It Should Be Band

Spring can't be far away now. Want to know how I can tell? It's not the slowly lengthening days, the different angle of the sunshine, the advent of shrill birdsong or the sign of green shoots in the soil. Nor is it the sudden appearance of all the "yard work" oriented merchandise in the home improvement store's garden section; (I'm sure that it's there - I just can't be bothered to go and look at it). No, what gives it away is the first sound of a fucking marching band practicing their awful excuse for music at a local high school.

When Spring arrives there will be weekends when half the band-nerd population of Missouri descends on said high school to "compete" in band contests. They show up in huge fucking trucks, full of outsize musical instruments, ridiculous uniforms and lawn chairs, and march up and down the field in turn, making a noise that could not be beaten for sheer irritation value by the sound of a thousand cats being tortured to death with weedwackers. And there will be hundreds of proud parents in matching "band booster" sweatshirts, their oversized buttocks hanging over their lawn chairs as they root for that particular group of weirdos with which their braces-wearing offspring is associated.

I know that musical taste is an intensely personal thing. I happen to like mostly rock - metal, punk, heavy rock, especially stuff I grew up with - but I can also appreciate occasional jazz, classical, even a bit of Eminem. Country music is hard to handle - it all sounds the same, and it's hard to take anyone wearing a cowboy hat and chaps seriously - but at least you can recognise it as music. Band tunes, by contrast, are just shit. Don't get me wrong, I challenge anyone not to be moved by the majesty of the Grimethorpe Colliery Band playing "Abide With Me", the swelling brass notes lingering in the air, the long tradition of the mineworkers in their heritage. That's a real band. But the typical US marching band plays bouncy excuses for tunes that go like this:

Thump Thump Thump Thump, Ringty-tingty-ting, Parp Parp Parp, Ringty-tingty-tingty, Thump Thump Thump. Etc. Etc.

Let's be honest - there's really no tune, is there? It's a bunch of instruments that would sound crap on their own, thrown together and playing what seems like completely different music. How do you hold a contest for that? I bet you couldn't even tell that there was more than one band there if you couldn't see that they were all wearing different stupid uniforms.

I know, a lot of effort goes into learning the "music" and playing it while marching in a dead-straight line while waving the trombones in unison. It takes a lot of practice and no little skill. But here's my point: given time, and a plentiful supply of beans and chili, I could, I am sure, learn to fart the Star Spangled Banner. It wouldn't be easy, and it would definitely require immense effort (especially not following through on the high notes). But that doesn't mean that anyone should want to listen to it, and I certainly don't expect to sell tickets so people in lawn chairs can watch. On the plus side, if I marched up and down the field at the nearby high school farting tunes out of my arse, at least the noise wouldn't carry so that everyone within a six-block radius was forced to "enjoy" it, like the fucking band practice. Unless I added Veggie Burgers into the mix. Then we might have problems...


Copyright © 2008 Edward Bison