I know there’s a lot of numbers in today’s headline. But I’m not trying to do math. If I was, it would end up wrong anyway.
As any band geek knows, I’m talkng halftime shows. It’s football season once again and I am reminded of the fun days at Hazen High in marching band. It was there that 8 to 5 was drilled into us. That means you take eight high steps for every five yards. Mr. Gleason used to have us practice it with our eyes closed so that on every count of 1, we’d be on a yard line that begins with a 5 or 0. This is not easy to do and we spent hours on it.
25 or 6 to 4, of course, was a Chicago song that we played regularly in the halftime shows. During my junior year, I looked forward to every Friday when we were playing at home. That meant a new show and new music to learn. We would practice during class and then after school. At least once we would practice at the stadium downtown — a dress rehearsal if you will — since we also had to march into the stadium and on to the field, which took some skill as well. Actually, quite a bit of skill.
We were a very solid marching band. Mr. Gleason worked very hard on every show we did, not only having to come up with a theme, but the songs, the formations and the narration. It’s a lot of work believe me.
How do I know?
Because the summer of my senior year, I was helping him out. Being vaguely creative, I had some ideas for shows and he was willing to let me have a go at it. Over the summer months, I started plotting out shows. As you can see by the one here, they end up being a bunch of X’s on a mimeograph. That’s the finished version.
In my living room, however, the marching shows were 3-D. I had gotten a piece of poster board and marked a football field on it in. Then I pulled out my HO scale army men and used them as the band. Day in and day out, I would work on themes and then the formations.
Some of them were pretty whacky. In the one shown here, we did an Ode to the Holidays, which also included a Christmas tree, champagne glass, an egg that opened up and a heart. The formation here is two skyrockets. When we finished playing Stars and Stripes are Forever, the lines burst would burst into spiraling loops, like fireworks.
It was a blast putting these together. When I liked a particular formation, I would chart it out for Mr. Gleason to work with.
A few shows really stand out that I did. I did one that definitely crossed the lines between separation of church and state. The theme was the Great Flood. Everyone started at the far side of the field, creating clouds, then rain to form the ark. From there, the ark collapsed into lines, eventually creating the sunrise as we played “Let the Sunshine.” I doubt they’d let us get away with that in our sue happy agnostic and atheistic world these days.
I think my favorite formation had to be the pinball machine. It think the bigger theme of the show was “Pastimes.” We had extra bodies to work with on this one, since we were using the combined forces of the marching band and the cadet band. So we had about 120 people on the field, double our ordinary strength. That gave us a lot more latitude in what we could do.
The pinball machine was a hoot. There was no song to play. After the narration had introduced the idea, the machine sprang to life. The human plunger pulled back and off went the ball. Yes, a real ball. We had borrowed one of those big balls from the PE department – about 10 feet in diameter. Two people rolled it around inside the pinball machine at random. When they ran into a side, just one person would play their instrument. When it hit one of the center bumpers, everyone stood up and blurted whatever note they wanted to. There were flippers at the bottom that would send the ball back up.
The crowd went nuts. It was very “U of W Husky band” in design and execution. In fact, Mr. Gleason was willing to make some introductions at the U to see if I could work on their shows. But after the mono incident, I headed off to Green River Community College instead. They didn’t have a marching band, so my show writing days ended.
Mr. Gleason went on to Bellevue Community College to teach music, bigger and better things as it were. The new guy taking over for him wasn’t someone I wanted to work with. When you’ve worked with the best, why take a step backwards?
So, I ended up being a writer, among other things. I still design stuff these days; they just don’t require as many people to follow along with my madcap ideas.
And yet, the French horn in my closet still calls to me on occasion. I can still play the Hazen fight song, sort of, though my lips go numb about 10 bars into it. Every once in a while, I get this crazy idea to put together a marching band of pirates. I can see it now, a line of Captain Jack Sparrows leading the big parade, followed by rogues and wenches right behind.
If that sounds a bit “Music Man” it is. I don’t even have to re-write the song much, given the last verse:
There were fifty mounted cannon in the battery
Thundering, thundering louder than before
Clarinets of ev’ry size
And pirates who’d improvise,
A full octave higher than the score!
Any takers? I have one pirate so far. A French horn player, I hear.
Out on the Treasure Coast, looking for the band arrangements for the Pirates of the Caribbean theme song,
– Robb