Elrod - canstrument, snare, whistle, scrap a-go-go Gus - wrenchaphone, big blue drum Angel Baby - hubcap, pylaphone Lynn - steel pan, snare, green bin Alhueche - wine bottles, big blue drum Saska - pot lid hi-hat, bass kick pedal Kimihiko Fresh - canstrament, junk trumpet Corky - saw, wheel barrel, green meanie
as well as dozens of other great players including Buba, Gertrude, Hector, Cynthia, Blane, Mimi, and Triana
Influences
Infernal Noise Brigade, Stomp, Tom Waits, Samba, James Brown, punk, drumlines, Rage Against the Machine, Indonesian Gamelan, taiko, hardcore, the military drum bands of our youth, and dozens of other awesome radical marching bands.
Sounds Like
Barely modulated chaos, a peasant uprising, an angry group of protesters coming for you, a drum jam at the dump
Santa Cruz Trash Orchestra is a performance and marching percussion band, whose instruments are composed exclusively of recycled and reclaimed materials, focused on anarchist and anti-authoritarian struggles and mutual support for groups making radical social change.
***Trash Orchestra is currently on hiatus, undergoing some structural changes. We will be active again soon, and we will keep you posted. Meanwhile, we are welcoming tryouts to contact us at trash@riseup.net***
We make percussion on tuned cans, hubcaps and barrels, drums, pieces of sheet metal, and homemade oddities. We are a bone-shaking recycled orchestra – a sonic force of fiery resistance!
We appear invited and uninvited at protests and celebrations, furors and frackuses, anywhere there's a need to make a ruckus, to shout out and help right injustice, suffering, and oppression, to make a big noise to celebrate our victories and our losses.
If you are full of rebellious insolence and music in your heart, we want you to be part of the band. Bring your courage, your passion, your righteous anger. Bring your instruments, recycled or otherwise.
Stay Up-To-Date: Get updates and announcements of trash orchestra performances and happenings. Join our low-volume announcement only email list.
Assorted interests: drumming, percussion, recycling, rummaging at the dump, junk yards, drinking whiskey, smoking cigars, driving beater cars, stealing 55 gal barrels, dumpster diving, dumpster playing, building instruments, making music, playing with the rhythms, playing gamelan, electronic geekery, campfires, punks, creative anarchy, working in collective groups, resisting authority, fighting tyranny, blurring the line between work and play
November 15, 1917, Occoquan Workhouse, Virginia, USA
40 prison guards armed with clubs and their warden's blessing went on a rampage against 33 women wrongly convicted of "obstructing sidewalk traffic". Women did not yet have the right to vote, and they'd been picketing the White House asking for that right. For weeks, the women's only water came from an open pail. Their food, all of it colorless slop, was infested with worms. Here's some details on what happened to three of them that night and over the course of their imprisonment.
LUCY BURNS' hands were chained to the cell bars above her head. She was beaten and left hanging there all night, bleeding and gasping for air.
ALICE PAUL was one of the leaders of the picket, and embarked on a hunger strike. The guards tied her to a chair, forced a tube down her throat and poured liquid into her until she puked. She was tortured like this for weeks until word was smuggled out to the press.
DORA LEWIS was hurled into a dark cell where guards smashed her head against an iron bed, knocking her out cold. Her cellmate, Alice Cosu, thought Lewis was dead and had a heart attack. Additional affadavits describe the guards grabbing, dragging, beating, choking, slamming, pinching, twisting and kicking the women.
Yeah, and you can imagine what else they did, too.
