greetings from montreal!

i have just had some great sushi with chris brewer and heinz kronberger of drums + percussion magazine. now i am sitting here in my hotel room getting ready to fly back to germany tomorrow. the montreal drum fest 2008 has just finished. it took place for the last two days saturday and sunday in lovely montreal, canada. we were very well represented by johnny rabb, eric boudreault (a great canadian drummer), and wolfgang haffner. i remember my first montreal festival years ago and it's always a pleasure coming back again. great people, great drumming, great city. thanks to ralph angelilo for making it happen again. check out some of the pictures i took.

from all the festivals i have attended so far, this was the first one where an artist who was supposed to perform acutally missed his flight and his show got cancelled. the organizers found out about it like 2hrs before he was supposed to play causing a bit of chaos. i cant tell you who the artist was, but i'm sure you gonna read about it in the press soon :-)

i'm flying back to germany tomorrow catching up with my work. looking forward to the upcoming pasic convention in austin texas in two weeks. more to come......

last weekend's superdrumming festival in austria has been absolutely fantastic. gerhard jessl and his team did an awesome job in organising the event and making sure that it runs smoothly throughout both days. congratulations to drumhouse for that great job.

has anybody been there too? i would love to hear your thoughts about it.

a picture says more than a thousand words, and i took a lot of them. here are some for you. have a look and enjoy.

with the superdrumming festival happening there, the small city of gmunden in lovely austria will be the epicenter of the drumming world this coming weekend. celebrating their 15th anniversary, gerhard jessl and his team at the drumhouse have put together a stunning line-up. this is the place to be for us this weekend and i am really looking forward to going there tomorrow morning. some of our top guys will be playing, like thomas lang (who will also be the mc), benny greb, wolfgang haffner (both solo and with his band "acoustic shapes"), ralf gustke, felix lehrmann, and stephan maass. check out superdrumming.at  for more details. i will see some of you there maybe?

a new podcast is online, "lunch with lang. an update on thomas' recent activities". it has been filmed on september 25th at a local restaurant called "kohlenmuehle". a local restaurant with excellent food where we often go to for lunch. if you haven's subscribed to our video-podcast yet, you can do it easily on our website, (click here), or directly on iTunes. i hope you enjoy this episode of meinl-drum-tv.

the sky seems to be the limit for tokio hotel these days. after winning the mtv music awards in september (see my blog sep 10), the four musicians (including drummer and meinl artist gustav schäfer) from germany have now also won the mtv latino awards for "song of the year", and are nominated in the categories "headliner" and "best act" for the mtv europe music awards too.

this is absolutely amazing! guys, on behalf of meinl: congratulations - you deserve it!

- norbert

it seems like as if many of you have been waiting for this video. well, here it is, and here (click), and here (click). it turned out great and captures the fun and excitement the two guys have had perfectly. it was filmed using four cameras for different viewing angles. then, the raw-footage has been cut and edited by matthias dangel, a friend of benny and ambitious amateur film-maker. thanks matthias for the great job.

we have made a second video of johnny and benny, which will go online in about a week. 

and now to all of you, please enjoy and have fun watching :-)

i got back from berlin last night via train. i really got a good load of work done during the train ride. so that was good :-) i may use the ICE more often now as i really enjoyed using it this time.

anyways, here comes a jost nickel drumsolo filmed at our festival. jost is an amazing guy. he has just started to get into workshops and the clinic-scene a little bit. glad he did, because he certainly has a lot to say on the drums. his playing is fabulous. it feels great, it grooves, it's got an unique musicality and character. some of the licks he plays have become kind of his trademark. for example his unique crash-muting technique starting in the video at about 6:47 minutes. jost is currently working on the new album for german singer jan delay. check out his latest release "mercedes dance live" for more of josts' great drumming.

the meinl festival has openend some new doors for jost, like the one to another drum-event in london in '09 possibly :-)

next week, we'll post some of johnny rabb's video footage. so stay tuned and have a great weekend!

greetings to all

as promised last week, here is the third (and at least for now, the last) benny greb video performing a great brush solo on a cardboard box some weeks ago. you can see it here, or here (click), or here (click). i hope you enjoy it.

i am off to berlin for two days. i got to do some business there and will be travelling by train (with the lovely "deutsche bundesbahn"). i usually prefer to drive by car, or fly. but my experience is that i get a good load of work done on long train rides. nobody to ask me any questions, no phone's ringing, no new emails. currently we are  at "high-performance-mode" for our new '09 catalog and i need to come up and modify a lot of text for that. a long train ride is perfect for that purpose actually. so i'm positive that i will get a lot done during the next two days.

stay tuned

Howdy,

Well, the rock and roll never stops...Last night I had the pleasure of witnessing two massive doses of rock and roll here in good old Nashville, Tennessee. Meinl Cymbal artists Jean Paul Gaster of Clutch and Trivett Wingo of The Sword rolled through town. The bands set up shop at the Cannery Ballroom, a super old factory which is now seeing better days as a venue.

Trivett and The Sword brought their brand of doom-laden rock and roll to the stage to much applause, as it seems that more and more people are catching on to just how great of a band that these guys actually are. Trivett, for his part, drives this band with a zen-like earnestness. He never betrays any emotions while playing. His calm demeanor is actually a forceful presence that commands attention. Be sure and check these guys out when they hit the arenas later this year while opening for the mighty Metallica!

Jean Paul and Clutch headlined the show, and as usual they brought their hardcore fan base of serious rabble-rousers and genre crossed music fans. JP has mastered the art of swinging in the context of thrown down rock and roll, and last night he gave a great showcasing of his awesome abilities. Literally, JP just keeps getting better and better at playing the drums. Not many people who play professionally can lay claim to that, but JP can.

So check out some pics that my good friend Rick Malkin took while hanging out at the show, and check out Clutch at www.pro-rock.com and The Sword at www.swordofdoom.com. Good stuff.

Later.

Chris

like i said yesterday, here is benny's second video from the meinl drum festival. enjoy!

drumroll please: tataaa......here is the first of three benny greb videos recorded at our last drum festival.

to me, benny's playing in this video is what drumming is all about: an endlessly deep pocket, groove, taste, character, dynamics, style, and an incredible musicality. the song in the beginning is one of my favourites of benny and will be on his next cd. his second video will be posted tomorrow, and the third one next monday. you can also watch it on our video page (click here), and on meinldrumfestival.com (click here).

enough said, enjoy!