This One Year, After Band Camp ...

I fell in love with this activity during this one time, at band camp! Well, drum major camp. OK, well, after camp. It was at camp that I saw something about this drum corps show near my home (link), and went. I was thoroughly captivated.

By the small and energetic Emerald Knights. By the color of the San Jose Raiders, with that red rose on the uniform (this is waaaay back, when there were just a drum and bugle corps, not a winter gurad!). By the Colts, who didn’t forget the audience that night (and who in the audience would ever forget Harpo!)

And the Madison Scouts, who modeled precision and taught me in a brief pre-show clinic how to teach others to march and gave me a great taste of Strawberry Soup! Then there was the Phantom Regiment, who re-introduced me to my mother’s passion of the classics, with Spartacus (to be reprised in 2008!).

Even in my little high school band, I was inspired to make a difference, to apply the lessons, to learn how to push myself.

In college I wasn’t in band, but I was lucky – the state championships were held at none other than the stadium right on campus at the University of Texas at Austin. And so I still learned.

In graduate school, I took a class on starting a business. I broke a rule. My business was a non-profit, a drum and bugle corps. I studied all the successes and failures, and then made a few more of my own, luckily on paper.

Then in Raleigh, North Carolina, a hand scrawled flyer got in my hands, letting me know about a few other people in Charlotte, who shared the dream of starting a drum corps. I was lucky that they let me into their club, and I was able to then see the paper dream become a reality, an organization you may know as Carolina Crown. I was lucky enough to serve as president of the board as the group matured, and fortunate that my tenure didn’t drive them into the ground! From that summer in 1981 to now – with the exception of 2006 – drum corps has been a part of my summer. Now, it is high school band again.

Passion is a big circle.


Thanks for sharing the ride this year! And Happy New Year to you!

Band on the Web

Once or twice I volunteered to work the concession stand our local Kiwanis Club had at Texas Stadium. While others would sneak off to watch some of the Dallas Cowboys games, I would work non-stop from pre-game to halftime. Then at halftime, when everyone else came back I took my break. I am a huge Cowboys fan (ask my family!). But band ... wow ...

Anyway, Lubbock’s Monterey HS is one band I remember from those days. How cool to see them on the field and in the program. I wanted to be in that band, and the other ones, too. The cool thing is that now I can be – via the Internet!

Check out this “band on the web” – Tarpon Springs (FL) HS. I hear their reputation exceeds this exquisite web site. Whether it does or not, they set the bar high for themselves!

Unlimited creativity comes with limits

I love Fast Company magazine. It celebrates the design, art and creativity of business, for a profit. Art not for arts sake but for, well, performance!

This issue (December 2007/January 2008) has a great article by Chip and Dan Heath, the brothers behind the brand book "Made To Stick". The article's premise is that constraints can actually expand your team's creativity in problem solving.

I often like to say that "Thinking outside the box presumes you are able to think inside the box to begin with!"

I love band for that reason – what happens within the creative boundaries:

A green canvas, 300 x 160 feet (with a bit of leeway).
10 minutes (or a bit more).
The number of kids on instruments.
The instruments!
The talent the kids have.
The potential they bring.
The music.
The storyboard.
The props.
The budget.

Stuck on a problem? Limit your creativity. Then see what happens.

(This message brought to you on behalf of late shoppers everywhere - two shopping days left!)

Starve a cold, feed a fever!

The 2008 DCI schedule is out! My summer is starting to take shape.

And Blast! is coming to Baltimore in April!

If you need to feed the fever between now and June 21 (unless you are moving right in to winter guard!), join me in a search for nearby screenings of this movie: From the 50 Yard Line. Apparently someone in Maryland has seen it … just not me … yet!

Never on a Sunday

The 1991 Star of Indiana (now known as Blast!) won the DCI World Championship with an unbelievable mellophone line and a fantastic drill. I was fortunate to be in the stands that night. and found the last 30 seconds utterly amazing then ... and still do!).

Looking back more than 15 years later, the Roman Images show’s solid religious overtones still come though. (It's a comment heard about the book American Band as well.)

Two of the best bands I saw this year are from religious private schools – the consistently solid Lancaster Catholic this year performing a show Requiem. But (without being a homer) my one of my favorite shows of the season was performed by Annapolis Area Christian School (AACS).

This year TOB Groups 2 and 4 finals were on a Sunday. Lancaster Catholic placed 2nd in TOB Group 4. But AACS did not complete in TOB Group 2, where I believe they had a show that could have placed them in the Top 5 (where places 2-5 were separated by 0.8 points!). Like Eric Liddell, the Scottish missionary and Paris Olympics competitor portrayed in the film Chariots of Fire, AACS doesn't compete on Sundays.

Many consider AACS's shows overtly evangelical. I think this is a band that knows what it is. And I found this year’s show with the too-long-title got better with every viewing, and I wish I could have seen it at the USSBA finals, where they finished 5th).

It was clear that the kids loved performing it. I bet the directors loved teaching it. And I know the audiences (of all faiths or even non-faiths) loved feeling it and responding to it. (Click here - see for yourself!)

What I liked about this show was how it showed what C.S. Lewis called "Mere Christianity." It is a passion that is genuine and deep, not the religion of flashy televangelists. It is the Christianity I aim for: You know where I stand because of the passion of performance. It isn’t forced. It isn’t flashy. And it was something else.

You see, for me marching music is a true, three-dimensional, audio-visual experience. It is a group experience. So is worship.

So all that begin said, I respect AACS’s decision not to perform on a Sunday. But, in a way, I wish they had, using their show to remind others that on that particular Sunday morning, that there is always time for organized worship experience, if even for 10 minutes.

PHOTO CAPTION (partial): AACS garnered a fifth-place award, scoring a 93.4, which is believed to be the highest score ever attained by an AACS band in competition. (Baltimore Sun photo by Kim Hairston)

Marching Band is serious stuff

Just ask the Rice University Marching Owl Band (aka "The MOB"). Or the Bridgemen or Velvet Knights, two drum & bugle corps that are gone but live on in our memories and on YouTube. Then there is Cal-Berkeley ... and this video to demonstrate just how serious they are at band and academics, especially in that critical field of computer science.

Oh, a suggestion before you click - if you are over 40, get someone under 25 to help translate it for you. And remember it is upside down.

Yep - it's a new season!

Funny how fast time move!

Check this video out! Although I stepped back from my role with the Carolina Crown family in over a half-dozen years ago, they are still close to my heart. Although I often say "Drum corps is for the kids, not the adults", the kids in Carolina Crown gave me a lot over the years.

Check out the video ... give if you can!

Yup - season's over ...

Funky Winkerbean, 11/28/07