boom-Boom said as he pounded on the table for emphasis. “We’ll institute a community drum policy. It begins tomorrow at the mall!”
His table pounding had naturally progressed into a group wide cha-cha, and as is now the tradition, we were kicked out by Jodie-the-waitress.
Since we lack any definite leadership the group sort of disintegrated once outside, but it was ok because the next day had all kinds of promise.
Operation: Community Drum
Code Name: Mellon Head
Location: Eastern Indiana
Time: 0235 GMT
With the mall map laid out on the office floor (a box of raisins represented the entrance, a dirty tissue the fountain, a line of straws the food court etc.) plans were under way to install a community drum in the food court. With a suspicious smile Mike highlighted the path from parking area A through the food court entrance and right into the main concourse of the mall.
All that was left was the “Community Drum Team” selection. After nearly an hour of discussion it was settled that Mike, Jimmy, Matt, Boom Boom and I would execute the plan.
It was nearly 5:00pm by the time we got underway. With drum in hand we entered the mall and headed straight back out the door… Jimmy got scared and wanted to leave so we kicked him really hard in the lower leg and said “you’re doing this you little sh&*”
As we entered I was reminded of a great Biblical film where Charlton Heston parted the waters to let the Blue Devils cross the red sea… or something like that. You see, it was as if divine intervention had taken place, the concourse was clear and there was no sign of any security teams.
We quickly placed the drum (with sticks) dead center and headed for a nearby table with drum cam in hand to watch the action.
No more then 60 seconds had passed before the first person picked up the sticks, looked around, and went to work… huga-duga burr…. huga-duga burr…. huga-duga burr….what were the chances that the first person to pass would be an actual drummer?
Before another few minutes had passed no less than four other shoppers tried the community drum…. Five minutes into the experiment we noticed that 4 out of five shoppers touched or played the drum, that’s about when another real drumliner came to the drum and started to whack out some riffs and didn’t show any fear of playing loud…. Imagine a marching snare in a mall…. It’s f’ing loud.
10 min had passed and still no sign of security…. Then out of the corner of my eye I saw him…. Security Officer Bob (we don’t know his real name). He walked over to the drum and then began to look around. We sat back and looked away trying not to look suspicious as he approached and asked if the drum belonged to us.
“Is that drum yours?”
“No, no sir it’s not ours, it belongs to everyone, it’s a community drum. Can’t you see that?”
He didn’t seem to care much because he said we couldn’t bring it to the mall. Boom Boom got mouthy with him and demanded to see his credentials.
After a short time we were met by another security agent and escorted, drum and all, out the door.
Not willing to settle for such behavior we set up the community drum outside and continued the project… Security Officer Bob found us again. He got out of his truck and said, “didn’t I ask you guys to leave?”
“No, that must have been someone else sir, Would you like to try out our community drum, it’s for everyone!”
Only after he threatened to call the cops did we decided that playing with this guy was dangerous – so back to the office we went.