I’m gonna be up front and honest here because I feel like we are all Internet pals.
I was in the marching band for eight years—four in high school, four in college. I’m not ashamed. I’m a proud Auburn High School Marching Band alum. (Tim Reed and I played quads. Called ourselves “Quad Squad.” We made up baseball cards and everything. We also always requested “All 4 Love” during games. I’m pretty sure everyone else hated us for that.) In college, I played cymbals in Mississippi State Famous Maroon Band every year to get my out-of-state fees waived. I was Cymbal Section Leader for two years by default. My band name was “Moses.” Yep, I’m a band geek. That’s me on the right.
Over the course of those eight years, I participated in no less than 10 Disney-themed shows (I can play “A Friend Like Me” on bass drum, tenor drums, and cymbals); five Blood, Sweat, and Tears shows; four Chicago shows; three Kansas shows; and lots and lots of “USA! USA!”-themed performances.
Earlier this week, Dan Gibson wrote a takedown of Kings of Leon member Caleb Followill’s inability to name two actual Motown artists as his favorite (he chose not-Motown perennial white people faves Sam Cooke and Otis Redding). This reminded me of the most shameful halftime show the Famous Maroon Band ever put on. (This includes our disastrous James Bond-themed show, wherein the band just stood there and played because no one could figure out the charts.)
The shameful halftime show in question was touted as a “Motown show,” and we did do a Temptations medley at the beginning. I remember being the arrangement being halfway decent. What wasn’t decent was the fact that it was followed by both Aretha Franklin and James Brown medleys. Yep—not Motown! Aretha recorded for Columbia/Atlantic/Arista and Brown did most of his work with Polydor. Honestly, I didn’t think too much of it at first, but my best friend, Mark (who had the displeasure of being a saxophonist sitting in front of the endless crashing of cymbals), an African-American and amateur musicologist, was fuming.
“So basically all ’60s black artists are the same, and all of them were on Motown?” he asked me. I realized I hadn’t thought about it (and certainly not about the racial implications), but after talking to some other black band members (there weren’t many), I saw this as a big problem. I casually mentioned it to the other drummers, and, of course, they didn’t see what the big deal was. Heck, nobody seemed to care much. I told the band directors about it, and they brushed me off. I got more and more frustrated about it, and when I get angry about things like this, I become a mouth-breathing jerk that everyone ignores.
I let it go, but then, there we were, standing on the field, listening to the announcer talking about how we were going to thrill you with “The Sounds of Motown” and 40,000 people in the stands (mostly white) clapped along and didn’t give a crap. All they would have had to say was “The Sounds of ’60s Soul” or something, and they’d be off the hook. Nope. That would have been too easy. Instead, we all skwonked away to the sounds of racial and cultural homogenization.
@bcapirigi: I don’t keep up with the marching bands of today. Sorry!
Ahhh, marching band. We had a “Swing” show featuring both Duke Ellington and… Zoot Suit Riot.
@Marth: My high school WSS show is totally jealous of your reverse-color uniforms.
@Dickdogfood: Nope. Nobody ever said anything. It was pretty much me, Mark, and a few others grumbling.
@Marth: Oh, we totally had Tower of Power in high school!
Also, nobody is commenting on my hair yet. But I miss it. God bless the 90s.
@Lucas Jensen: Kudos on that excellent follicle helmet.
@Chris Molanphy: Thank you. It was quite a mane.
I think you look like Pyro from the Xmen movies, for some reason.
Also, on the same day of the KOL post(in which I found out that I’m the only fan of KOL that comments on this site), there was a thread in a message board that I go to often regarding Motown and people’s favorite Motown songs. It was quite a funny coincidence, since there were almost 100 replies and a lot of them weren’t Motown acts. I pointed it out to them, but it got me thinking that maybe some people just think of Motown as a particular sound, or as a word that describes 60s/70s soul music. Not that it makes it any better, but the word Motown is thrown around in movies, tv and in magazines that it’s kind of like C86…you could be referring to the sound or an actual act on the c86 comp.
@MayhemintheHood: Sure, and as the 60s rolled on into the 70s, Motown strayed from the sounds occasionally, but I find I’m hard pressed to finger too many Motown-sounding classics that weren’t on Motown itself.
I think you are right about Motown being a catchall, but that’s part of the problem, I’d say.
This exact kind of thing happened at the Republican National Convention in 1988. The singer for the house band asked the crowd, “Do you guys wanna hear some Motown?” and then delivered “Respect.”
And the best marching band I’ve seen (the only marching band?) in the last few years is Mucca Pazza.
@casperfandango: Celebrity alert: I once talked to the girlfriend of one of the horn players in Mucca Pazza. I know, right? I couldn’t believe it myself.
I marched for six years on clarinet and surprisingly, never did a show of Motown and/or miscellaneous soul music. Now there was that seventies jazz rock show featuring the works of Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears, and Bill Chase. It was kinda awesome.
Ah, once a band geek, always a band geek….
As a former member of the Pride Of Minnesota, I can sympathize. Though in my two years involved, we didn’t play an awful lot of “modern” shows (say, Motown on forward), we did a few here and there. Tower Of Power… yikes. And I missed out on a Beatles halftime by a year or two. But we did do a halftime West Side Story show once, where half the band were the Sharks while the other were the Jets (reversed colored uniforms and everything), and had a conceptual gang war on the field. God, marching bands are amazing things.
@Marth: conceptual gang war
They’re opening for Xiu Xiu and No Age, right?
So Lucas, was there any repercussions after the show? That’s what I wants to know.
@Ned Raggett: No, you’re thinking of Chimeric Battle Posse, but close.
And now I’m wishing we could’ve conceived a Xiu Xiu halftime show, forming a giant sexually abusive parent on the field or something.
That’s annoying. But it also annoys me when DJs at 80’s nights play the Spice Girls. Which they do, for some reason. If you’re going to create a concept stick to your damn concept.
BTW, Lucas, who are your two favorite marching bands of today?