Artopia: The Hot Dorks of Drumline
Titanium Sporkestra: bringing sexy back to marching bands.
By Sara Brickner
There's a reason they're called band geeks: Around these parts, marching around in ridiculous hats like the first infantry doesn't exactly scream "hip." But Titanium Sporkestra, an eight-person drum band, takes the best aspects of marching bands—the bombastic music and the showmanship—and tweaks them for an audience of hipper-than-thou Northwestern naysayers.
Titanium Sporkestra plays rhythms derived from HBCU (Historically Black Colleges and Universities), though their outfits are more Oregon Country Fair than college football game. "HBCUs have some of the most amazingly talented marching bands in the country," explains David Stern, the band's dreadlocked leader. "They're known for their showmanship. They juggle their sticks and do unbelievably complicated rhythms. So we take about three-quarters of our music from those bands and adapt it to our group. It's a pretty traditional marching band sound."
Stern's band also incorporates Indian and African percussion. When the group opened for Moroccan virtuosos the Master Musicians of Jajouka at Neumos several months ago, they warmed things up by getting down on the floor in matching Kanye glasses, drums strapped to their torsos, dancing (in the limited capacity allowed) and inviting the crowd to join them.
Stern, a middle-school teacher, Seattle native, and main booker for the marching-band festival Honk! Fest West, started Titanium Sporkestra with bandmate Cevin Millstead after seeing a marching band from Chicago called Environmental Encroachment at Burning Man in 2007. "They were amazing, and it sort of reopened my eyes to the idea of a marching band."
At present, Titanium Sporkestra is still just a round-table drum line of 20-something band geeks who've blossomed into performers as comfortable at Neumos as they are in the streets. Soon, though, the band will hold auditions for a new horn section, a cross between "epic, loud, blaring horns," Stern says, and "heavy grooves, like a really loud hip-hop kind of sound. We have this vision of our sound to be, as Cevin put it, something between 'Ride of the Valkyries' and 'Baby Got Back.'"
But the drums alone are more than enough to entrance even the most reluctant crowd. "The thing with just the drums is that they're so powerful, even for people who aren't drummers," Stern says. "There's something that's relatable about this kind of music. It's like staring at a campfire. You can't help but be sucked in."
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Here is what the Stranger newspaper had to say about our performance with the Master Musicians of Jajouka.
Drum circles are passé. Titanium Sporkestra give you the drum octagon. Six drummers and two cymbal-clappers got down on the floor among the customers and brought a Burning Man meets marching band steez to the quarter-filled Neumos.
“Feel free to surround us, feel free to dance, feel free to take your clothes off,” announced the dreadlocked guy in the band. The audience heeded two of those suggestions.
Featuring former Infernal Noise Brigade members, Titanium Sporkestra combine military rhythmic precision with anarchic energy—while wearing gaudy ’70s shades and, in the case of the female bass-drum-pounder, a sliver lamé dress with red leggings. The Seattle troupe’s set was invigorating and mostly bombastic, full of brief episodes of rolling percussive thunder, which sometimes assumed familiar shapes. One piece alternated between the beats of Iggy’s “Lust for Life” and the Sweet’s “Ballroom Blitz”—a brilliant idea, as it represents a kind of ultimate hedonistic impulse.
After 30 minutes of boom boom ratatat tokka tokka (clang clang), their machinations resulted in diminishing returns, but for that half hour, Titanium Sporkestra really got the blood flowing.
URGENT UPDATE: Esteemed KEXP DJ Riz reports that a woman at the show volunteered the information that she pissed her pants. This show is now officially legendary.
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SEATTLE WEEKLY
A local band called Titanium Sporkestra opened for the Master Musicians. In most bands, the drummer usually hangs out in the back, holding up a song without much fanfare, but these guys are all drums, all the time, and the results were decidedly favorable. We walked in to see about eight people wearing their drums (and silver Kanye glasses), standing in the center of Neumos, hitting the skins like fiends and dancing around while the audience stood in a circle around them and watched. It was pretty excellent. If I see these guys on any bills in the future, I'll alert you. - Sara Brickner
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Titanium Sporkestra have performed in the following places
The Crucible Fire Arts Festival - Oakland, CA
Honk Fest West 2008 & 2009 - Seattle, WA
Neumo's with the Master Musicians of Jajouka - Seattle, WA
Nectar with Buraka Som Sistema - Seattle, WA
3rd annual Stranger Gong Show (score:34/40) - Chop Suey - Seattle
Marin County Fair 2009 - San Rafael, CA
Ashkenaz - Berkeley, CA
Amnesia Bar - San Francisco, CA
The Deathride - Markleeville, CA
Subrosa - Santa Cruz, CA
Burning Man HQ - San Francisco, CA
Fisherman's Wharf - San Francisco, CA
East Blair Housing Co-op - Eugene, OR
Capitol Hill Block Party 2009 - Seattle, WA
Artopia - Seattle
Power Tool Drag Races - Seattle
The Broken Spoke - Reno, NV
Dockyard Derby Dames Roller Derby - Tacoma, WA
Music in the Streets - Issaquah, WA
Northwest Film Forum Gala - Seattle, WA
Hazard Factory - Seattle, WA
LoFi Performance Gallery - Seattle, WA
1st annual BDX Drumline Expo at Garfield High School - Seattle, WA
M4 Factory Party - Seattle, WA
Stronghold 7 year anniversary party - Seattle, WA
Dead Baby Bikes Annual Party - Seattle, WA
Burning Man 2008 - Black Rock City, NV
Halloween Street Mayhem - Seattle, WA
Obama Inauguration Street Party - Seattle, WA
Seacompression Party 2009 - Seattle, WA
Tacoma First Night - Tacoma, WA
Hazard Factory - Seattle, WA
Green Scare Benefit for Political Prisoners - Seattle, WA
Other random street parties and houses all over the region | 
