Concert Report: 88BoaDrum NYC
88BoaDrum at sunset: drumming and standing
The big New York-area musical event of the weekend – the inaugural All Points West festival – went off with more than a few hitches, if you go by reports of those who attended. If you leapfrogged Manhattan on Friday night around the time Radiohead was taking the stage at Liberty State Park, there was another show that was drawing a fair bit of attention. It was the 88BoaDrum concert on the waterfront in Williamsburg, organized by the Japanese band Boredoms, hosted by the Brooklyn band Gang Gang Dance, sponsored by a shoe company (a major one), and featuring the talents of 88 drummers arranged in a spiral. And even though 88BoaDrum was heavy on gimmick (it took place on 8/8/08, started at 8:08pm, featured 88 drummers and lasted 88 minutes), it had plenty of genuine disappointment of its own to offer.
As the Village Voice’s Zach Baron pointed out in a very cranky preview of the show, 88BoaDrum was never supposed to be. Last year the Boredoms performed a similar trick (77 drummers playing for 77 minutes on 7/7/07), but billed that event as a once-in-a-lifetime experience. So even apart from the corporate sponsorship (my friend asked “Does this place make you feel a little like a d-bag?” as we entered the park), this year’s event already had a slight feel of desperation, as if folks who stake their reputation on being in the know, but who missed last year’s show, knew they had to catch this one or suffer another year of humiliation. And while you’d think a massive drum circle would send everyone out into the night grooving on a spaced-out up-with-community vibe, Williamsburg showed once and for all it has the ability to make even a free drum circle an elitist chore.
That’s right, the hipster vibe won out over the hippie vibe in a big way. In the hour before the drumming started, folks spread out on the lawn at the Williamsburg waterfront, but as soon as the drummers were called to their places, a small group of people stood up right behind the circle. I figured the mood would eventually take over and these folks would sit down, but instead, the wall of standing observers got thicker, until it blocked most of the circle from view.
It would be unseemly to complain too much about a free show in a local park on a beautiful evening, and to be completely honest, a lot went right at 88BoaDrum. There were free tee shirts, ample space, the weather cooperated after threatening rain all afternoon, the Manhattan skyline looked beautiful, the sound was fine and the music itself had about as many epic crescendos as you could reasonably expect from a 90 minute drum circle. Gang Gang Dance did a nice job of leading the mayhem, and in general it was an opportunity to highlight the drummer, usually relegated to the back of the stage and charged with keeping time, or worse. Apparently there were some famous people manning those kits. Two members of Animal Collective, Matt Sweeney, a guy from TV on the Radio… not that anyone could see them through the wall of hipsters. Thanks, Williamsburg. It didn’t have to be that way. Check out photos of the parallel show in Los Angeles if you don’t believe me.
Am I just being cranky? Anyone else go to the show and see things differently?
-- Filed by Jacob Ganz
August 12th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
I played the thing, and I agree with you. The one saving grace is that some people had a good time, but considering the epic promise of such an event, I feel more creative work should have been done in advance by the conductors of the piece. Instead, there was a very self-congratulatory air to the whole thing, and maybe that turns out to be fitting, considering the context. Me, I don’t get it.