Stand-By Tambourinists and the Ten Commandments of Marching Band

As you all know, I celebrated my annual "get in touch with your inner geek" festival Saturday when I attended the Virginia State Marching Band competition. I love these things. I'm a band geek in the truest sense of the word, I sometimes think that's my main identifier because I've been one so long. Longer than I've been anything else, I guess. Hell, I was a band geek before I was even old enough to join a band. And so sitting on a cold slab of concrete for six hours watching kids march around and play music was just fine by me, even if the wind did whip around my ears and intensify this crud I've picked up, oddly enough, picked up last week when I spent four hours outside in a driving wind - playing in a band.

And as many of you also know, when I did this geekfest thing last year I got a case of the HHGs (Helpless, Hopeless Giggles) at the fact that there was a flag girl out on the field who stood there without a flag because her arm was in a sling. The same corps also had a girl, if you'll recall, who suddenly hit her knees on the field and went catatonic on us for about a minute, which just added to the hilarity.

Well, I didn't have such an occurrence this time, although one band did have a kid on crutches and with his leg in a cast who sat on the edge of the field in a chair and played. I found this not really so funny, no HHGs at all on that one, and in fact I found it just plain dumb. No one could hear him sitting there playing along with everyone else, and he wasn't on the field adding to the marching drills, and mainly he just (shades of slinged flag girl) drew attention away from the band and to himself.

However.

However, one band did have a rather interesting member. She is pictured above. I call her Stand-By Tambourinist.

This young lady (and I'm sure she's a great girl) was part and parcel of a marching band that did a load of 70s numbers, and her talent was to play the tambourine for four measures of that old Chicago classic, "25 or Six to Four." For the entire rest of the band's performance, she stood there exactly like you see her in the picture. Hands in front of her, holding her unplayed tambourine over her nether regions.

I called her Stand-By Tambourinist because of a line from the old Andy Griffith Show, where Barney buys a pair of cymbals - Andre Kostelanetz Marchers, no less - and wants to join the Mayberry town band. Andy gives him the job of stand-by cymbalist. When Barney points out that there's no regular cymbalist in the band, Andy replies, "Well, that's the best kind to stand by for."

And that's kind of how it went in this band. There was no regular tambourinist. Just her, standing there, in sunglasses, with her tambourine over her private parts, looking around at the band, out into the audience, then - "Hit it!" Four measures of tambourine tapping, and then she went back to standing with her instrument. She didn't play anything else, no other song, no other instrument, and I couldn't help but wonder just how important that four-measure tambourine passage had to have been to that band. Because it sure wasn't important to me, and what's worse, from the look of her, it didn't seem to be important to her.

Stand-By Tambourinist was in the percussion pit of her band. And this is where everybody's going to get out their remotes and start flipping around to other blogs, because I'm about to repeat myself. This is my version of when your dad says, "Of course, in my day, we had it hard."

Of course, I'm from the old school.

I was a high school band marcher in the mid to late 70s, and it was all different back then. I might have been more easily adaptable to how it's changed had I been around during the progression. But I wasn't. I left high school, longed to go sit on cold slabs of concrete watching marching bands for 20-some years, and then when the nephew became a band kid I got my chance. It was like waking up in a different band century. And I don't like it. And not only do I not like it, I just told a tremendous lie in this paragraph, because I wouldn't have been more adaptable at all, I would have spent 20-some years going, "There's change afoot. And I don't like it." Just so you know.

Anyway, I've been mulling over my Marching Band Manifesto. And I shall publish it here.

The Ten Commandments of Marching Band

Thou shalt have no percussion pit before me. This is one of the darker influences of the popularity of drum corps. Now marching bands have percussion pits, full of xylophones, marimbas, timpani, chimes, gongs, and, yes, even stand-by tambourinists, standing in front of the band on the edge of the field, flailing away. This sucks. Does marching band really need timpani? I say unto you, no. The percussion pit has also laid waste to the marching bell player, traipsing around out there with her bell set harnessed to her. I used to like marching bell players. They were always perky. The true marching band philosophy? If you can't march with it, you don't need it. Enough said.

Thou shalt march up and down the field. Probably the single most disheartening marching band trait today is the fact that none of them march up and down the fucking field. They start at one sideline, march onto the field, dip and doodle around there in the center, making circles and marching sideways a lot, then they exit off the other sideline. Lord have mercy, how I miss the days of marching bands that started in the endzone, marched to the middle of the field, did a little band derring-do, then marched off to the other endzone. You've got a whole field out there! You have room to roam! I have a fear that this lack of field coverage may be due to laziness. You have to have some gumption to march back and forth over a whole football field.

Thou shalt not waveth flags, pompoms, ribbons, nor fuzzies at my person, nor shalt thou flingeth thy fake wooden artillery into the heavens. This is a fancy way of saying, "No auxiliary, please," or more succintly, "Get those fucking flag girls off the field." Now, when I was a marcher, there were bands that had flag girls, and large schools even had rifle girls, but we didn't. We had a band director who swore that as long as he swung a baton, no flag girl would march with his band. About two years after I graduated, he caved. Flag girls are useless. They're members better put to use playing instruments and marching in lines.

Thou shalt not handeth over 20 pieces of silver and purchaseth a band show. I actually take back what I said above about the most disheartening thing. Because I was wrong, this is the most disheartening thing. No band makes up their own show anymore. They open a catalog, pick out a show, and write a check. In my band days, our director and a college band director buddy of his would come up with an idea, sit and write the arrangements, and draw out a marching program to go with it. It was amazing. We had the most creative shows around. They were even open-minded enough to take suggestions of songs and show ideas from the students, with great results. And the other bands in the area, they didn't have that great braintrust, but they still went and pored over their music till they picked out enough songs to make up a good program. No one does that nowadays. It's all pre-packaged crap. That is why you go to a band festival now and see two and three bands performing the exact same show. They just picked badly from the catalog. There's no imagination anymore.

If thou handest over 40 pieces of silver for a canned show, thou art doomed to eternal damnation. Yes, it gets worse. Everyone buys a band show, but some bands out there spend even more of that donut and pizza-selling money and buy what I call a "canned" show. It's a pre-packaged show that comes not only with music, but with a taped track of narration and sound effects. Completely embarrassing. These shows usually contain narration on some sort of theme explaning why the band is playing the tuneless blips and blops they're playing, because we'd have never figured it out otherwise. Like the worst-ever attraction at Disneyworld.

Thou shalt not doeth weird shit with electric guitars. It seems like at these band things, there's at least one band that just has to stick a long-haired, pimply-faced kid in the pit with an electric guitar. This is just a fucking disgrace. Electric guitar has absolutely no place in marching band. The kids are marching, twirling with precision, and that kid is in the pit shredding like he's in Metallica. He's not. He's in a marching band. The only way I'd even entertain the thought of electric guitar is if the player agreed to actually march with it. With it plugged in to the amplifier. And now I have the scene from that Woody Allen movie in my head, the one where he's playing cello in the marching band. Hey, at least he was trying. Well, the guitar players are trying, but in a different way.

Thou art a marching band. Therefore, thou shalt marcheth. There's way too much standing around in marching band these days. In our day, the only time you stood still was in between the songs. Now it's march a little, get to a spot, and stop and stand there and blow. Again, laziness. You're not marching up and down the damn field, you don't need to stop and rest! Band directors also seem to be afraid to have their kids playing while marching away from the audience. It cuts the sound, you know. So they'll stand and play, turn and march away, turn back around, and stand and play. Ridiculous. One band director from Saturday had kids playing while marching away, and to balance, she had the quieter instruments, like flutes, marching towards the audience. The balance was amazing. This woman is a genius, I'm convinced.

Thou shalt not playeth alone. God, every band has to have at least one soloist. I blame the popularity of drum corps for this, too. They're big on soloists. It detracts from the band. It sounds rotten. And it, well, it goes against the whole approach to a marching band - they're a unit! They're not a back-up band for some flashy-ass trumpet player, or saxophone noodler. And if your soloist is on crutches - well, we won't even go there.

Please remembereth - thou art a marching band. Yes, a band. Not a traveling Broadway troupe, not a group of interpretive dancers, not the Six O'Clock News. You're a band. There was one band on Saturday who basically put on a three-act play about Billy the Kid. Complete with his demise. It was bad. It was real bad.

Thou shalt haveth and inspireth fun. I mean, really. Isn't that what band is? Learning music, having fun with your friends, and entertaining crowds? Sure it is. But tell some of the bands today that. It's all sturm and drang with some of these kids, they're playing atonal music, looking skyward, dragging around the field not knowing what the hell is going on. Don't come up with some highfalutin' show that'll impress three disgruntled composers who had to become band directors and now make a little extra money judging these things. Do something for yourselves! Do something for your audiences, for God's sake! Have a little fun! Our band used to sing, dance, throw in musical jokes, play three and four different songs at the same time because it was goofy, and it never hurt us any. My favorite band on Saturday did just this. They were the only band out there that looked like they were actually having a good time. And the crowd went absolutely nuts. Other bands, other band parents, everyone jumping up and down and giving them a standing ovation. That's what being in band is all about. Making people happy, dammit.

And so that's my manifesto. And I shall print out enough copies to sit at the door of every bandroom in America. And this manifesto shall be read. And then thrown away, but I'll print out some more copies, at great expense to my person, and do it all over again, until someone out there understands it. And changes his or her band for the better. And after that band is changed, maybe another director will look and say, "Wow, that's pretty damn good," and change his band. And on, and on, until band will become what it used to be. Back in the last band century.

Or maybe not. Maybe it'll just get worse. Anyway, this was the nephew's last competition, so it may be another 20-some years before I go sit on a cold slab of concrete all day. I hope not, though. It would just be more fun if I could go back in time and sit on one all day.

Betland's Olympic Update:
* Acrowinners, we have acrowinners. So, tell me about your having the crud.
- Honorable Mentions go to LilyG, with her "Nasty rash itches. Smallpox? Damned terrorists." And Kellie (with an ie), with her "No Rest. Incessant Sniffling. Downing Triaminicin." (Mine's Robitussin, but she's got the idea.)
- Runner-Up goes to Stennie, with her whole little story, but mainly "Not rubella; it's strep damn throat."
- And this week's winner goes to Flipsycab, with her "Nightfall rears its sadistic dripping tendencies." She hit the nail right on the head - the minute I lie down, the coughing begins.
- Thanks to all who played, you've all done very well!