[Harp-L] The Guinness Book of World's Records Attempt

[michael rubin <michaelrubinharmonica@xxxxxxxxx>]

Last week The Pocket Full of Soul guys Marc Lempert and Todd Slobin
set up a major event at the Houston Astros games on Friday Sep 10th.
With the help of Hohner who supplied the harps, they attempted to beat
the World's Record of most harp players playing one song together for
a little over 5 minutes.  The record was not beat, and is still held
by Hong Kong at 6132 players.  But we had a great time trying.

The pro harp players leading the audience were myself, Ronnie
Shellist, Gary Allegretto and Sonny Boy Terry.  Shellist and
Allegretto flew in for the event, I drove in from Austin.  After I got
on board, we spent many an email and conference call planning.  They
made an instructional video.  They found many volunteers to pass out
harps and a proof of participation ticket which they also collected at
the end of the night.  There was more press than you could count on
two hands.  Lots of television cameras and journalists.  There was a
very young man in a suit looking very serious who claimed to be from
Guinness. There was lots of work done with the Astros' people.   Marc
and Todd did their homework.  Props!

We harp pros played many promo shots for many television stations and
wound up on Fox Sports.  We were filmed for the little games they play
between innings.  We played Take me out to the Ballgame during the
Seventh Inning Stretch.  We led 5000 harp players in Bo Diddley's I'm
a Man.

We broke our hearts as they went into 2 extra innings and the record
was lost.  When we do it next time, I also suggest we hand out twice
as many harps.

Afterwards we played blues at a club and had a great time.  Overall,
yet another amazing experience that I never would have had if I hadn't
have bought Jon Gindick's Country and Blues Harmonica for the
Musically Hopeless.  Life is cool.

Michael Rubin
Michaelrubinharmonica.com