Welcome to Bandecdotes,
humorous experiences
supplied by Mr. Dentino.

Samantha Jones and the Cymbal of Doom

One of the bands, that I had the extreme good fortune to work with in the early years of my career, had an outstanding marching band tradition.  They had an at-school band camp in August before school started in September, before-school practices in the morning, and Thursday night rehearsals under the lights.  They  even had a portion of the student parking lot painted like a football field to practice on, when they couldn't use the stadium. They had Friday night football games like we do, and, also, like us, they performed only at their home games, and went on the road for one away game a year. They did a completely different show for each home game.  That, of course, meant different music had to be memorized, new drills learned, and new show designs prepared well in advance. All of this was patterned after another rather good marching band in the area;  you know, the one that performs on autumn Saturdays in the "Horseshoe" or "The Shoe", Ohio Stadium, in Columbus, Ohio.

The most important football game at Concord-Carlisle is the traditional Thanksgiving morning battle with Bedford.  The most important game of the year at this Ohio school was the annual "Homecoming" game.  This was the game that was attended by all of the alumni.  There was the traditional election of the Homecoming King and Queen, a special Homecoming dance after the game, and many other school-wide events during the week prior to the game. Homecoming was usually scheduled in the middle of the football season, not on a traditional date, such as Thanksgiving.  Neither was it required that the game be played against a traditional opponent, but it usually was - the dreaded eleven from North High School.  The team was going to be ready. The school was ready. The band had darn well better be ready, too.

As a young, energetic second year band director fresh out of Ohio State, I understood the importance of tradition.  We had spent the fall gradually increasing the difficulty and the challenge of our shows, and I had the "show of the year" planned for this band for Homecoming.  Boy! This was going to be big.  No one in attendance that night was ever going to forget this show. The students had been pestering me for several weeks about replacing their hat plumes with battery powered hat lights.  These were a small flashlight type of decoration that slid right into the plume slot of the marching hats.  With a quick twist, a small colored light blinked on at the top. It rather looked like each band member had a candle on their head.  The band had used these lights with great success with the previous band director.

I consented to program the hat lights in the Homecoming show.  We would form five concentric circles on the field.  They would be arranged like the Olympic rings, and each one would have a different hat light color.  We would shut off the lights to the stadium, turn on the hat lights, rotate the circles a bit, turn the stadium lights back on, and poof!  The Homecoming King and Queen would magically appear in the circles. Homecoming King and Queen requirements fulfilled, band members' sense of empowerment satisfied, professional reward, you name it, this show had it. And all to the melody of "Isn't She Lovely", a hot hit by Stevie Wonder that year.  Perfect.

Band practice that week went extremely well. No twenty-five cent fines for unmemorized music that week, that was certain. Those kids had everything memorized before drill practice started that Monday. We had requested the actual football field for Thursday night practice. Only band directors know how difficult that request really is.  Everybody knows that marching bands do more damage to football fields than football teams do (to say nothing, of course, of soccer teams, lacrosse teams, cheerleaders and the freshman archery team). If anything happens to the football field be it drought, spike-rent turf, or grubs, it's most often the marching band's fault.  "I saw them!", said one past coaching acquaintance of mine.  "They were stomping on the field, legs going up and down and turning on the same hash mark...all 116 of them!", he said. "What's a football field really for, the football team or the band?".

Anyway, the Athletic Department granted us this once in a season request and there we were on the field on a beautiful autumn Thursday night in Ohio. Everything went according to plan. I had my new state of the art wireless headset on, and I was in tune with our electronics teacher Mr. Reese.  I gave the signal for the kids to turn on their lights and signaled Mr. Reese to darken the stadium. The head snare drummer gave his four taps to set the tempo and start the tune.  Stevie Wonder's latest hit floated into the night.  The circles rotated, one apparently moving another, the hat lights were all on, King and Queen in place.  Beautiful.  We were ready.

Friday night began with the typical pre-Homecoming excitement. The bass section was "twinkling" their sousaphones. The percussion section was tightening their snare heads.  The winners of the previous week's "Tuna Award" for the stupidest, boneheaded marching blunder in that week's show had made the band officers their tuna subs.  I called the group together for warm-up, made a few last minute adjustments, gave the final instructions and the obligatory pep talk, and we marched out to the field.  If Thursday night had been beautiful, Friday evening was sterling.  There was a crisp bite of autumn in the air, and the sky was that perfect twilight blue.  My favorite color.  It matched the band's uniforms. There was a huge crowd and the team was not letting them down. We were up 12-zip at the half. North's band played first, as we got set on the sidelines. Then it was our turn.

The first two numbers were dynamite. In keeping with the show's theme for the evening we knocked off a couple more mega hits from the album "Songs From the Key of Life" by old Stevie.  "Sir Duke" was one of them. Then it was time for the finale.  "Here we go!", I told Mr. Reese,  "Hit 'em!". The stadium lights went out. Blackness enveloped the stadium as planned, but there was one problem...and it was a big one.  I had forgotten to give the band the signal to turn on their hat lights.  Now, every band director knows that if you don't give that one critical cue, that one special look, that one point of the baton, the band won't do anything. They'll just sit there like bison waiting for the slaughter. They will never figure out, as a group, that "Yeah, this guy just messed up and this is the way is goes".  Well, that's what the band did, they just stood there.  All of them, that is, except for the head snare drummer.  You see, the percussion section was down front and was not involved with the hat light drill.  "Pretty good move", I thought.  The head snare drummer's cue was the dimming of the stadium lights.  The lights went out.  The snare drummer sent forth his taps.

Music started springing up from different areas of the field.  I could hear some of the first trumpet melody.  The first trumpeters were seniors, so it stood to reason that they would be among the first to put things together. The baritone horn counter melody got going okay. But the woodwinds, as always, were playing in their own time and tempo, the bass line was contesting with the percussion for control, and the trombones and saxes....boy, no chance of recovery there.  After the first fifteen seconds or so, most of the kids figured out what was going on and decided to turn on their hat lights. Lights of various colors, like so many sprites, began winking on all over the field.  No concentric circles here, folks.  What I saw made absolutely no geometric sense at all.  The only way I can describe it was chaos with a couple of amoebas swimming around.  One circle (I think it was a woodwind circle) actually kind of got its act together. It was rather round, of one hat light color, and moving in time with the music,  The only problem was one half of the circle was moving one way and the other half in the opposite direction.  This resulted in a collision every sixteen counts when the circle was supposed to change direction. There would be a collision at the top of the circle one second, then sixteen counts later, a collision at the bottom.

I was on the head set. Pee Wee was asking me how things were going. He was hearing a great deal of crowd noise which he presumed to be appreciation for a job well done. All I could say in my microphone was "Oh my God. Oh my God. Oh my God.". Finally, "Isn't She Lovely" came to a blessed finish.  The music had recovered quite well considering the disaster which had befallen it. I told Pee Wee to bring up the lights.  It looked like a war zone.  Kids were all over the field. Marching band hats and hat lights were strewn everywhere. Pieces of instruments were on the ground.  The Homecoming King and Queen were nowhere to be found. Evidently, they had the common sense to run for it while the getting was good and escaped serious injury. The percussion section had no idea what was happening.  A band director designs their marching shows with the best kids in the most important places. Samantha Jones, Band President and first Alto Saxophone player, held one of those positions. She was standing, at perfect attention befitting one of her leadership position, directly in front of me and a little to my right. Her hat was askew. Her saxophone neck was twisted to one side.  Head head was straight forward, but her stare! If looks could kill! Then I noticed it...her mouth was bleeding. You see, as I found out after the game, she had marched right into our crash cymbal player and got a crash right in the face. No stitches required, but she couldn't play for a few days

The band marched off the field in good order trying in vain to regain some of its lost dignity.  We finished the game in the stands cheering and playing our team to a rout. Then it was into the band room. That was the quietest post victory band room I've ever been in. The band officers got together and voted on the "Tuna Award" for that week. The verdict was returned unanimously, and in record time. You've got it. It was me.