Who was in the h.s. band? Can music mania be *outgrown*? The drums are beating in July.
So for 25 years or so I've occupied my digs, which are about 2 blocks as the crow flies away from one of the city's high schools, with a canal and a high traffic street in between their parking lot where the band practices and my house. Year 'round my region has a 30 miles per hour wind almost constant, blowing from over there (in the region) towards me. So everything - sound, dust, litter - blows my way.
So one of my 25 years' routines is that that band starts practicing over summer vacation in August. That is, when school lets out for the summer, they all take a month and a half completely GONE from the vicinity of school, so the whole area is vacated of the traffic, the pedestrians, everything. But every year around the second week of August, the band comes back, starting with the DRUM Section, first with only the bass drums beating 1-2-3-4 (repeat, repeat, repeat forever), then after days of the bass drums only, the rest of the drums start in with metronome type exercises, then a week later the musical instruments join in with intelligible melodies, mostly the brass section blaring in the wind.
Sounds charming, don't it. (not a question) So here's the thing. I was in the band - lo, these forty years ago - and I fully understand the extreme hold that band has on us band kids. It's really an obsession, a not-secret society, rather a healthy alternative to gang membership, a place where one BELONGS and belongs willingly, a place apart from family and school, the band being the mystical, spiritual, magnetic family.
But I left band after 2 yrs in Middle and 2 yrs in High schools, leaving being unheard of. My mother, who was responsible for the music in our family anyway, coming from being a Catholic school girl versed in piano and light classical music, gave me a talking to about being obsessed with band to the effect of, "Music is beautiful. Band is fun. But you need to study math and science and other things."
So I know what participating in concerts, in football field marching, in parades, in competition means, and I disliked the part about performing like a monkey in front of audiences. And I cut off playing an instrument (wind instruments are yucky with saliva) and with the advent of home entertainment devices was liberated from being in audiences at concerts, and really over my work life lost touch with keeping up with the latest artist or deepening exposure in all facets. I have set it aside, despite still thinking that music is the highest creation of all.
What brings this up now/here, is that this darned h.s. band has started with the banging bass drums since last week ------------- *JULY*!!!!!1 Band kids have fun all school year, but summer is when they can be BAND ALONE without the appendage of SCHOOL!1 Several years ago I went to the old all-schools competition where all the region's bands perform one after the other from Noon to a grand finale at night, and what surprised me was when it was all over and the field was vacated, ALL of the tuba sections from all the different bands took the field, just the tubas for themselves, NOT scheduled, NOT officially performing, just the oddball tubas wanting to be alone with themselves.
So another of the local routines is in late September for the Homecoming game. This canal street band puts on their very own parade for themselves, circling around from the school over to this street next to my house, with a few flatbed trailers carrying pep squads and this band being the only performers. That one is scheduled. Get off my yard!1 (Haha)
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