Mars Volta drummer plays “Limelight” by Rush Going In Blind

In the latest episode of a Drumeo series where professional drummers listen to songs where the drum track has been removed so that the person listening only hears vocals/guitar/bass/keys/etc and not Drumsthe drummer of The Mars Volta plays “Limelight” by Rush and is absolutely awesome.

This is a really cool show. Seeing professional drummers pick up songs on the fly and play them faithfully without ever having heard the original, and adding their own twists to it, is great to see the series develop. However, with this one, I have to go really far to believe that a successful professional drummer *somehow never* Heard “Limelight” by Rush, one of Rush’s most popular songs and a true anthem of classic rock.

Now that I’ve gotten that out of the way, we can all bask in the glory of Mars Volta drummer Linda-Philomène Tsoungui. I once played Ouija board or something similar after a Mars Volta concert in 2008 at Terminal 5 in NYC and (1) didn’t have a backstage/VIP pass but (2) went through the wrong door and ended up with the band but was so stoned on cactus-induced mind enhancers… I’ll leave it to your imagination…

The members of The Mars Volta, who were playing this Ouija-like board game, noticed how crazy my roommate and I were and wanted to keep us around for entertainment. The evening got weird. I’ll share a few more details about that below after the video. Their “final” performance starts at about 5:22 in the video:

Side note: I managed to track down some concert footage from the 2008 Mars Volta show at Terminal 5 where I went nuts with the band. This video looks like it was filmed with a potato:

To pick up the story, my roommate and I were completely out of it after the cactus time (IYKYK) and somehow walked through the wrong door and played with the band, not really knowing how we got there. After a brief moment of clarity, I realized I didn’t want to be in that room anymore, so I walked out another door and the one I just walked through closed behind me. So I ran through the next door, and the next door, and the next door, and each door closed behind me until I somehow ran in a big circle and ended up back in the room with the band.

The whole thing lasted maybe 10-15 seconds, but it felt like it was taking forever. Seeing my roommate was an instant relief and I thought to myself, “We have to go now,” so we took off and walked to the subway, still completely oblivious to the busy world around us.

We were so clueless when we left the Mars Volta show that we walked past all the “No Police Barricades” on the subway and made it to the platform before we saw about 30 police officers and a dead body covered in a white sheet. Apparently someone had landed on the tracks and lost their life. I turned to my roommate and said something like “I can’t watch this right now, we have to go,” and we ran.

Next thing you know, a security guard at the Trump Hotel at Columbus Circle flashes his Maglite in my eyes and asks me, “Where do you think you are right now?” Not in a threatening tone, but genuinely concerned about how detached I seem from the world. At that moment, I snapped back to reality. I looked down, apologized, asked him, “Please don’t call the police,” and walked back to the Upper East Side with my roommate when we came back down to earth.

And that concludes the only time I saw The Mars Volta in concert. The evening left quite an impression on me.