Nice story about Virg

[morgenthaler]

Hi all!

Last night we here at Percussion Center had Rod Morgenstein in clinic, and what a great guy!
Being a great teacher he educated and informed about many interesting subjects!

At the dinner later last night he told a funny story of his first meeting with Virgil.

1994...Premier calls Rod to ask if he is interested in participating in the TUDW in Australia, arranged by Frank Corniola in Melbourne. Rod accepts and later gets a call from Dom Famularo who will be his travel companion as he is a fellow Premier and Sabian drummer.
At the airport Dom says to Rod: Now going to Australia I have 2 words for you: VIRGIL ; DONATI!
Rod says: Whos is he??
Dom: This is drumming like you have never heard it before! Rod replies: Are you kidding? I live in New York, and have seen every great drummer there is!!
Dom answers: No no.. he is beyond human!
Well, surely Rod is looking forward to this.

Landing safely in Australia, they get picked up by Frank who wants to discuss the order in which they shall perform.

Look Rod you are ofcourse the international drumming star and we all look forward to having you here, but I strongly advise you not to finish after Virgil Donati!....that name again, Rod thinks to himself.
For Rod it is ok to finish second to last, so he will be able to hear this guy.

In the afternoon the following day, Rod, Dom and Frank are setting up, and suddenly this roaring rumble begins in the room next to theirs. Rod says: Who the h... is this?? Frank and Dom: VIRGIL!!!

Rod enters the room and this is the sight theat meets him:
Virgil eating lunch off of his left floortom while doing doublestrokerolls on his kickdrum. Rod said to me(last night) that his jaw actually dropped that afternoon.

At night when Virgil and OTV are about to finish, they call back Rod to finish of playing doubledrums with Virgil on the Steve Morse/Rod classic ´Cruise Missile´. Rod is sport, and Virgil Shouts across the Stage: How fast do you want it? Rod thinking this is Virgils show shouts back: As fast as YOU want it!!
He regrets that as soon as Virgil counts off!!
He said that half way into the song, he had to fake it to the end, cause he couldn´t keep up. After that night he was and still is one of Virgils biggest fans!

I can´t start to tell you how nice a guy Rod Morgenstein is!!
Go see him as soon as you can, and tell him I said hi!

[morgenthaler]

...Forgot to say that there is actually a short clip of that very performance on the TUDW DVD!!!

[kirk]

Great story Jeppe. How many stories are there out there of Virgil
just blowing away these other great drummers the first time they ever witnessed him playing. The statement Herman Mathews(tower of power) made was hilarious. There is a short excerpt on Virgil's site, but the whole statement narrowed down is basically that he was pretty much a straight ahead player but he really respected and enjoyed the BIG fusion guys. He said Vinnie, Dave and Dennis were amazing to watch BUT that Virgil was even more insane than the rest of them. He said that boy "IS STUPID" of course in the positive sense. He (herman) says that he( virgil) thinks of things on a mental level that I would and could never think of let alone how in the world can he physically do what he does, he is truly amazing. Pretty much the way I felt the first time I ever witnessed him playing.:eek:


Regards Kirk

[Christopher]

Awesome story!

I remember seeing Rod back in 1995 at the Montreal Drum Fest when he first started to write some stuff with Jordan Rudess. His style is amazing and I have always loved it since Winger!

About your part on "I strongly advise you not to finish after Virgil Donati!", I remember that very same thing happening in Montreal (again at the Drum fest). Only this time it was with Tim "Herb" Alexander (formerly from Primus) who was on AFTER Virgil's performance. If I remember correctly, this was one of his first times in Canada. Of course he rocked the crowd so much that people almost didn't care about Tim's solo when he came on. It sucked for him though, because I really really liked Tim at the time, even when he left Primus to join his band "Laundry".

Even at some parts of his show, Tim was saying stuff like "Hmm, I can't really do stuff like Virgil, but I guess I'll just try". He tried very well though, I loved his performance!

It's not for nothing that they put Virgil on the first day of the festival, because on the second day, they had Dennis Chambers lined up!

[Fede]

Speaking of Tim "Herb" Alexander, I've heard several individual "eye-witness" reports from a Primus concert here in Copenhagen some years back...

Appearantly, at some point during the concert he had some kind of solo in which he threw both sticks up in the air, grabbed a new pair of sticks and made a quick roll down all toms (4 or 5 of them, I think), threw the new sticks away and caught the "old" pair as they were coming down again and carried on like nothing had happened.

And this I've had confirmed by several individual people who were there.....I wish I'd been there to see it!

:o)

[Christopher]

I don't know what's going on with him.

I know that he performs a lot at the Drumpad in Chicago and has good affiliations over there, but other than that, the last time I heard of him was back in 97 with his band "Laundry".

Maybe he's sleeping and planning something awesome? Who knows! :)

[DeepThought]

Awesome story!

Kinda like when I bought MD 96 at my Mars Music. The sales guy was like, "I own this myself. Prepare to cry your eyes out, and break all your sticks!"

I almost did ;)

Now I need TUDW!!

[jimi]

@DeepThought: Can't believe you don't have TUDW!! It's my absolute favourite Virg Solo and the workshop is great too :-)

Great story Jeppe, anymore? I'm someone has another cool story?