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1969 PALM BEACH POP FESTIVAL TRAILER

Five hundred dollars got the Bethlehem Asylum a bright yellow school bus in Clearwater, Florida. They intended to drive it to Miami and all over Florida to gigs that their ertswhile manager, Micheal Denlinger was putting together. The year was nineteen sixty nine.

The Bethlehem Asylum was a strange mix of personalities but onstage the paradoxes yielded amazing music where almost everyone was entranced, amazed  and enchanted. The original songs had melodies memorable after one hearing, the soloing was extraterrestrial performed by Charlie, Christian, Jim, Danny and Buddy. Charlie; tall, blond, thin wearing John Lennon spectacles shared his Berklee school of music jazz facilities on saxaphone with Christian’s New York via India hip jazz electric piano, buttressed by Jim’s foundation R n B bass, and Buddy’s unwavering grooves while Danny’s folk/electric guitar flavorings topped everything off. It was an eclectic band. And they headed off into the sunset with an entourage not unlike the Grateful Dead following close behind. Several gigs at junior colleges were already set up but the piece de resistance would be the upcoming first annual West Palm Beach Pop Festival. They weren’t booked yet but they were determined to make the bill and perform. Everyone was going to be there; Janis, the Airplane, Stones, Chambers Brothers, Grand Funk, Johnny Winter, Spirit, Spooky Tooth, the list seemed endless. Bethlehem Asylum was destined to go down in history, they could feel it in their bones. Everyone who heard them said they were the next supergroup. And they believed it down to the very core of their existence. They knew they were different, greater and cooler than anything else out there. They had already shut down Spirit when they had opened for them in Orlando. They were on their way.

 

First stop was Daytona Beach Junior College. A dance/ concert to be held after a football game which unfortunately Daytona Beach lost. There were a lot of angry rednecks that soon became drunk and aggressive. In the conservative climate of the American South this did not bode well for the longhaired, racially mixed constituents of Bethlehem Asylum. The night ended in a stand- off with Animal the road manager/bus driver wielding a microphone stand in a particularly menacing manner in the faces of the drunken collegiate defensive linemen who were intent on taking out their defeat on the commie, faggot, long haired freaks in the band-even though they were dancing and hooting to the music just minutes earlier. Moods can change quickly in the fetid humidity of Southern Florida in the middle of a summer night.

drumming meditation workshop at Seasons


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Drumming on Soul Sunday


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Drumming Tribute to Richard Scruggs

 

We were drumming in Santa Monica, Cal while his tribe drummed in Ft. Worth, Fla at the service for Richard.Watch live video from Buddy Helm Drumming on Justin.tv

Drumming for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.


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drum love trio


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Falling Rain in 6

New Drum song for the New Year


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New Years Day Drumming


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Holiday drumming

Hello Everyone,
I was thinking of you during this fine holiday time while we were drumming here in Santa Monica, California..
Hopefully we can share the groove soon in this new and important year 2012.
These drum patterns act as our gyroscope amidst life’s distractions. Staying on our own downbeat ensures that we can live and move to our own groove.
Happy holiday
Russell Buddy Helm

Fixing the Glitch in our Conscious-ness

The human brain has been evolving for eons- and its not finished improving itself. But it has vestigial artifacts from early primitive brain patterns.

One ancient brain pattern is our sense of rhythm and it’s relationship to the outside environment.

When we sleep do we hear rhythm? You bet. When we are awake or asleep our system tells us if the environment is safe based on the rhythmic signature of the space our body is inhabiting at that moment. If we are sleeping in a cave and hear a rumble, then our belief system tells our survival system to get up , tense muscles and get ready for something terrible.

If you are sleeping in a five star hotel with sound proofed walls then you are probably not going to send that survival message to your body unless there is an earthquake. Our system has monitored rhythm in the environment since literally the beginning of time. It is how we have survived. Fast tempos mean possible danger, speeding up tempos create adrenaline. Slowing tempos suggest safe spaces and slow tempos ensure healing, meditation and rest.

But there is a glitch in the system. And it has to do with technology. Since Freud came up with the Unconscious about 1896, we have been trying to understand why it works the way it does.  Entrainment is a word coined about the same time also in Vienna. If an object is in rhythm it will affect other objects in its area of influence. The other objects will try to entrain to the dominant rhythm in the environment. And that is why there are powerful rhythmic soundtracks on movies, TV shows and commercials. The rhythms tell us how they want us to feel and we react because we are rhythmic animals. We can’t really help it.

In the beginning this talent to entrain was helpful , the environmental rhythms were slow. Now the rhythms are fast and it is driving us crazy, sick and angry into a headlong rush tripping over our own evolution by pushing too hard, not giving time to what is essential, not listening to our instinctual good sense and often being influenced by some elses’ dysfunctional patterns.

 

The HelmTone Drum Healing Protocols addresses these condition and many others. This is a patented process developed over the last thirty years to raise consciousness and heal our humanity while evolving us in the right direction toward happiness. There is a certification program or simply one-on-one sessions at our center in Santa Monica, California or on my tours around the U.S. and the rest of the world. Contact us for private sessions. Email us.

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