My Dark Past
by Katie
There’s something pretty big in my past that I don’t really talk about. And I relived it this weekend.
I’m talking, of course, about being in the marching band. THROUGH-CLICKING SUCKERS! We won’t talk about who was the queen of what, or who experienced a shitload of band drama throughout their band-filled life, or anything, but suffice to say I was pretty into it in my heyday.
Look at those straight, straight lines.
So when I found out that USSBA championships were November 7th and 8th in Annapolis, I was intrigued. After I graduated high school, my high school band changed directors, Mikey quit the tuba line (bottom of the bus, meet Michael), everyone else I knew grew up and graduated too, and apparently they changed competition circuits. What had become of my old band in the last… however many years, I wondered. Seeing as Annapolis is a) the cutest city EVER and b) only about an hour away, I manged to convince ex-color guard hotshot Liz to drive me to the competition.
(That’s right. If I’m going down, I’m taking all of you with me. We! are! fa!mily!)
Things have changed a little since my old band days. For instance, now the bands are all using weird backdrops that they spin around or turn over and that have two to three different images on them. One band also had purple beds as props, and a girl in a glass case (of emotion?) hanging letters on the sides. Their show theme was “A Beautiful Mind” and at the end, they unwrapped the be-lettered glass panes, and lined up all the purple beds and lifted them up to reveal a message that said:
IN MY BEAUTIFUL MIND
LT’S ALI A PICTURE
A for effort, guys, but F for execution. Also, purple beds for the color guard to dance on? WTF?
In other strange changes, there are a lot of voice-overs going on during performances now, which I really don’t understand. I mean, I thought Alex Short invented that for his proposed show theme, “The Kennedy Assassination,” which would have featured Arlen Specter reciting the single bullet theory or, barring that, a voice repeating “back, and to the left” during the closer. But apparently this babbling is becoming standard band practice, as several of the bands used semi-audible, awkward voice overs during their shows. I think it sucks, but I’m not involved in it, so who cares?
Most of the bands have really good-looking outfits, while poor Quakertown still sport the bulky wool getups they wore in my day. Seriously, those things are 10 years old. I guess that goes in the “Hasn’t Changed, But Should Have” column. A quick google search reveals that they may someday have uniforms that look like this, provided they don’t get cut from the school’s budget again. (The consistently-average football team, however, got a totally renovated stadium right after I graduated. Whatever.)
All told, we sat through some 15 bands and a rain delay, remembering high school, loving uniforms with capes or different colors on the back than on the front, and hiding from the dad of friends we’d had pretty much from 1st grade through high school who were also sisters (did that make sense?). It was pretty awesome to see a lot of great bands–and to cheer like crazy when Qtown placed 3rd and beat the schools of most of the spectators around us. I was really proud to see what the band has become, and to know that it’s only gotten better since I left.
Watching bands like Quakertown and North Penn (who placed 2nd and are sort of legendary among SEPA bands) didn’t make me miss marching boxes, or anything like that. But it did remind me how much I learned and grew as a leader and a musician during those few years. It took moving out of the country to more or less fix the social anxiety thing, but I definitely became more confident and a better leader because of my time as a bando. So, rad, and also, congrats Quakertown!!!
If I could find video to post, I would. But I can’t.
ummm, I came up with the Arlen Specter voice-over idea. Don’t give that fool credit
I don’t know what you’re talking about. What is this color guard you speak of?
Also, the new uniforms are no improvement. I think the uniforms (that they got when I was not in the color guard) are still pretty nice looking if old. That keyboard thing is heinous. And there is no keyboard in marching band.
And finally, I was thinking this morning that mom and dad really screwed us up. Who doesn’t go say hello to someone they’ve known their entire lives? Wes’s friends’ parents give me hugs when they meet me because they love him so much. Maybe we’ll never get over our social awkwardness.
PENNRIDGE RULES!!!
no just kidding. I wish I would have done the band or anything else social like that. You form relationships that last a lifetime. Do you still keep in touch with anyone from the band?
Good posting.
Lots and lots of happy hours spent watching many talented kids learning how to work well with others as well as honing important skills like marching backwards. Being an old bando myself (go North Penn), I think the halftime show is still the best part of a football game. Sometimes I miss going to those competitons.
ah, my little bro is in the band. You know, the one bolton consistently belittles on facebook? Yea, the band is pretty OK. Never understood the school’s infatuation with its crappy football team. (When they renovated the stadium, every other sport asked for a turf field, but good ol’ Mr. Donnelly owned the world, and now, if you were to pass by the stadium, would see a patch of dirt with a little grass in it.)
Anyway, don’t tell michael, but I like your blog a TEENSY bit more than his. Plus, I enjoyed the Ben Folds blog immensely, but I didn’t write because I felt like a total creeper.
Tell your brother congrats! They were great this weekend.
Also. Ha! I told Liz that I thought I liked you, after you snarked Mikey for something earlier. He’s such a troll on all those Qtown facebook pages. I wanted to link to the JFK assassination band page, but they made the group private because of him and Alex.
I like how Mom uses her full name to comment. Your mom reads your blog!
She reads yours, too. Snap!
Nostalgic post, to say the least katie. I really ought to relive those memories one of these days, as it was a major part of my pubescent years, whether for the better or for the worse. I suppose wearing skin-tight spandex, while standing on a podium, in 17 degree weather, in front of 5K people was…. character building? I think my memory blocked out those years for a reason?
And what’s with this voice over stuff you are talking about? Are students reciting what, like poems(?), over their show? If so, that must detract from the music, and I did come up with that idea! So help me, if Q-town uses a voice over in any shows to come, I’m going to remind the director of Senator Specter’s proposed cameo appearance at our show. (Hey, it’s a swing county, ain’t it?)
… “back, and to the left, back, and to the left”