Drumming for Peace: Beauregard Ajax: Happy Brontosaurus

teaching peace through drumming, rhythm, and storytelling

The Creator wants us to Drum. (God) wants us to corrupt the world with drums, dance, and chants. We've already corrupted the world with power and greed, which has gotten us nowhere. Now's the time to corrupt the world with drum, dance, and chants.----Babatunde Olatungi, Nigerian master drummer

Thursday, February 18, 2010

Beauregard Ajax: Happy Brontosaurus

Found this silly song from my 60's rock group, Beauregard Ajax, on youtube today.

Posted by Drumming for Peace at 5:01 PM

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Leo Hartshorn

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A Different Drummer: My Personal Blog

Click for reflections on theology, art, poetry, and culture

About Me

Drumming for Peace: I am Leo Hartshorn, director of West Coast Drumming for Peace. DFP was started in 2002 with Heidi Beth Wert in Lancaster, PA where she continues to direct the East Coast Drumming for Peace. DFP teaches and witnesses for peace through pedagogical drumming, sacred drumming, public action, and storytelling. I have been drumming for 50 years on drumset, hand drums, and plastic buckets! I started drumming at 10 years old in grade school, played in the high school band and Rock and Roll groups in Southern California. I was drummer for the 60's rock/psychedelic group Beauregarde Ajax. Over the years I have taught snare drum, drum set, and djembe to numerous students. This blog is about the DFP organization, my passion for drumming, and my journey with drums. For more information on DFP or booking a DFP program contact Leo Hartshorn at: drummingforpeace@aol.com or call 717-471-7476.

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Heidi Beth Wert

Director of East Coast Drumming for Peace. Heidi Beth Wert MSW/DMT is a graduate of Hunter College NYC has 30 years experience in human service, counseling, nursing, mentoring and theater/performance work. A graduate of Hunter College NYC dually certified as a master's level Social Worker and Dance/Movement Therapist. Co-Founder Drumming for Peace, Co-Founder HeadsUp Lancaster (Helping Educate and Develope Students Unleashing Potential), former member of drumming ensemble Commit No Violence. Heidi has performed at peace vigils, schools, theaters, colleges, schools seminaries, festivals, special needs camps, martial arts studios, with Co-Motion Theater, Independent Eye, PA Academy of Music and for Nobel Peace Prize recipient Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Her work has been featured by local media, periodicals and the international peace magazine “Sojourners” She has studied and trained in Capoeira for the past 6 years independently and with Pennsylvania Capoeira instructor Carlos Rodriguez (Grupo Cordão de Ouro) and has recently completed two weeks intensive graduate training with the National Dance Institute NYC. Heidi is the Kids Capoeira instructor for PA Capoeira. Click her photo for programs

Drumming for Peace

For more information on DFP contact me at drummingforpeace@aol.com

A Joyful Noise program

This Christian-based one hour program teaches basic peace principles, such as cooperation, respect for diversity, and nonviolence through various rhythmic exercises and stories. Click for slideshow from Grace Mennonite Church, Pandora, Ohio

Found Sounds program

Same as Joyful Noise program for secular settings without religious references. Featured in Sojourners magazine. Click for September-October 2002 article

Commit No Violence Drumming Network

A network of drummers in Lancaster called upon to play at public events. To invite them to play at local Lancaster events, contact Heidi Beth Wert at heidiwert@comcast.net. Played for Nobel Peace laureate South African Archbishop Desmond Tutu (center, back row).

Drumming for Peace Drum Circle

Interested in a drum circle in Portland, OR? Contact me at drummingforpeace@aol.com

Sacred Drumming program

Teaches spirituality of drumming through diverse cultures with focus on learning West African polyrhythms. Contact me for more info. Click for images from Lancaster Theological Summer Academy continuing ed. website.

The Sacred Rhythm of Life: Creation, Drumming, and Peacemaking

PowerPoint on drumming, spirituality, and peacemaking in diverse cultures. Contact me for booking 1 hour presentation and discussion

Drumming for Peace frame drum

Damfa Indian Drum made for Ten Thousand Villages . Click to order

DFP at Mennonite Church USA Children's Conference, San Jose, CA, 2007

DFP on video at 0:32 and 4:12

A Different Drummer Youth Recognition

The Peace and Justice Support Network of Mennonite Church USA presented its first A Different Drummer Youth Peace Award at the MC USA national assembly in Columbus, Ohio, July, 2009. Click for mpress story.

Roll Over Menno disses my DFP work! Click Photo

MY DRUMMING HISTORY: Vibratones

My first surf rock group in 1963. 14 years old. Click for more photos.

The Agents

My Rock Group from 1964, 15 years old

Soul Five

My soul group from 1965. Me, at 16 yrs old, in front

Beauregard Ajax &; Deaf Priscilla: My 1968 Rock group

Review of Mike Wood from Foxy Digitalis: A period piece, but what a period. Originally released in 1968, Deaf Priscilla at once sounds typical and transcendent of its place. While the mellow psych rock here is a mix of Byrds/Mamas & Papas folk rock, it also has a hint of snotty 60's punk; most of the 18 songs here clock in at under 3 minutes. Dead Woman Blues could easily be a Syd Barrett outtake; likewise, Arthur Lee would not have thrown Blue Violins or Things Will Work Out Fine out of bed. But this is not to say that this was just a band riding on the waves of whatever the Zeitgeist said was cool in 1968. Acid folk trappings aside, this band had its own ideas and drove them home with confidence, and sound poised to explore further sounds. As trippy riffs on Happy Brontosaurus and Father in a Bottle show, not many bands even then wanted to be Pink Floyd and Music Machine at the same time, except for maybe 13th Floor Elevators. Now if only they had stayed around long enough to hear Blue Cheer. A great lost gem most of us never knew was there in the first place. Click for story on group.

Beauregard Ajax Bio

Click for bioandlyrics.com

Music Samples from Deaf Priscilla

Review from Swedish blog ChrisGoesRock: "Here is one of the best albums we ever laid our hands on. Perhaps better than Public Nuisance and as good as Brain Police from Rockadelic. This album is a milestone such as Cold Sun's Dark Shadow. Not one track is losing energy (and there are 14 great ones). The album was recorded in April 1968 at Western Sound Recorders L.A. for a famous surf label, but was never released. Songs such as: 'Loneliness Is A Sometime Thing,' 'Dead Woman Blues' and 'Deaf Priscilla' are outstanding but as highlights of this album we would vote all 14 tracks. Just perfect vocals, tons of fuzz guitar and tough lyrics. We will love this album forever. Click for samples of album at Sam Goody.

Song-Deaf Priscilla on YouTube

Review from Tiny Mix Tapes: "David Ferguson and Charlie Hendrix act as the Lennon/McCartney team here, sharing songwriting responsibilities and vocal duties. It’s difficult to tell who is who, and similar to The Zombies’ Colin Bluntstone, both croon with a soft, vulnerable wail. Lyrically, they range from simple youthful love laments to surreal stories and the free-associative trippiness popular of the time. The oddest and most intriguing example of this lies within the Mellotron-laden title track, in which a deaf girl may or may not be aware of the pain she’s caused by pushing her elderly mother down the stairs. She messes up her pop pretty bad, too, and it’s gems like this that separate Beauregard Ajax from other American acts of the ’60s.

Song- Kaleidoscope on YouTube

Review from Patrick Lama in Ugly Things magazine: Beauregard Ajax is nothing less than an instant classic, a 24 carat showcase for everything that is good about 1960s music. I’m inclined to file it in the tiny pantheon of truly great unreleased psych albums, right next to Cold Sun, the Stalk-Forrest Group and Axe/Crystalline from England… The most obvious comparison for the Beauregard Ajax sound is Revolver —obviously an outrageous claim since music doesn’t get much better than Revolver—but I am not alone in making this connection. It’s a vintage McCartney sound, the acid McCartney, who wrote brilliant pop songs with quirky lyrics and bridges, edges and chord progressions like the world had never seen. The Beauregard Ajax songwriting duo of Ferguson-Hendricks stared at the orchestral scores streaming out of Paul’s head from “Paperback Writer” to “Penny Lane” for so long that they began to understand them, and went about writing and arranging songs according to that scripture.