My Review of Last Night's Band Concert

Last night I attended the legendary Elkford Secondary School band concert. I call it legendary because from this day forth you shall know what a momentous event this was. Here's how it went:

The night began with everyone filing into the school gym. The spectators sat on the wooden bleachers (no backs, of course), and the performers sat on orange plastic chairs laid out in semi-circle rows in the middle of the gym. To the right were a number of wooden benches for the students to sit on when their particular band wasn't performing. This is a small town school of about 140 students, which explains the lavish surroundings.

Eventually the performers all find their way into their seats. The tuning begins, first with a single clarinet, then the rest of the clarinets, then the saxophones, trumpets, trombones, and over to the flutes. The audience is asked to rise for the playing of the national anthem. We all stand as the band plays a proud, yet ever so slightly out of tune rendition of 'O Canada.' This is where the show begins... not necessarily in the music, but in the performance. Looking back to the percussionists, we see a couple of guys snickering with each other as another lazily beats out the rhythm to 'O Canada.' After the song ends, most of the students move over to the side benches while the Concert Band stays in the orange seats to wow us with their material.

While the bands sitting in the orange chairs played, there was always a side show going on in the benches. People whispering, people not bothering to whisper, people slapping each other, people dropping their instruments. If only we had something going on to the left it would've been like a three ring circus! A few songs into the show when the intermediate band stepped up to play, another bit of excitement happened. About twenty seconds before the end of the song, the female clarinetist sitting in the front row on the end (remember, it's a semi-circle, so she's in the seat that is the closest possible seat to the crowd) threw up all over herself. It sprayed out all over her music stand and doused her clarinet. The conductor didn't see it happen. The song went on, the final eighteen seconds feeling like an eternity for the spectators. Finally it ends and a lady escorts the girl out of the gym.

At this time the bands moved around again. I was terrified that someone was going to slip in the barf and fall. The entire time I had a disgusted look on my face that was impossible for me to remove. I then began to worry that a sour smell was going to waft my way and taint the rest of the concert for me. Luckily Gertrude (I forget her real name) the janitor came in and moseyed her way over to the woofed cookies. My face was still scrunched up the way it does when I have to clean a toilet. It couldn't be helped. Finally the show went on. The conductor had the audacity to suggest that the girl would hopefully be back to finish the show.

At this point in the show the guitar class came up to perform for us. This was like nothing I had ever seen before. Imagine twenty-eight acoustic guitar all playing at the same time. It was certainly a first for me. Since nobody could keep the same rhythm as the person next to them the songs sounded as though there was major reverb and echo effects added to them. It was a symphony of guitars playing popular rock songs. The band teacher was kind enough to sing the lyrics for us. I can't remember all of the songs, but one in particular stood out: 'Whiskey in the Jar' by Metallica. Perhaps now is a good time to describe the band teacher to you. He was a short, stout, middle-aged, slightly balding white guy. The image of this guy singing a Metallica song along with 28 amateur acoustic guitarists was simply unreal. The icing on the cake was watching how each person had their own style of playing. One girl would bob her head with each downward stoke on the strings. Another would passionately sing along with the band teacher as she swayed slightly from side to side. A guy on the right counted so intensely you could read his lips. My favorite was a girl in the back who only pretended to play as she confusingly looked at what the person next to her was doing.

Eventually the other concert bands came back up and played songs such as 'Lowrider',
a medley from Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, some Beach Boys, and the theme from Pirates of the Caribbean. I will remind you, this is a concert band we're talking about, not a garage band or anything that might have electric guitars or vocalists. The evening drew to a close when the students played their final song of the year. The song was played quite well and was coming to a climax near the end when suddenly the band teacher stopped everyone dead in their tracks. He told the drummer to switch with another percussionist who was just standing there. At last they played the final thirty seconds of the song. Apparently the band teacher wanted to make a dramatic ending for his percussionist student by allowing him to finish the song... his last time playing at that school. Personally, I think there are better ways to go about honoring a person than by ruining the final song, but hey, it was funny to watch the students try to figure out what was going on. Everyone thought the original drummer was in trouble for some reason. Weird.

All in all the evening seemed very quirky and enjoyable. I remember seeing a girl playing her clarinet when she started to laugh. Her clarinet emitted a high-pitched squeal from the sudden burst of air into the instrument. That reminded me of my days in band class when I played the saxophone. When I was in band the guy sitting beside me would always let out huge farts in the middle of songs we were playing. We were on metal chairs, so the sound would really resonate. This would cause me to blow into my sax and make it squeak. That would make him do the same, which would make the other saxophonists follow suit. Eventually there would be one big honk coming from our section and the band teacher would be furious. That made it even worse because we all know that when you try to hold in laughter it only makes you want to laugh harder. That was kind of how I felt all night.

One of the students on our soccer team asked us why we came to their concert. Apparently she has a different sense of humor than us.