Russell Buddy Helm

“John Belushi had just died when I got the phone call”

excerpt “History of the Groove” ©2014 Russell Buddy Helm

1983

John Belushi had just died when I got the phone call; “We were referred to you by a trusted friend. He said you could do a shoot for us.”

“What kind of a shoot?” I snarled into the phone in my downtown LA artist’s loft, gazing out the sixth floor fourteen foot tall windows at the distant island of so many Hollywood murder mysteries. Catalina.

“It’s kind of weird.” He said evasively. “It’s a funeral. We want you to shoot video of a funeral of a very famous comedian at Forest Lawn.

“Ohhhh!” A VIDEO  shoot. ” Okay.”

I rented portable video taping equipment and showed up and shot the corpse while a bunch of borscht belt comedians and their fur coated blue haired wives honked approval. It was a nice event.

“You handled that one pretty well. Now we want you to shoot in our nightclub on the strip.”

Living in a downtown LA loft at the outskirts of the ‘art ghetto’ and commuting into Hollywood to video tape partiers at an illegal after hours dance club on Sunset Strip was a culture shock. But I was used to those culture shocks, if I wasn’t having one, I would start wondering what was wrong. I got footage on some of the most interesting people in Hollywood and from around the world. It became quite a fashionable hang out. There was a big French Playboy article written about our video team in the club. We were the first. We created what would become MTV. I encouraged people to do whatever they wanted to do. You would be surprised at how many women were ready to take off their clothes because they couldn’t think of anything interesting to say to a large video camera pointed at them at three o’clock in the morning while Wolfgang, an up and coming chef, was cooking something on fire behind her in the kitchen of “At Sunset”. It got crazy. But I was in a bemused isolation from all the revelry. I was the camera man. I saw everything through the lens of attempted objectivity. I acted like Warhol; just letting things happen. Witnessing. They wanted footage that they could use when the famous people would die of some tragic romantic Hollywood karma. It was money in the bank. We shot for three years. It became a way of life. We shot everywhere, made pilots, edited, shot, and created a format and editing style. It was new and exciting. It got co opted and set up in New York with Big Dogs running the show. We weren’t making anything but we had a great time. It was anthropology and poetry with a good dance beat. I interviewed Bananarama, David Lee Roth, Clive Davis, Michael O’Donaughugh, Jean Michael Basquiate and a bunch of other interesting folks.  Rodney played my single, “Dancing on the Titanic” on KROQ late at night.  Life on the Strip is unearthly. I almost forgot that I was a drummer but it would come back to remind me. Two rock stars came in and held court in a booth while I shot them. One of them was Doug Fieger, creator of the Knack, whose big hit was “My Sharona”. They showed up in my edit bay with a bevy of beauties and demanded to see the footage of them holding court in the club. I ran it. They were really sloppy drunk and the viewing was a bummer because I played it all for them. They left and didn’t come back to the club. One of them managed to dry out but Doug died of some over medication. The club ended up being a recovery club. When people see themselves on video doing something that they are ashamed of, they often change their behavior. I saw that if I wanted to make money in the entertainment business; offer some kind of recovery program to the stars and the ruling class, and I’ll always have work.

excerpt “History of the Groove” ©2014 Russell Buddy Helm

Excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm ©2014 all rights reserved

May 18, 1978.

I was drumming with Gary Busey after the premier of the “Buddy Holly Story”. Buddy Holly’s widow was there and complimented us on our good sound. The bar was full of rock n rollers and film people. We were out in the country in Callabassas and lots of people were sitting in. A couple of girl singers were doing a great job on back up. When we finished I was at the bar and one of the back up singers approached me, “Don’t I know you?” she asked. “That’s supposed to be my line.” I said with a smile.

“No, really.” She insisted. We talked for a while, mentioning different people, different cities and we both said ‘Atlanta” at the same moment. She had been singing with Lowell George and Little feat and I was with Tim Buckley. We were both performing at Richard’s; a huge rock club. We both looked at each other and got embarrassed. The lost weekend came back to us both at the same instant. Bonnie Bramlett had also been singing with Little Feet and was determinded to take me away from Tim. That didn’t work out. Suddenly, a person from the past showed up; Mark Lindseys’ bodyguard. The huge bodyguard had sort of stalked Mark’s ex girlfriend. I knew he had kept an eye on me too, just in case the ex girlfriend might track me down. So I went out on the porch of the Saloon and he followed me out. There was a new Pantera parked in front of the saloon with a lot of other fancy cars. The bodyguard came up to me and pretended to be friendly. “Is that your car?” He asked. “Yeah.” I said. “Nice.” He said. “Look,..” I said, “I’m worried that somebody is going to steal my car while I go to the john. Would you stay here and keep an eye on it for a few minutes. I’ll be right back.” He perked up, suddenly feeling important. I slipped away from him, went out the back door and left for the night. I feel sorry for the owner when he tried to get into his own car.

Excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm ©2014 all rights reserved

excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm ©2014 all rights reserved
34.5

1972. We were playing at the Troubador, sharing the bill with the remains of the Zombies. Tim and us had just finished a grueling tour through the Midwest and East coast over the span of a few months in the snow and we were road weary.
A very sweet young woman talked to me after our first show, on the stairs up to the dressing rooms. Then she fainted. I sat her down on the steps and interrogated her about what drugs she might have taken. She was recovering from a sinus infection she got while shooting a breath mint commercial where she had to sit in a waterfall all day. I listened while she talked about leaving her rock star boyfriend because he was getting really weird; wearing a pyramid hat in the recording studio while he cut a hit song, and also while they were in bed. Being new to LA, I naively offered my knightly assistance in case she had to have someone protect her from a wacko rock star. She responded saying that she had the unwanted protection of her ex boyfriend’s bodyguard who was not leaving her alone. He was always hovering around keeping tabs on her.
On stage while we talked was Colin Blunstone, the lead singer from the Zombies, with his new band. They were doing very well. The reviews in the LA Times said they were very good and gave short shrift to Tim Buckley, the hometown artist and his hardworking band. Tim took offense at the snub. I started venting in the dressing room while we were trying to rest, about American music getting co opted by English musicians and then selling it back to uninformed American kids at inflated prices. Colin’s band was doing the rock star raving drunk routine in the next room. I yelled out the window at them in my best mock redneck voice,  “We’re trying to git some sleep over here!” I meant it as a joke. Colin came over and apologized. He was very nice. When we got onstage, Tim picked up my refrain, “What we’re doing here is AMERICAN music! I’m sick of English musicians ripping us off.” He repeated what I had said in the dressing then he improvised remarks impuning the masculinity of the other band,  “I don’t care what someone wants to do, but if I drop my car keys and I have to kick them around the corner before I bend over to pick them up then I have to say something.” He got quite a response from that remark. Colin and his bandmates at the back of the room immediately gathered up as many groupies as they could find and made a big procession out the door while we were still performing. I was the last to leave at the end of the night. Loading out my drums through the Troubador’s alley door, the English band’s rental station wagon pulled up, driven by their road manager. He threw the girls out of the car and drove off. “Hey!” The party girls griped at him as he sped off, “I thought there was going to be a party!”

excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm ©2014 all rights reserved

I was starting to see real things materializing after we drummed on them. It became a regular part of the drumming sessions. People came into our store in Santa Monica to ‘drum on something’ that they wanted to have or something that they wanted to happen. It started with an elderly cancer survivor who wanted a special person in her life. She came and drummed on it then said one week, “He’s here! But I wish he was a little taller..” She hadn’t drummed on that specific aspect. I noticed that people wanted good things, I didn’t mind drumming for them. Good job, good apartment, good car, good friends, forgiveness, healing, acceptance, stress and fear relief. I was discovering simple manifesting grooves, usually in three or six beats that ‘hit the note’ as Duane Allman might have said. It accessed a certain energy portal. It was getting to be like a cosmic cell phone. We could dial the right numbers and program the universe. It got so workable that I would do a ‘systems check’ every once in a while just to see if the manifesting was still working. I would come up with an outside chance type of manifesting; something that would not have the odds in it’s favor. A long shot. The final time I did this, I got in too deep. I felt like the sorceror’s apprentice in the Disney movie. My outside chance was to get the universe to deliver this woman that I had gotten involved with then separated from in emotional scenarios. “I am very flattered,” I explained as resolutely as I could, to her smiling hopeful beautiful face, “But I am not the guy for you.” But I had drummed on it; a singer songwriter I could work with who could also play great guitar. It was a perfect fit for what I needed, but there were other factors that I had not taken into consideration. There was my fear for starters.. It had happened unannounced without my instigating anything. She wanted what really wasn’t there or what I could not be. It was finally over and she was living in the rural back woods of northern Florida. I decided to see if the universe could bring her to Santa Monica if I drummed on it. A few months later I got a text message from her; “Leaving Florida, moving to Santa Monica. Maybe you will see me around.” She had met a musician in Florida that lived two blocks from our store. She was suddenly in the neighborhood and it spooked me completely. I realized I was in over my head. I felt I was working with energies more powerful than I understood. Then I realized that these were the energies that I had always worked with in my life. I was a drummer; this was part of that consciousness. I struggled to understand my place in all this new information. There was at least one aspect that I did not understand about this drumming manifesting: Love. I did not know or respect what love was, and also how it figures into the drumming manifesting. My dispassionate scientific research into the energies of the drum came crashing down around my head in a rubble of imagined emotional culpability. Rhythmic intention is a powerful force. Love and rhythm are the most powerful elements in the universe. But what we fear is also powerful.

“The greatest challenge for a yogi is the Dakini; the young maiden who reintroduces him to the distractions of the world after he has mastered the body and all of it’s devices.” Lady Sogyel; the first woman yogi in Tibet said it best; “Most Yogi’s fail at this last attempt at mastery.”

excerpt: “History of the Groove” ©2014 Russell Buddy Helm

Her spine undulated like a dolphin

excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm ©2014 all rights reserved

1998. Her spine undulated up from her sacrum to her cranium then back down like a dolphin swimming. I knew what that looked like from watching Florida swim around me in circles back down in Coconut Grove at The Dolphin Project.. It also reminded me of the Hyde Park Kensington in London when the maid flipped the fresh sheets perfectly, sending a wave up to the top of the bed, before settling down into a smooth, inviting linen. Funny how images and sounds trigger memories.

This woman was lying face down on a chiropractic table in a dimly lit room with soft New Age music. She let out a sigh of relaxation as the psomatopsychic wave moved up her spine in slow motion, up to the base of her skull, then it reversed and came back down her spine; a gentle wave as the bones adjusted themselves. Then it subsided. She was attended by Doctor Wendy, who was showing me discreetly, what ‘the wave’ looked like. I would not have believed it possible if I had not seen it with my own eyes. A human being cannot do that to their own spine. It had happened as if it was the most natural form of chiropractic adjustment in the world. That was the new Network Chiropractics, and it was not your conventional chiropractics at all. It was all energy without force. When it happened to me I realized many things, one of which, that I should go back and record drumming music to create this same healing phenomenon using rhythm. This is what brought me back to the music and the drum. If the spine feels safe enough, it will adjust itself. It’s called dancing.
Actually injury brought me back to the drum. Or rather ‘forward’ to the healing drums. I hit my head on a low hanging sign at an art store. They paid for the chiropractor. I did not tell them it was the new very alternative form called Network chiropractics created by Dr. Donny Epstein in New York who studied videos of swimming dolphins. Their undulations reminded him of the involuntary body movements some of his patients experienced while he was adjusting them. Even after he had adjusted them, they were just lying there on the table and then began to move around; sort of letting their spine adjust itself. It reminded him of the dolphins. He started to map out portions of the patient’s back where there were energy grids he could sense without touching them. Hovering over the spots would create a healing movement in the body. This was proof that there was an invisible energy exchange between the patient and the doctor. He created a protocol and it became very popular. Groups of people attending “Gates” would share this miraculous energy transference. If a patient on one adjusting table started to release, others close by on other tables would also release. Past lives would come up for people who did not believe in reincarnation. Realizations and insights were plentiful. People were healing all because of this method where the chiropractor did not even touch the patient. These are accredited doctors doing this and it was amazing. The doctors themselves were often dumbfounded by the results. They were getting strong psychic impressions from the patients. A patient, lying face down on an adjustment table, felt that a bejeweled sword was imbedded in her back while a doctor came by her as she worked on several different people at the same time. The doctor envisioned a dagger in the patient’s back. She pulled it out. They talked later and realized they both had experienced the same image. I saw that it was releasing Orgone energy based on my Wilhelm Reich studies back down in Coconut Grove. The life force, Orgone, was getting blocked as it traveled up and down the spinal column. This Network chiropractics opened up the addresses along the spine that were blocked, as a result the life force would rush through into the brain creating what the yogi’s refer to as Samadhi, white light. I got it. I also knew that this bland New Age music would have to be augmented with grooves that would engender movement in the client’s spine. “Let your backbone slip.” Was the way Big Joe Turner put it. The blues and the healing arts were coming together, and I wanted to play the grooves that would heal and help us survive.

excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm ©2014 all rights reserved

Watch live video from buddyhelm on www.justin.tv

Healing the Pacific Ocean drumming

We will broadcast the usual drumming workshops on justin.tv/buddyhelm three times a week: Tuesday Friday at 7 pm Pacific and Sunday at 3. The theme and focus will be creating an energy field of rhythmic intention that will be a prolonged drumming meditation on healing the Pacific Ocean. We did this for  a whole year with the BP disaster in the Gulf. It generates good energy. There were good things that evolved from that daily meditation and broadcast. This time we will involve more people and more focused intentions. The point of this is to create the psychic phenomenon that will heal the Pacific Ocean and the people around it. We are focusing as specifically as possible even though this is a large issue.

http://www.forbiddenknowledgetv.com/videos/radiation-poisoning/fukushima-radiation-hits-san-francisco-dec-2013.html

http://www.drumvictoria.com/inspirational-videos.html

“You knew his name!” She said with a shocked expression

Excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm ©2013 Russell Buddy Helm all rights reserved

I found a charming successful New Age store in Orlando; in College Park, a nice older neighborhood that retained some of the character of Old Florida. The Live Oaks dripped Spanish Moss over the cobblestone streets shading the well kept large older homes from the sun. “Dreams” was run by Drema and it was a New Age store before the term was coined. She was sweet and sincere, very savvy, and a visionary. She supported the space for tarot card readers and astrologers, energy workers, psychics and artists to share a sacred space and help people. I repeated my drumming meditation workshops here every few months and helped generate a very nice healing drumming community. One woman, Mel, asked for a private session to deal with some of her personal issues. This was one of the first requests for a private drumming session and I looked forward to it to further my/our research into the growing phenomenon of healing drumming. I drove out to her country property and we settled down in her living room with two drums, facing each other and set up a nice meditative groove and she began to talk. I listened, kept the beat nice and laid back. Eventually we decided to do the inner child protocol and we slowed the tempo down repeating, “You’re safe with me.” until the tears stopped flowing. This was an instinctive choice based on where this healing protocols was going to go next. I did not want her to feel alone in the universe; she now had her child with her. She said that she saw her in a field of flowers and they held hands and danced while we drummed. They were safely together. Intention and a good beat go a long way in convincing the belief system. We then went to the main focus of the session. Her husband had died suddenly five years earlier and she was not able to move on and have another relationship. I suggested we make a ceremonial farewell; “Good Bye, John.” I suggested. She looked at me in shock and covered her open mouth with her hand and she said tearfully, “You knew his name!” It had come out easily. It seemed like a good guess. But there is also a quality of empathy that exists in this type of drumming. I call it “a heads up display”. We can see it, feel the information about someone, if you are open to it and you get familiar with the feelings. This is a quality of the healing drumming that seems very useful. It is something I strive to teach; it uses the higher functions of the brain and psyche in a profoundly healing way, so this is not psychic parlor tricks. We get results because it is not about “us”. She spoke this release with some difficulty, and I prompted her to just continue hitting the downbeat, back and forth if possible with alternating hands and we gradually slowed down the tempo. The tears fell from her face and landed on the Ghana goatskin drum head. I thought that was good. When we had slowed down to an imperceptible crawl of a groove, her tears finally stopped. Later that afternoon as I was driving back to St. Petersburg, I realized that I had left my precious phone book at her place. This was the dark ages era before the ubiquitous cell phone and shows how long I have been doing this. I called her and she agreed to send it to me. “I have never been this high in my life. Not on drugs, or alcohol or anything.” She said in awe. Some months later, I visited the Rennaissance Fair in Tampa, strolled by the drumming booth that has grown. I remembered when Ren Fairs did not have drumming booths. I felt good about the progress of the meditative drumming community. I admired the locally made drums, and I even played one. It sounded good. Then I got back on the road. In Orlando a few months later, Mel brought up her new husband at a drumming meditation workshop. He was a very nice guy and he had the drum that I had played for a moment at the Tampa Renaissance fair. “I picked it out.” He said, “Then the guy said you were just here and that you had played this drum.”

Excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm ©2013 Russell Buddy Helm all rights reserved
History of the Groove

Drumming Affirmations
excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm ©21014 all rights reserved.

The concept of drumming affirmations came to me when I had to save myself. My overly critical mind was consuming me alive. Commercials and movies have soundtracks that convince us how to feel. “A movie is 50% soundtrack.” George Lucas had said. Drumming can be a rhythmic device that will enhance any learning experience if the groove is positive and relaxing. Unless you are interested in getting energized by the up tempo beats. That is always possible but what I needed was a way to access my own memory banks and rhythmically reprogram how my survival mind works. The survival mind is a mechanism. It has good intentions but it can interfere with simple things. Drumming is a way to see the interference of the critical mind trying to control hands in a rhythm. It tries to stay in control when it doesn’t know what’s it doing. In other words, the intellect does not understand rhythm. It can work with it, it can learn rhythm, but essentially it can get blind sided by rhythm. That’s how commercials get us to buy stuff we don’t need; rhythm and music, of course. Once I studied affirmations, I realized a subtle point; most people speed up their affirmations which defeats the intent of the affirmation. Our belief system is sensitive to rhythms. We instinctively react to certain rhythms. If it is fast, there is adrenalin for fight or flight. This comes from learned history; if a tempo is fast, it probably means there is danger near. But if the tempo slows down, the system usually assumes that the environment is safe and will shut off adrenalin and secrete healing endorphins. This is one of the oldest forms of reactive behavior humans have adapted. So with drumming affirmations, it is very important to lay back the groove, even slow it down as the affirmation progresses, otherwise the learned affirmation might  have an emotional charge of fear on the memory if it is learned with a tempo that speeds up. Our perception of reality is influenced by tempo.

excerpt: “History of the Groove” Russell Buddy Helm ©21014 all rights reserved.