Recycled Percussion Rocks EFF

Photos by Connect2Mason Director Grace Kendall. Story by Broadside Correspondent Jen Driggers.

Students were welcomed to Harris Theatre on Friday night for the second Every Freakin’ Friday event of the semester. Students came to enjoy what they may have thought was any regular band, automatically expecting a drum set, a guitar, and bass, but after hearing Recycled Percussion, students were astonished. The band, which does about 100 to 180 shows a year, goes through ten pairs of drum sticks a show and burns 80 thousand dollars in fuel while on tour, has been playing together since high school according to band members.

At Friday night’s show, Recycled Percussion went above and beyond the norm. Besides being musically satisfying, the band put on a great show at this week’s EFF event. The stage was filled with plastic buckets of varying sizes—some stacked in towers, and others standing alone. Aluminum and plastic trashcans stood faithfully aside empty scuba tanks and other varying forms of junk. Amps stacked on each side of the stage were topped off with powerful spotlights. One band member, DJ Todd Griffin, stood on a raised platform, stage right, with a keyboard, sampler, mixer, two microphones and other music enhancing forms of technology. To his left on the same platform stands guitarist Jim Magoon with an electric guitar. Drummer Ryan Vezina and group leader and drummer Justin Spencer stand amidst the junk on either side of the stage.

According to Bradley Perrow, a senior at George Mason University, the band displayed very unique instrumental abilities.

“[The band had a] ferociously creative use of [immersed] talents,” he said.

As the four-piece ensemble began to play, students were blown away. The drummers begin by pounding and smashing the buckets in fast and fluid movements as the DJ provided the band with background sounds, adding to the rhythm of the music. The guitarist starting strumming away in a backwards form, adding to the melody of the drumbeats.

Students gather in the aisles and begin head banging, jumping, and screaming. The sound of the heart pounding, adrenaline raising music, amidst the screaming and cheering students reverberated through the auditorium.

“I thought it was amazing, [I] couldn’t breathe it was so good,” said senior Kristen White.

The band continued to play metallic, reggae, techno, blues, ska, jazz, classic rock, hip hop, punk, boy band and “junk” music throughout the performance.

All night drumsticks were thrown into the air, behind the back, under legs, and off of the floor and junk. Spencer even took a moment to throw drum sticks to several members in the audience in an attempt to get them to throw them back into his hand all while still playing. At one point, Spencer and Vezina played synchronized ladder, where two ladders were brought out onto stage and turned into musical instruments by the drummers. Other highlights of the night included when DJ Griffin came out on stage to sing Peter Gabriel’s “Sledgehammer” and break dance and when Magoon played a guitar solo to cheering fans, which ended in an electrically enhanced American anthem.

Later, sparks were even emitted from both sides of the stage, and Spencer played the drums with his feet up and hands between his legs so fast that his drum sticks were like wooden wings flapping ferociously at the instrument. Next, the quick-handed drummer put two more drum sticks in his shoes and continued to play them and his drums with the same incredible spped and motions he had been using all night.

“[Our] mission is to put on a rock show, let people experience a high energy show, [and] break away from the everyday,” said Spencer, who has the band’s logo tattooed to his arm.

According to student attendees, they succeeded.
“[It was] highly entertaining, one of the best EFF [events] ever” said senior Alex Lovitt.

The Every Freakin’ Friday committee, who acts under Program Board organized the band for last Friday’s event, though the band first played at Mason two years ago in the Johnson Center Atrium, and quickly packed the small space. This time around, Harris Theatre was just the right size for the band’s college following. Both floors of the theater were occupied with over two hundred people.

“EFF as a whole is extending,” said Tara Passwaters, EFF’s Committee Chair. “[There is] more advertisement to reach more students. [There have been] lots of changes, it’s very exciting,” she said.