It's a mighty, joyful noise - a wall of sound so big your jawbone vibrates and your spine tingles.

The Yankee Rebels Drum and Bugle Corps, formed in Baltimore six decades ago, is running through its repertoire in a small hall at a Dundalk community center. And the sound is almost too much for the room.

As the 50-odd drummers and brass players, wielding everything from mammoth contra bases to lilting mellophones, launch into "Everything's Coming Up Roses," the walls begin to shake as if they're about to come down.

Then the corps runs through the piece again, kicking it up a notch as arranger and instructor Larry Kerchner, the only person paid to be at the rehearsal, peers sternly over his reading glasses and draws the melody and countermelody in the air with furious, extravagant hand gestures.

For a moment, the room seems even closer to bursting as the air fills with a swooping, punching crescendo.

"Oh, it's a great thrill to be part of this music," said Parkville's John Manlove, whose tuba-like contra base is so big he has to rest it on a table when he plays. "We've got a bunch of us here who have been around since the mid-'50s. It's like a family."

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