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In Baltimore the band played on even when there wasn't a team!

I like this. I was invited to a football game this past fall to see an old friend's marching band...well, they really aren't marching bands anymore. The visiting band had all the bells and whistles - flags, front mallet percussion ensemble, and electronics. They had 160 members on the field with 8 very fine playing Sousaphones that were at times totally covered up by the electronic keyboard bass (Why ????). I guess I'm just too traditional to enjoy what they now call the "marching arts". I have my own name for it.

Jperry1466 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 22, 2022 2:12 pm I like this. I was invited to a football game this past fall to see an old friend's marching band...well, they really aren't marching bands anymore. The visiting band had all the bells and whistles - flags, front mallet percussion ensemble, and electronics. They had 160 members on the field with 8 very fine playing Sousaphones that were at times totally covered up by the electronic keyboard bass (Why ????). I guess I'm just too traditional to enjoy what they now call the "marching arts". I have my own name for it.

i thought it was just me.

I'm old enough to be offended by the use of electric amplification, particularly bass, in a marching or pep band. My alma mater occasionally calls for alumni to staff the basketball pep band due to conflicts and were I to go and see an amp... well, it would be a shame it something happened to the cable. I'm sure it won't. But it would be a real shame.

I have not seen nor heard of this abomination.

Say it isn't so!

If you're only 40 years old or so, you probably also remember before marching bands dragged huge nondescript pieces of weird crap out onto the field.

bloke wrote: ↑Thu Dec 22, 2022 8:05 pm If you're only 40 years old or so, you probably also remember before marching bands dragged huge nondescript pieces of weird crap out onto the field.

Thanks, DCI.

kingrob76 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 22, 2022 3:23 pm I'm old enough to be offended by the use of electric amplification, particularly bass, in a marching or pep band. My alma mater occasionally calls for alumni to staff the basketball pep band due to conflicts and were I to go and see an amp... well, it would be a shame it something happened to the cable. I'm sure it won't. But it would be a real shame.

How do you expect tuba players in the 11th grade are going to play when you give them 3/4 size tubas to play from age 11 - 14 ?

no wonder they're not making enough sound...

bloke wrote: ↑Thu Dec 22, 2022 9:19 pm
How do you expect tuba players in the 11th grade are going to play when you give them 3/4 size tubas to play from age 11 - 14 ?

no wonder they're not making enough sound...

The 8 guys I'm talking about put out plenty of sound, balanced the band well. The keyboard bass had his amp in front and cranked up. My objection is to the one-act play going on on the field, with music being secondary to the theater. And the music is always "commissioned", and unmusical. The judging sheets no longer mention stride, spacing, foot placement, or marching - just "adequate body motion". Some of these bands own an 18-wheeler to haul props and equipment and spend up to $150,000 on that year's "show". (Know how many instruments I would buy with that kind of money?) The squats and kicks do nothing for me or the crowd. That's why the bleachers empty at halftime, which is just a rehearsal for the next contest, with band parents about the only audience. Having attended a university where music and theater shared the same building, my name for the "marching arts" has to do with theater and their "proclivities".

Sorry for the rant. I grew up and taught marching band in a time when it was still marching band where musicality and precision were important.

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High School bands in this part of the country in the 1970s weren't that interested in marching - at least not as far as competing with each other. Most of us look forward to Thanksgiving and Christmas when that stuff stopped and we quit having to go outside in the cold and the dew and the mud. We did maybe a half-time show, maybe a different homecoming halftime show, and marched in parades.

Our college band mostly got on and off the field the same way for a pregame shows and halftime shows, but the middle parts were changed every week and were pretty impressive, maybe even by today's standards (though no one hauled any random weird pieces of painted crap out onto the field) - certainly the playing was tops. I wasn't the least bit interested in being in a college marching band, but the tuition was very low and I've tabulated that the band scholarship paid about $5 an hour (the equivalent of about $30 today) was more than I probably could have made working at the Sears warehouse, at a car wash, or someplace like that, and particularly for such odd hours.

I believe marching contests had barely began to really become a thing in some regions when I was in school, and many of us laughed at the idea and repeated the saying jokingly, "The purpose of music is to win." Concert band events with judging were referred to as festivals, and schools got ratings and comments but no trophies. Jazz band festivals were mostly the same, except the only awards handed out were to soloists or possibly sections of bands for outstanding performance.

One last thing maybe:
Keeping my eyes and ears open, a whole bunch of these schools seem to have people coming in teaching private lessons to every single student, either at the schools' expense or at the band's own funding's expense. We (other than maybe two or three kids) didn't have any money for lessons. We just practiced (to avoid being severely called out in rehearsals), and bought etude books at music stores that had stuff in them that we couldn't play, and worked on those at home.

One of the local high schools, Catalina Foothills, is going (went?) to the Rose Bowl (parade?) There are 270 kids in the marching band. They have shared park concerts with us at times, because we use their auditorium for non-park concerts. And their director plays flute in our community concert band. These kids are quite good and there is no electronic anything. I don't know how many sousaphones there are, but there are a LOT. All hanging on the wall in the walkway behind the stage in the auditorium. This is a "richer neighborhood high school" and the instruments are not trashed. I don't know why they all want to participate in marching band, but they do. I have always been glad that I played violin in high school and college, remembering that every year in high school someone in the marching band would faint from heat exposure. (Indianapolis, heavy wool band uniforms.)

Found it; 2023 Rose Bowl Parade:
https://tucson.com/news/local/catalina- ... 33c05.html

This is all repeated stuff that I've posted before, but we didn't even scuff the bottoms of our 36k fiberglass sousaphones.