Username:

Password:

Fargot Password? / Help

Blog

Cobus Potgieter | Blog. Just a place for me to share what is happening and for you to be kept in the loop. Thanks for being amazing fans.
14
January 16, 2012 Posted by Cobus in Blog

NAMM 2012

I like cheese.

This time last year I was on a plane, probably half asleep (definitely NOT drooling on myself) and on my way to my very first visit to America. I get a little nervous even just thinking back.. I was anticipating my first visit to NAMM, my first visit to DW, and my first In & Out burger experience.

I arrived in the States on the Tuesday before NAMM, tried getting rest and recovering from jet-lag on the Wednesday (did not work. at all or even close.) and then attended NAMM starting that Thursday. Obviously, for a dude from a small town in South Africa, NAMM is absolutely and beyond overwhelming. The fact that I was jet-lagged to the point of having my IQ knocked down to the intellectual capability of a table did NOT help. I remember the whole thing being a blur.. doing an appearance at TRX Cymbals, having to talk incredibly loud all the time due to the insane volume inside the convention center, signing autographs for pretty much the first time ever and concentrating on not falling asleep. It was awesome, but it was incredibly intense. I'm not an extrovert at heart, and although I love people and conversations I'm not really an out-going attention-seeker.. so being in that kind of environment really stretched me, and it proved to be indicative of what was to come for 2011.

That was a year ago, and I can freakin NOT believe that a year has gone by so fast.. because today is Monday, and in three days NAMM 2012 will be underway. If any of you guys attend I would LOVE to meet you and hang out, you guys make all of this possible and it's always so surreal for me to meet you guys and get to know you a bit better. Sometimes the Internet has this horrible way of isolating people and just making people names on a screen, but meeting you guys in real life totally shatters that and makes it unavoidable that people support my career and dig what I do and are as passionate as I am about all of this. I can never EVER get used to that and I appreciate it so much. So if you're at NAMM this year, please come and hang out if you see me around! I'll be at the DW booth a lot, as well as the TRX Cymbals booth doing some appearances.

If you've been following my story and videos and posts you'll know that 2011 was a very big year for me. I came over to join the guys at Drum Channel as an intern, met some of my all-time favorite drummers, even got to jam with some of them, sold 3,000 copies of The Cobus Method, and experienced more support on my YouTube channel than ever before. I don't feel entitled, I don't feel super proud, but I do feel incredibly thankful and incredibly blessed. You guys are carrying me to unbelievable places and I am very excited for 2012!

And just because you are a trooper and you actually read to the end of this post, I'll give you the low-down: new series is recorded. Post production is underway. The mix is freakin insane and this is the BEST drum sound I have ever gotten, no contest. I might drop a video in the next week or so as a surprise.. but we'll see :) Otherwise the series will hopefully launch early February, but I'll keep you guys posted. I also have another HUGE project underway that I'll announce soon.. something I've been wanting to do for years and something I am very very veeery excited about. It will involve millions of musicians from all over the world and it's going to be HUGE.

Thanks again, from the bottom of my South African heart, for making all of this possible. I appreciate it!

NAMM2012.. amped.

Much love.
Cobus.
0.0/60votes
Voting statistics:
RatePercentageVotes
60%0
50%0
40%0
30%0
20%0
10%0
15
June 28, 2011 Posted by Cobus in Blog

Chad Smith. Again

The thing about being in Los Angeles and being at DrumChannel every day, is that you don't quite know exactly what will go down, what will happen, who will pitch up, what they will be like, or how a live show is going to go. I knew Chad Smith was going to be here today, I knew he was going to do a live show.. but as always, more often than not things turn out completely different from what we expect and desire.

Today.. I met Chad Smith from the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Again.

read more



I "met" Chad for the first time at the beginning of the year, on the 14th of January, at 11:38 in the morning (I just checked the info of the file, "Date Picture Taken." So not a stalker, then. Just a geek.) and even though I got a photo with him, I don't think this could ever count as a "meeting". It mainly consisted of a nervous "Hey Chad, can I please get a picture?" with a smile and him responding with a blank stare that clearly says "What the hell kind of accent is that?" but still agreeing to take a photo. This mostly two-sentence-bound and extremely one-sided conversation would then be ended with my (still nervously spoken) "Thank you!" and both of us walking in different directions.

My thoughts: "I just got a photo with freakin CHAD SMITH. *MUST* tweet this. Now."

His thoughts: "Australian? British? He must have been British. The hair.. yeah, definitely British."

I have a photo to prove it, with a date and a time and everything. But there was no real life communication. He wasn't my friend afterwards. Heck, he wasn't even an acquaintance afterwards. We live in times where it's possible to admire and respect somebody for ONE thing that they are able to do exceptionally, without them ever knowing the respect or the admiration exists. It is one-sided. It's sad, but the alternative is also impossible, unfortunately. The alternative (being CLOSE and REAL friends with every single person who admires you) is unfortunately not even closely possible. Human beings just aren't wired like that. I've tried that approach many many times, but it always leaves me drained and exhausted. I'm in a position where some people have wanted to take a photo with me also, or maybe even my autograph, so to experience this from the other side is invaluable but also SO surreal. Regardless of that that, I've always tried to make real-world connections, even if it's just for those few seconds that I'm talking to somebody, even if I forget their name a day or two later, and even if we both know we'll never see each other again. As a human to a human, not an "idol" to a "fan" or a teacher to a student.

You have to realise, Chad (any famous person!) probably meets hundreds of new people every month, ALL "wanting" something from him. Something as innocent and as simple as a picture, or something as sinister and as complicated as a "friendship" just for personal gain. That's got to suck.. filtering every single human connection through that criteria: "What does this person want? Me, my heart and my personality, or my fame and my money and my connections?". I don't envy that. I totally understand and sympathise with that.

Now, I'm a shy guy.. I'm never in anybody's face. Unless if it's a girl that I'm kissing (ooooh SNAP!) but you get my point.. I'm always and happily in the background. I wanted to meet Chad (again) and I wanted to take a picture with him, but I didn't expect ANY little thing more than that. Tons are expected from these dudes, day in and day out, and I would have been (and AM) perfectly happy with a handshake and a photo. So after the live show tonight everybody had some supper there at DC, chatted randomly, and just relaxed. Afterwards I asked Chad for a photo, got it, and posted it to my Facebook page. After that most people left. Don, Chad, the members from Outernational (the band Chad performed with) and I stayed behind a little bit longer. What followed was something that meant a ton to me and was something that I never expected. It ranged from everybody just jamming out on random drum stuff of Terry's that was stacked around the DrumChannel studio, to trumpet playing, to talks about Buddy Rich, talks about producers and engineers and mixers, and even chatting about the new RHCP music video that they're shooting tomorrow. I'm not namedropping or saying these things to make you jealous, I'm saying these things because they overwhelmed me a little. I'm a very observant guy, and it was clear as day that this wasn't just a cold and quick handshake and a photo anymore, we were all having a conversation. It wasn't like we were all holding hands and singing Kumbaya either, I'm not trying to romanticise this into some soppy Hollywood cliche.. but it was real. THAT's what blew my mind.


We always picture the people we admire as people who are "far away" and unreachable.. and some cases they very much are and they very much should be. But flip, we're all equally human. It was so cool to have a real life conversation with all these people and have Chad shake my hand afterwards to sincerely say goodbye. I'm not going to be all corny and say that the second handshake made him "feel like my friend" or that we are now BFFs forever (like, oh my goshhhh) but it most certainly made him seem to not be "far away" or "unreachable" anymore. And I appreciated that. We're all equally human. We're all equally human. We're all equally human.

It was a good day. I feel blessed.
Much love.
C
0.0/60votes
Voting statistics:
RatePercentageVotes
60%0
50%0
40%0
30%0
20%0
10%0
35
June 20, 2011 Posted by Cobus in Blog

One for the Trolls.

For those (happily) not in the know: a "troll" is defined as somebody who says negative things with no purpose other than to upset or offend others. Needlessly to say, the human race inherently sucks (I'm including myself, here!) and if you give us anonymity and the ability to post a message or a comment behind a veil of disguise, things go downhill.. and fast.

This blog post is by no means a plea for sympathy or compliments, REALLY, I am blessed by enough (too many!) of those every single day. Even more than that, I am blessed with a heart that is epically at peace, and I want to go as far as to say that I'm trying my absolute human best to not even depend on compliments and validation: I never want to reduce what is very valuable, down to something dependant on what others think of it. With this I am obviously talking about one of the most valuable things I have ever come to own: the ability to make music.

(See, right about now: the troll in the room would have made a "joke" about how a drummer isn't really a musician, followed by a really obnoxious chuckle between him and his troll friends.. and then ended off with some all-round bad grammar and horrible breath. That's how trolls roll.)

I know we joke about it, I know we try and laugh it off.. but there's something very very disturbing to me about a human being who is so fundamentally and sincerely MEAN right down to the core of their little black hearts, that they completely lack the perspective and decency to see that they leave nothing but a mess of destruction and pain in their wake. I am a sensitive dude, so compliments floor me to no end.. support and compliments and wise words and smiles always overwhelm me, in the BEST way possible. But almost in the same intensity, mean and arrogant and hateful comments also make my heart race, in a bad way. I just need to relax for a few minutes, though.. then I'm fine. Right here I run the risk of sounding like an arrogant and self-righteous idiot, but after I've calmed down, and after I've absorbed it and deal with it: I feel so sorry for trolls. Aside from the fact that they're named after ugly and pathetic creatures who live underneath bridges.. there has to be something very very broken and insecure inside people who willfully CHOOSE to be mean. There isn't a speck or a molecule of inner peace in hateful comments.. and that so freakin sad to me. I might be angry for the first few seconds, upset for the first few minutes, but I'm just wholeheartedly SAD when I realise that you can't possibly post something intentionally hateful if you've got peace in your heart. If you're ok with who you are there is absolutely NO need EVER to bring other people down.

So this one is for the trolls.. stop worrying, it's OK. I know you're unhappy sometimes. I know you sometimes think "how the frick did a dude playing drum covers of easy peasy songs get almost 200,000 fans on Facebook?!" ..because I totally and regularly think that too. I know you might feel like life just hasn't lived up to what you expected. I'm exactly as much of a human being as you are, as is everybody else, so I don't even want to give you advice you might not want. All I'm saying, is that you don't have to hate anymore, you can totally take that off of your shoulders and throw it to the ground. Because we all know that hating never helped anybody ever, it's barely a short-term solution for a long-term problem. Anyways, hippy and cliché and cheesy lines aside, that's all I wanted you to know.

Now, let's see how many people hate on this because I didn't even MENTION the words "drum cover" until almost the very last paragraph..

Much love. Regardless of if you're a troll or not.
C
0.0/60votes
Voting statistics:
RatePercentageVotes
60%0
50%0
40%0
30%0
20%0
10%0
Pages:123456789