A high school band camp is back in town, and it’s actually quite nice. As long as I have lived here, there have always been tons of band camps here in the summer. It’s a great place for them- lots of athletic fields and college dorms for them to stay in, a cafeteria, and in the middle of nowhere so there is not much trouble for them to get into other than typical shit they could and do do anywhere.
They weren’t here last year for obvious reasons, and this year, there is only one, but it is nice. I have the windows open listening to them playing out of tune. I didn’t know I missed it.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
Band camps are alike from sea-to-shining sea – they smell of moldy clothing, clearasil, desperation, clumsy sex and angst….
West of the Rockies
Anything that is normal after the last four and a half Trumpian years feels lovely.
WaterGirl
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I am in love with the giraffe from the OTR you just submitted.
Omnes Omnibus
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: You really are a bitter dude.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@WaterGirl:
He was amazing – a really chill guy. I’ve got shots of us standing just a few feet from him. Have others of giraffe heads outlined by the light of a setting sun in the background of a beautiful landscape. Elephants that way, too.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Omnes Omnibus:
C’mon – everybody went to band camp or the equivalent (I had the ever enjoyable Southern Baptist thing of “Choir Tour”). It always went the same way – tears, drama, the impermanence of teen romance.
rikyrah
That sounds so sweet, Cole.
I bet they are so happy to be there :)
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
On the subject of “in tune”, is it ever really possible with a trombone?
Chief Oshkosh
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: If you have 76 of them, whatever they’re playing IS in tune.
Eunicecycle
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I recently copied our family VHS tapes to DVD. Some of the more torturous videos were my kids’ elementary school band concerts. I thought about not copying them, but in the end left them in. But yeah, they were pretty bad.
Major Major Major Major
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: absolutely! Somebody’s never heard a good trombonist
Roger Moore
I have fond memories of band camp. I was in both school band (which usually didn’t have camp) and an outside band, which owned a band camp in Grand Lake. We would occasionally have weekend camps, but the really big one was a full week in the summer where we would get into shape to march in parades. We would march for a couple of hours every morning and afternoon, and have regular band classes, too. By the end of the camp, we’d be in great marching shape. When we were judged in parades, we didn’t always do that well when the reviewing stand was at the beginning of the parade route, but we always won if it was at the end. The other bands were worn out by the end, but we had done much tougher marches in camp and were still in good form even after a long parade.
Suzanne
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: And Axe body spray! Lots of Axe!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Suzanne:
My day was Drakkar Noir.
Omnes Omnibus
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: I did not.
HumboldtBlue
Band camp was a pain in the ass. But we were an excellent marching band and we regularly practiced on the streets of the local neighborhood, it did get us ready for the school year.
I loved band and chorus.
Now, the annual band trip was a blast, as was football season.
Miss Bianca
@Roger Moore:
So, kind of a band/boot camp combo, eh?
Roger Moore
@Miss Bianca:
I think the people who ran our band camp figured we’d be less likely to get involved in hanky panky if we were physically exhausted at the end of the day.
FlyingToaster
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: As a veteran of 7 years of marching band, I can attest…
@Suzanne: Thank heaven I predate Axe. I first smelled it while cataloging books in the middle school library, and would crank open the casement windows to dissipate the miasma.
Jeffery
We had the high school band rendition of the Star-Spangled Banner every morning over the intercom. It was a painful 4 years.
WaterGirl
@rikyrah: When I was growing up, band camp was where everybody went out into the fields at night to have sex. I never went to band camp, but the stories were wild.
MomSense
One time at band camp…
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Roger Moore:
The wear ’em out theory. Didn’t work with us.
Cameron
I played a couple instruments that I quit when I became an alcoholic. As a buddy of mine observed “much easier instrument – it’s only got one hole and no keys.”
Roger Moore
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I know it wasn’t completely successful with us, but a combination of “wear them out” and aggressive chaperoning managed to keep the number of pregnancies within acceptable bounds.
frosty
Looks like I missed out. My summers were Scout camp and cross-country practice. Nothing coed. Damn!
Nice description Cole. Sounds like it’s really nice to have them back.
mrmoshpotato
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: Now now, tromboners have it hard enough as it is!
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Roger Moore:
Ours were mainly scares, from what I ever knew for sure.
I had the pleasure of running with with multiple crowds – my blue collar Catholic high school and a group of liberal city Baptist kids. And I was sporty, kind of academic AND blue collar-ish, all in one. All in Hunter S Thompson’s old neighborhood with all the funkiness that entailed (side note – Dad went to high school with him).
Back then, a D&C was quick and cheap, and there were no protesters. Plus, everybody (Catholic and otherwise) was fine with the procedure.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Roger Moore:
I chaperoned some of my kids’ things. I remember one dance that was a sophomore-junior thing at my oldest daughter’s high school. I’m standing with a mom that was pretty attractive, chatting. We notice some couple at an activity that was …. probably a lot of fun …. look at each other and made the joint decision to not interfere, figuring “they look like juniors, if they’re doing that here they’re doing more elsewhere, and are old enough to handle it”.
We decided to only interrupt drug use or drinking.
Catherine D.
I was wise early – I took up the oboe which can never be in a marching band.
Omnes Omnibus
@Catherine D.: Violin.
sab
@Catherine D.: That is my favorite instrument
ETA : I could never have played it. I play classic guitar and folk harp. Wind instruments are beyond me.
Alison Rose
I never did band camp, but I was in marching band in middle school, and it was fun. Parades more so than band reviews because they were less intense. I still get sympathy headaches for my younger self, remembering having my French-braided hair shellacked with half a can of hairspray, then shoved into the plastic Stetson-looking hat. By the end of a warm day in late Spring, your head expanded and you had this deep imprint from the hat brim across your forehead. Very pretty.
But the worst was my first year, 6th grade, before the band teacher demanded the school pony up more money for uniforms. Our school colors were blue and white. The uniform that year: white sneakers, white sweatpants (fucking sweatpants, for real), blue cotton polo shirt with our name and instrument embroidered on the chest pocket, and a white floppy beret.
White pants, blue shirt, white cap.
We looked like Smurf cosplay. Other schools would walk by our bus in the staging area, in their fancy uniforms, and sing the Smurf song at us. That summer after my first year, good old Miss Fredericksen had enough, threw a shitfit with the school board, and next year we had snazzy uniforms.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Catherine D.:
My folks stupidly stuck me with a clarinet, which I hated but was not bad at. I’d ditched it completely by 8th grade, and my all-male high school had no organized musical anything.
Fun story – when I was 10 years old, my birthday present was nothing cool. Dad is an antiques hoarder, and I was gifted an ornate antique brass music stand on which to sit in my bedroom and practice the hated clarinet.
I wanted a decent skateboard, which I ended up ultimately buying myself later that summer out of my bits of grass mowing and birthday money.
Mom and dad still have that music stand and clarinet. I’ve never asked about them. But to add insult to injury, when I mentioned that middle daughter bought me a guitar for my birthday because I always wanted to learn to play one, Dad said “you did? I’d have bought you one….”
Kent
Ha! My 15 year old started band camp today. Actually she is at “drumline camp” which they do the week before regular marching band starts. She is a tiny 5’1″ and wants to move from bass drum to the heavier tenor drums this year and has been practicing her riffs all summer in the basement. Next week she moves on to regular marching band camp which will be her first season of doing it despite being a rising sophomore because it was all canceled last fall due to Covid.
My 18 year old is a sax player and will be playing on the UW Husky Marching Band in Seattle this fall. They had zoom auditions in July and she successfully auditioned. Her band camp starts in around September 10. UW is on quarters and classes don’t start until about Sept 30 so she arrives at campus 2 weeks early and has band camp from 8 am until 8 pm for a week before their first game. Sounds pretty hard core.
raven
Band camp. . .right.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@Kent:
A friend of mine has a kid at U of L doing marching band – their schedule seems brutal.
Drdavechemist
@FlyingToaster: Another 7-year marching band vet here- three years in HS and four in college. My high school band camp was at a literal rural camp with cabins and a lake in Southeastern Ohio, and I look back with a weird mix of nostalgia for the fun with my friends as we worked at being the best marching band on the East Side of Cleveland and disgust at the adult-sanctioned hazing that new band members had to endure.
sab
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: My Dad hated music, resented his forced piano lessons, and never let us play anything. My first instrument was a ukelele I got with green stamps. I loved that thing.
Alison Rose
@raven: Honestly, all I keep thinking is “This one time, at band camp…”
Catherine D.
@Omnes Omnibus: Pshaw, have you never seen Nova Scotian fiddlers/cloggers?
raven
I didn’t think much of marching bands till we went to the Rose Bowl. We went to the parade and the game. The Georgia band played at Disneyland the day before, marched in the parade in a 5 1/2 mile long route and then played the entire game and double overtime. We sat next to them at the game and they worked their asses off!
Omnes Omnibus
@Catherine D.: I said violin. I did not say fiddle.
raven
@Alison Rose: IN my 3 years of high school I spent the summers carrying two bags for18 holes on Medinah Country Club every day!
Catherine D.
@sab: I played oboe while wearing braces. Weird to have callouses on the inside of the upper lip ??
Catherine D.
@Omnes Omnibus: hah! Ok then.
bluefoot
@Catherine D.:
In my high school the oboe players carried the banner(s).
There was a brass band jamming (New Orleans jazz) in a local park a while back and it reminded me how much I love live music and how much I miss it.
Haroldo
@FlyingToaster:
Things weren’t all that great for us semi-Oldz. We soaked ourselves in English Leather.
(But we were able to steel ourselves for before-school marching band practice with an off-label use of Vick’s Inhalers.)
schrodingers_cat
@Omnes Omnibus: Me neither. I did attend summer schools for the gifted. Blech. I was impossibly nerdy and uncool.
Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes
@raven:
Did the golfers ask for club/shot advice?
Yutsano
@Catherine D.: Hey I played oboe too! I was still in marching band too. Tuba probably wrecked my back but I do not regret a thing.
FlyingToaster
@Haroldo: I don’t recall any of the guys in my HS cohort stealing their dads’ Old Spice. Mostly, they just stank. We females were stashing solid deodorants (regardless of what you used otherwise) in our instrument cases, because our August BandCamp was 7am-12noon at the high school. In the Gladstone/Kansas City hellrift. When it would be 85° by 8am. Every break it was Gatorade and more deodorant.
The Football players had it worse: Noon-8pm.
And the PomPoms and Cheerleaders were inside the gyms, 8-4.
After school started, our practices were 6:30-7:45am; Football had the field 3-5. I think the PomPoms and Cheerleaders were on the tennis courts, because the gyms were reserved for varsity sports.
Uni was much more fun; Band Camp started a week before Freshman Orientation; 8-noon, 1-5, on field, dorms for lunch and dinner, 7-9 in the department of bands learning new music. Learned to march the Script Indiana (just to show up those blowhards at the OSU).
MisterForkbeard
Gonna engage the BJ brain trust here – I think I’m going to buy an exercise bike. Does anyone have a recommended one or know a good brand?
Catherine D.
@bluefoot: Given how much I hated my school, never woulda happened! Skipped every grade I could to graduate at 16.
Catherine D.
@Yutsano: I love the sound of double reeds.
FlyingToaster
@Omnes Omnibus: A distinction without a difference (as a violinist’s parent).
Lindsey Sterling, then?
FlyingToaster
@Drdavechemist: The nice thing about city schools (or even inner-suburban schools) is that they can’t afford to send us away for band camp. Or Football Camp. Or, basically, anywhere further than 50 miles away for a day trip.
The bad thing, of course, is that they’re always fucking broke.
OzarkHillbilly
It’s the little things.
Omnes Omnibus
@FlyingToaster: Oh, but there is a difference. Just let your left arm droop a little during a violin lesson and is fuck around and find out time.
artem1s
@Drdavechemist:
Hocking Hills? Zeleski? Lake Hope? or somewhere else?
My high school had band camp at Rio Grande College, home of Bob Evans Farms. F**king middle of nowhere in a dry county. I’m pretty sure that was most of the point of selecting it.
Ohio Mom
I didn’t go to band camp, my urban high school did not have one, or any team sports for that matter. Besides, I am completely unmusical.
But I can appreciate Cole’s satisfaction at the return of a band camp to his little town. Watching the signs of the seasons is a joy of mine.
This week it’s been seeing the first monarch butterfly fly by — always a sign that fall is on its way — and on Thursday afternoon, after a year off for COVID, the return of the summer rummage sale at the nearby Conservatice synagogue.
I don’t know where they get all that stuff but they always seem to have something for me and I look forward to finding it.
sab
@Catherine D.: I will be more tolerant of my invisiligner braces.
comrade scotts agenda of rage
Never went to anything like that: single mother, poor, who dragged me around so much that I went to 5 different schools in 4 different cities from 6th-10th grade.
Old friend of mine, he won a Grammy a couple of years back, ran a “rock camp” in Houghton MI of all places for a number of years. It’s somewhat based on a concept that was pirated to make the Jack Black film:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_School_(film)
If you can find it streaming, watch it. Keerist those kids are good.
Drdavechemist
@artem1s: It was called Camp Conestoga in Minerva. Looking at a map, I see it was less far south than my memory placed it, but still a substantial drive from our community in Geauga County, and it felt like the end of the world.
Ohio Mom
@MisterForkbeard:
I know nothing about exercise bikes. If there’s one near you, I’d go to Play It Again Sports and try out what they have available. Because I don’t have it in me to buy new when I can buy used.
FlyingToaster
@Omnes Omnibus: WT’s music school collaborates with a summer Fiddle Camp. They teach you off-curriculum application, so once you learn Verracini Gigue they start you on Kesh Jig and Squirrel Hunters and, well, you get the idea.
The Mass Suzuki Festival, every March, has breakouts for fiddle and improv. The “cult” style Suzuki teachers won’t send their students, heh.
sab
@Ohio Mom: My autistic grand-daughter has been in school and she absolutely loves it. Hard to get her to stop socializing with everyone she meets on the street, since that is one of the new skillsthey taught her.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
Open thread? y’all saw Lindsey Graham has a breakthrough infection?
from the thread: Rosen, Cortez Masto, Thune and Coons were on the boat
Another Scott
@MisterForkbeard: Stationary?
If so, we have had a Sprit Fitness XBR55 for many years. It’s been fine. It’s reasonably quiet and the program adjusts the tension (don’t have to mess around with adjusting knobs, etc.). It looks like they still sell it even though it doesn’t have fancy TV screens and subscriptions and all the rest.
If you don’t want to spend anywhere near that much, rolling stands/trainers work well too and take up a lot less space.
Good luck!
Cheers,
Scott.
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
Since you declared this open.
Eunicecycle
@artem1s: Hey I went to band camp at Rio Grande College, too! This was in the 70s. Yes, we had band camp in the stone age!
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: I would never make so bold!
I have consulted the FAQs (I haven’t looked at D-Kos in years and I don’t even know if that joke is still cromulent)
Martin
@Baud: Its odd. CA was the first state to close and the last to open and had half the GDP drop as the nation overall. It’s almost as though not reflexively firing everyone, kicking them out of their homes and otherwise at least trying to maintain a degree of normalcy is good for the economy.
Baud
@Martin:
That’s amazing. You should recall your governor.
Another Scott
Missed out on band camp – not a make-musical person. I do remember one winter Boy Scout camp jamboree thing when all the scoutmasters tried to make a huge bonfire from freshly chain-saw cut green trees and couldn’t get it started (even with flammable liquid help). Not a good look. ;-)
ObOpenThread:
I’m so glad I was never tempted to become a lawyer!
Cheers,
Scott.
Jim, Foolish Literalist
@Baud: Ed Kilgore and the O’Bros are urging Democrats to take the recall more seriously. Between Governor Arnold and 2016, I’d say take everything seriously, on the other, I haven’t heard of a candidate can imagine beating Newsome. Glenn Loury? Really?
(Listening to the O’Bros podcast now, and Joe Manchin is citing the “brilliancy of the Founding Fathers” in his defense of the filibuster. Who wants to tell him? Not that it will do any good if someone did).
Elizabelle
@Jim, Foolish Literalist: Laughing. Graham as a vector. Maybe we will see with the GOP Congress and Senate who was posturing, who is vulnerable, and who has immunity through (undisclosed) vaccination. I also wonder what this will do to the calculus of passing the infrastructure legislation.
Some of the WaPost reader comments on the breaking news of Lindsey’s breakthrough infection were amusing. The following are all by WaPost readers:
Positive for Covid, still negative for a spine.
The vaccines are designed to stimulate the immune system of a human being, not a worm.
I know he’s in the Senate but Nancy was right: wear your masks morons.
Lindsey was one of the first people in the country vaccinated since he jumped the line. He got his only 11 days after it was released on December 22, 2020. If he gets very ill we should suspect that booster shots are needed and know that karma is a beoch.
Stay positive, Lindsey. Stay positive.
Another Scott
@Elizabelle:
Hmmm…
Cheers,
Scott.
Elizabelle
@Another Scott: Indeed. Probably holds true for a lot of them.
Salty Sam
I beg to differ- a violin has strings. Fiddles got strangs.
Anonymous At Work
So this one time at band camp…
Baud
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
I think California does recall stupid. There’s no head to head choice. If Newsom loses recall by 51-49, any other person with the highest vote wins, even if it’s like 25%.
Miki
Not sure how the DNA mixed but my cousin’s son is a high school band director in Texas. I was raised to believe the music came from my mom’s side but apparently it’s gonna come from wherever, a good thing, imo. Anyhoo, he was named after his dad’s brother who died in Vietnam in 1966. So utterly thankful he found his heart and followed it, in spite of the could-have-been-an-anvil hung around his neck.
Miki
@WaterGirl: Different generations, fer shure. In my day it was church camp.
Kumbaya, baby.
Elizabelle
NY Times: No, Cormac McCarthy Isn’t on Twitter. Don’t Be Fooled by the Check Mark.
An account posing as the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of “The Road,” “No Country for Old Men” and “All the Pretty Horses” was mistakenly verified by Twitter.
The twitter account fooled horror writer Stephen King, along with your basic randos on the internet.
J R in WV
@MisterForkbeard:
We have a Schwinn that’s pretty good, have had it for years, so I can’t really advise about a specific model.
Miki
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes: You’ve obviously never had a D & C.
CaseyL
Never went to band camp – I was in high school when doing *anything* related to “school spirit” was considered incredibly lame – but a few years ago there was a Sedentary Sousa Marching Band that used to play at holiday fairs and music festivals.
They were exactly what they said: they played the marches while sitting on folding chairs. They had similarly seated drum majorette, who did all the arm stuff and the baton-twirling/hurling stuff.
They all wore band uniforms, none of which matched. Some had hung onto their own high school/college marching band unis; others bought the uniforms at thrift stores.
They were a hoot. I should see if they’re still around.
Another Scott
Biden White House statement today on what they’re doing regarding eviction moritoria:
Cheers,
Scott.
Roger Moore
@Jim, Foolish Literalist:
The problem is that they don’t have to beat Newsom. We’re going to be asked two separate questions: 1) should Newsom be recalled and 2) who should replace him if he is recalled. There’s a serious worry people will answer yes to question 1 without a satisfactory answer to question 2. Or rather they’ll say yes to question 1 and then split a dozen ways on question 2, and we’ll be stuck with whichever candidate manages to get a plurality. It’s a stupid, stupid way of doing things.
Ohio Mom
@sab:
I’m happy for you — to see your granddaughter full of excitement and trying her best to join in.
I always think (that is, I haven’t read an expert on this, it is just my made-up theory) that autistic kids who want to be social have a trait that will motivate and propel them forward in many ways.
I don’t mean that they will naturally pick-up social Ps and Qs (of course not!) just that they will say yes to things and will be broadened that way. Ohio Son is a bit of a loner and he’s missed out on opportunities by saying No. But that’s his comfort level at this point of his life.
On a related note, I spent part of my screen time today at LGM, I guess to try to see what the attraction is. I read (yet another of) Eric Loomis’ posts on school segregation and how prejudiced white parents are at fault. I slogged through the comments (in a nested system, you can never catch up because new comments are scattered).
All I can say is, what those people know about children and schooling would fit in my proverbial pinky finger. I could also accuse them of ableism because they completely ignore special ed issues but I don’t think it is ignoring as much as completely not on their map.
J R in WV
I was in band for 6 years, Jr High and Senior High. Camp was right there in town, summer all day. We once marched our show for halftime at the football game, off the field into the buses to ride to Bristol TN VA for competition all day, long parade, do your thang on the football field for the judges, band directors from away.
I was in pretty good shape after high school, I carried a 55 pound brass sousaphone for miles and miles ever year. Got me through boot camp after I was drafted…
Dan B
@Kent: We drive past the U District three times this weekend. There’s a wall of 30 + story skyscrapers going up just west of campus. The light rail station west of campus opens October 2nd so the development is at fever pitch. At the light rail station near us in the BIPOC majority neighborhood there’s finally Federal funds to develop a low income housing project to fill a vast vacant lot more than a decade after the light rail arrived.
At least there’s no band practices…
JML
Hated marching band in HS. all we ever did was march in the Christmas City of the North parade, and it usually snowed. Except for when we marched at Disney Magic Music Days and the entire band nearly got heat stroke from the horrid synthetic suit coats, overlays, and ridiculous hats.
Pep band was way more fun, especially the hockey games.
geg6
My niece is on the dance team at her University, which is not “in the band,” but always performs with and travels with the band. She is very excited that they are booked to perform in Prague, Vienna and Munich this spring. Her first two years of college have been so sad due to COVID-19, so I really hope this trip happens for her.
NotMax
@Mister Forkbeard
Only thing to offer is that have heard tell there are thousands of, as they say on the car lot, lightly used models out there, gathering dust in garages and basements or acting as laundry racks.
Ruckus
@Le Comte de Monte Cristo, fka Edmund Dantes:
I have skills, music is not one of them, not in any way shape or form.
Mom demanded that I take music. We tried a number of instruments. Due to being a humane person I demanded that we not continue the torture of anyone’s hearing within 20 miles of me attempting to play.
Ruckus
@MisterForkbeard:
I have a spare fitting bike, as I used to mfg them. A fitting bike is fully adjustable to fit a wide range of people, mine works from about 4’10” to about 6’8″. It has a computer (built as part of the bike) load generator which goes from 50-1500 lbs of load. If more than one of you uses the bike it is easily adjustable for multiple people. BTW 50 is an easy peddling load, I could 10 yrs ago go up to 500 and I’ve had a Cat 2 bike racer on the machine and he could pull 1200 and talk to me in a normal voice. Cat 1 racers are the Tour riders. He was close. You can change the bars and seat easily so if there are different riders, say a husband and wife, both could ride this very easily and comfortably.
If you are interested we can get WG to exchange our emails and discuss further. There are cheaper exercise bikes but this is a much better proposition for exercise.
Ruckus
@Ruckus:
It’s not foot pounds it’s watts that the load is measured in.
HeartlandLiberal
If you want to see the most famous high school band in Japan, performing in a video with one of the top female pop stars in Japan, go to YouTube, and search for “kalen anzai Bokura wa tsuyoku nareru”.
There a number of female vocal pop artists in Japan who rise so far above the J-Pop bubble gum crap it is amazing.
My other favorite is “Shine” by leo ieiri. Just search on “shine leo ieiri” and you will find it. Fantastic voice.