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I'm just curious as to how many members here are in some sort of marching band. Poll away!!

I voted for "walk", but it's really more of a shuffle . . . .

I guess I could have a chat with my quintet and see if they'd like to add this extra degree of difficulty to our repertoire!

Cheers,

I'm in the high school marching band and american legion band

I'm currently teaching college marching band. Hope that counts, lol. I think I aged out.....

Marched in high school, did drum and bugle (played snare drum) in the Marine Corps but the last 45 years have found me on a band stand in somebody's bar or restuarant.
Haven't marched any Mardi Gras parades since high school but have played guitar and trumpet on parade floats with a Honda generator buzzing along to power up the 600 watt P.A. system. They origionally wanted us to march with a coaster wagon tied to my belt loop with the generator running in it. I pled old age and the fact that they don't call us the "Half-Fast Creekers" for nothing and got us on the float.
Dennis Gray
tubatooter1940
www.johnreno.com/

Hell... our Shriners Band members do well to haul their horn from the parking lot to the band room! Some of 'em only get as far as the Temple lobby and take a rest before getting on the elevator to go upstairs.

I can claim membership in a sort of marching band, but since we don't get together often enough that you could prove it's alive, it's no big deal that I can't find it on the menu of choices. But I've been in it for 20 years, so I'm going to count it.

Main venue is street protests. Anti-war protests, union protests, Martin Luther King Day parade, World Trade Organization greeting committe, whatever. Repertoire is extremely varied - a Renaissance bransle, Down by the Riverside, some tune supposedly by Albert Ayler, Sweet Bye and Bye ["there'll be pie in the sky, when you die" etc.], protest tunes from the early 70's, Nkosi Sikele the supposed African National Anthem, The East Is Red [The East is Pink] played at rapidly increasing tempo in non-transposed parts for Bb & Eb to get parallel harmony, a couple tunes from "Marat/Sade" ... Or someone just starts playing something they like - "Mercy, Mercy", Mingus' "Fables of Faubus", "Sailor's Hornpipe", and we'll all join in with enthusiasm and actually sound a lot more like we know what we're doing than you'd expect. Some very good players, and when it comes together it can be a ton of fun, nothing like anything else.

Let's see... I instructed marching bands for 26 years and recently marched in a senior drum corps for three years. Does that count? It's not among the choices above...

I'll bet that there are some brass banders on TubeNet who've marched on Whit Friday. Andy Cattanach???

I am occasionally hired to march with a sousaphone with the "Chicago Symphonic Wind Ensemble, Inc." You know you're in for a unique experience when the conductor calls himself "The Maestro."

I really dislike marching, but somehow I'm gonna be one of the Redcoat trombone section leaders next year with a friend of mine. A tuba player as section leader, who would have thought.

richland tuba 01 wrote:well, our marching band went and got 7th at the bands of america grand national championships in Indy last year, so I guess that counts. I'm gonna join the blue devils(drum corps) as soon as I get over my dislike for running laps and doing push-ups.

You're really cool.

I only voted to see the results. After marching in high school, grad school (my undergrad did not have a marching band, as they did not have a football team) and a couple of other situations, the words, "I walk," are superfluous to the rest of the phrase. I ride on the trailer.

But in high school, as we had similar conditioning drills, just not the pushups, the only people who did not make fun of us about the physical conditioning it took to march, both street and field, were the football players who played in concert band, so during football season they were the guys who chalked the practice field, set out the yard markers, carried the director's ladder/podium, etc., for us, and we countered the football players quips about "2-a-day" practices starting two weeks before school started with the fact we rehearsed and marched all summer, including the hot Independence Day parade while they sat around, and why did they wait so long to start?

Just in case this sounds like a rant against football players, it isn't. It's just after playing little league football, I realized that if I continued, I could probably count on difficulties walking later on in life. I was even asked by the head football coach to come back after being cut from basketball to be starting wide receiver. With a deep breath and a whole lot of Chutzpah, I said thanks, but I that liked my knees the way they are now. Thirty years later, I know I made the right decision, as my brother-in-law who is about my age has all sorts of joint problems, my step father, who place kicked, just lost a couple of toes off his kicking foot due to diabetes complications, my uncle who was his high school's starting quarterback now has Parkenson's, evident mostly in his throwing arm, and I'm still playing center field on a church league softball team and driving a golf ball 275 yards, and 300 on a good day.

iiipopes wrote:I only voted to see the results

Aw, c'mon! Tell me you didn't see that little "View Results" tag underneath every poll, just so you don't have to!

Yeah, on this one I just wanted my 2 cents' worth since there were extra words added to the choice, "Hell, no I don't march...."

I marched in the Phantom Regiment for a long time...


However, I'm too old now.