nerd core without the bar
I have a friend in Mucca Pazza who had been trying to get me to go see that band for what seems like perhaps a year now.
A rock marching band?! And images of droll drum lines rolling out in military succession would leave me with the blasé decision: I could drive out half an hour in the middle of the night to go see staccato horn lines in regimented sequences, or I could do ... anything else.
That was tragic decision as anyone who has ever gone to see the spectacle of Mucca Pazza would tell you. A near crime. Go see Mucca Pazza. Anyway...
That being said, I wonder if I've been infected now somehow, or if I just forgot why I so wanted to be in a marching band when I was younger.
Last night I went to a horn and drum line marching band competition, just for fun. (I know. That was a sign that things had already gotten strange.)
Perhaps more accurately, I watched a marching band competition out at NCC.
The pinnacle moment was the final act - the Cavaliers - the Green Machine. I was on the other side of the field than the bleachers, on the other side of the fence, leaning on the crossed posts of a wooden bridge at 9:30 at night. Before me fell the stream, wild flowers, the great bowl of the stadium. The thick mugginess had rolled into the field as a hazy mist, and the moon was brilliant and near full above it. The band filed out in black and green with bright metal plating, the bright metal of the horn and drum lines, flashes off the metal on the conductors uniforms and the crowd rising indistinct and ghostly behind them.
I don't know. Something surreal happened. The opening and closing were original scores, and that was perhaps what I was first stuck by -- the strange, compelling compositions that were almost disconnected from anything else that had happened in the band competition so far. They played it like a war, the guard and band spinning and twining in succinct and complex dance moves. How can French horns be supple? How can flags raise like fire? It felt more like watching a Hollywood production than a band competition in a small suburban college field. It felt out of time, too neat, too fluid, too accurate, eerie and medieval. Indistict but entirely weighted -- hyper-real.
It was possibly one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
And I've been around.
Was this a fluke? These were apparently some kind of competition marching bands that included an age range up to 21. This is pretty much what they do -- these theatrical competitions and shows. (And I would love to meet the composers because really -- it was very keen.) Have I been infected somehow by the "Mad Cow", or is it just that I had become blind to Marching Band badassery?
Also, I ran into the Green Lantern, Superman and Captain America outside the stadium (just chillin); but really, these things happen.
A rock marching band?! And images of droll drum lines rolling out in military succession would leave me with the blasé decision: I could drive out half an hour in the middle of the night to go see staccato horn lines in regimented sequences, or I could do ... anything else.
That was tragic decision as anyone who has ever gone to see the spectacle of Mucca Pazza would tell you. A near crime. Go see Mucca Pazza. Anyway...
That being said, I wonder if I've been infected now somehow, or if I just forgot why I so wanted to be in a marching band when I was younger.
Last night I went to a horn and drum line marching band competition, just for fun. (I know. That was a sign that things had already gotten strange.)
Perhaps more accurately, I watched a marching band competition out at NCC.
The pinnacle moment was the final act - the Cavaliers - the Green Machine. I was on the other side of the field than the bleachers, on the other side of the fence, leaning on the crossed posts of a wooden bridge at 9:30 at night. Before me fell the stream, wild flowers, the great bowl of the stadium. The thick mugginess had rolled into the field as a hazy mist, and the moon was brilliant and near full above it. The band filed out in black and green with bright metal plating, the bright metal of the horn and drum lines, flashes off the metal on the conductors uniforms and the crowd rising indistinct and ghostly behind them.
I don't know. Something surreal happened. The opening and closing were original scores, and that was perhaps what I was first stuck by -- the strange, compelling compositions that were almost disconnected from anything else that had happened in the band competition so far. They played it like a war, the guard and band spinning and twining in succinct and complex dance moves. How can French horns be supple? How can flags raise like fire? It felt more like watching a Hollywood production than a band competition in a small suburban college field. It felt out of time, too neat, too fluid, too accurate, eerie and medieval. Indistict but entirely weighted -- hyper-real.
It was possibly one of the coolest things I've ever seen.
And I've been around.
Was this a fluke? These were apparently some kind of competition marching bands that included an age range up to 21. This is pretty much what they do -- these theatrical competitions and shows. (And I would love to meet the composers because really -- it was very keen.) Have I been infected somehow by the "Mad Cow", or is it just that I had become blind to Marching Band badassery?
Also, I ran into the Green Lantern, Superman and Captain America outside the stadium (just chillin); but really, these things happen.