Bass in a Marching Band?!?

[Brad Barker]

In an hour and a half from now, I'm going to be at the high school for a last minute practice before our next competition. I feel indifferent.

The competition is the FBA, and as far as I know, it is the qualifier for the state competition. Meaning, if we don't do so hot tonight, we'll only have a week left (we will still have another competition next weekend). If we do make states, we'll practice to no end, undoubtably.

I'm disliking marching band more and more every day. I want the season to end soon. But if it ends later than sooner...oh well.

Last night, we played our last football game. Our show didn't seem to be good or bad. We have tempo problems, which disables our show from being performed the best we can. My friend who's a drum major seems to have tempo problems, which is more worse than, say, a trumpet player, because the band is supposed to be reliant on him for tempo. Instead, they play at their own individual tempo and I try to follow both the sound of the band and the tempo of the drum majors with less than spectacular results. Anyway, the band director didn't seem so pleased with our performance. We had to cut our show short a song; I thought it was b/c Mr. Foster was pissed, but I was reassured that it was due to time constraints.

I don't really care.

[Munjibunga]

About those bus rides. They're actually the BEST part ... IF you can hook up with one of the two acceptable looking young ladies in the band. Then you just make out in the back all the way home. In our band, the banner corps, most of whom were half-ways decent looking, rode on the band bus. But that was over 35 years ago, and I can barely remember it.

[BigBohn]

haha, wellington would whoop St. Lucies ass anyday in football, buh'lee' dat!

[Ty McNeely]

Well, I'm pretty satisfied with the performance of our marching band this season. We made the finals and got 5th place overall at the Southern Oklahoma Marching Championships (first time in 8 years to make the finals), we got 2nd place overall at a contest in Tishomingo, and got a Superior at Regional contest, which hasn't happened in 8 years. We're well on our way to a Sweepstakes!

BTW.....any more tuba/sousaphone bashin' around here and it may just get ugly

[Brad Barker]

We got an "excellent." Many were pissed, others satisfied. turns out that the performance not only wasn't a competition, it wasn't a qualifier for states. That's next week-end.

Towards the end of the last "song" (I know I shouldn't call them that, but I don't know what else to call them), there is a part where there are 16 counts of rest: the whole band uses this time for a "visual." I hold my bass out perpindicular to me neck on beat 3 and do a wave-like motion on beat 4. When I raised the bass up, the chord kinda crapped out and made a chirping sound, in the middle of all the silence. I was really pissed; some, nay, ALL, of the kids in the stands started laughing. I frowned like the harder I did, the less a difference that noise would make.

I want to hear the judges' tapes, or at least hear what they had to say about me.

We did alright. We got an "excellent." I wouldn't use that particular word to describe my band.

As a side note: yes, any football time would walk all over the PSL team. They suck...hard. We were able to win last friday but lost by over 30 points. They really suck. During halftime, i met a tuba player and i said that i played the electric tuba; I would play the tuba but I don't have any lips, I said to him. I don't think he bought it.

[Intrepid]

We have two very hot ladies in our flag guard that I rode the bus with, but you just don't make out in public anymore these days.