"Dawn to dusk with a commune of young people on the Lower East Side, searching fulfilment through sex and drugs."–A.M. "...one of those remarkable films incensed with the values which man forgets, caught in the sedge flats which he calls his streets. It is these disowned values that [Meyer] obstinately and with the greatest of poise works with and surprises his film spectator...The world of SHADES AND DRUMBEATS has no need for sound; for the film frames speak and contain the word, the sentence which reveals to the engrossed spectator the spirit of Meyer's work."–Gregory Markopoulos, in a lecture at Idaho State University, 1964