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Ricky Syers and his puppet drummer Chops play Tom Sawyer on ABC's The Gong Show

Wed, Jul 12, 2017@2:39PM | comments

A couple of years ago puppeteer and musician Ricky Syers posted a video titled Chops Sawyer to YouTube and other social media sites. In the video Syers pulls the strings on a puppet drummer named Chops playing along to Rush's Tom Sawyer on tiny drum set constructed of tin cans. The video quickly went viral, garnering over one million views on YouTube to date and being picked up by The A.V. Club, Ultimate Classic Rock, Funny or Die and a number of other sites. You can check out the video on YouTube here. Syers along with his puppet Chops made an appearance on last week's episode of ABC's The Gong Show (Season 1, Episode 3), playing Tom Sawyer on a tiny drum kit (an upgrade from his original made of tin cans) for judges Dana Carvey, Tracee Ellis Ross, and Anthony Anderson. The judges went with it for a little while, but eventually Anderson gave them the gong. You can watch a video of Chops' performance below or on YouTube at this location, and catch the entire episode online here.

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