rayfallon

No #### - my shoulders hurt like a ########... I feel like I've been digging out since I got back from PR. I hope no one in Boston finds out that ll this snow is because I missed a couple of winters in Texas and God is trying to make sure I pay for it. They'll be ######.

Yeah but most parades all you dealt with was horse ####. At the Barnum they also had elephants. Ewwwwwww.... Have to throw that white buck away I think.

I'm thinking/feeling the same way - amazing.

Is there a book of your life coming out any time soon? Please let me know when it gets to paperback. I also need to get you together with Mike Hart, former Sunriser (in his heart he'll always be a Sunriser, as well as an Airborne Ranger) who got 3 Purple Hearts in the Big One - no, not WWII, Viet Nam. I'm going to go way out on the limb that the two of you could swap some amazing stories, that many of the rest of us would listen to with rapt awe. Glad you made it okay. We've lost enough of our generation.

True - but during the 60s, when the "white" culture was a little bit more reserved (i.e. stick up our butts) the color guard girls ended up with very bright very red faces. "Hey Chicas! You like me? You know what I got here for you? You gonna like it!" etc. etc. etc. all of 35 blocks of 5th Avenue.

Probably due to the fact that I was 12 years old when that earlier video was done the world looks really strange back then. Weird... Interesting though...

You are the friggin' Herodotus of Connecticut Drum Corps...

42 H U G E guys playing horns.

You're a cruel ####, Chuck. (btw - that rhymed). We were going to try to get out to Texas tomorrow morning, but every flight is sold out (we fly for free when there's a seat available). So... more shoveling this weekend...

OK - me and parades - the Cliff Note version: At the Puerto Rican Day parade in 1964 (13 years old). I had to go to the boy's room (not old enough for the men's room)... Took my contra bass with me... can't leave a contra bass on the streets of NYC. Came up from the (downstairs) men's room - the corps had stepped off in the parade. Hey, I'm nervous, so I run down the street, turning right onto 5th Avenue, running hard... right into an ancient (maybe over 45) woman carrying a shopping bag - knocked her ### over tea-kettle - as my mom used to say... OK, helped her up, picked up her crap... went back to running... Caught up with the corps - being the lone contra bass I'm the entire back row. Corps goes on through the intersection and a cop doesn't notice me, let's all of Westbound New York through - bye guys... Catch up with the corps 5 min later - life is good. Corps gets to 67th street or whatever street in the Upper East Side it turned off on... it's almost over... Henry Hartjen, WWII Vet and one of the Oceanside Legion Post members that proudly walked beside the corps in this and other parades stumbles, bumps into me, and hits the street - hard - never ever to arise. Heart attack - DOA at (I'm guessing) Bellview. Every one of these details is true - I honestly don't know if they all happened in one parade, but I'm pretty sure it was the Puerto Rican Day Parade that most of it occurred, for instance the bathroom, corps abandonment, and old lady TKO was one event. After that? Maybe multiple NYC parades over a year or two. Oh, and did I mention the soft pretzel vendor whose entire cart was knocked over into the ######### strewn street, only to have him scoop up his wares and continue selling them? Also a NYC parade. Haven't eaten a pretzel since. I get the same vibe from parades, walking through the other end of Da Nang (away from the base), and a casual stroll through Philadelphia, North of Lehigh Avenue, around 10pm on a Friday night. So while I appreciate everything you all have rightfully listed... Only parade I enjoyed was the St Pat's parade the year after I came home, when I went and sat on the steps at St Pats hours before the parade, and finished at the Blarney Stone off Central Park East hours after it. Parades - you can pick your friends, you can pick your nose, but you can't wipe your friends on the couch.

Sky has never had a forte, except during warm-ups, which were short and insignificant... Sky's dynamics begin at fortissimo (in place of piano) and go up through FFFF to G level (a level named for Bob Giranda). They play well, sometimes exquisitely, like 1983 among many other years. But forte? Nah...

A certain amount of critical recruiting for "inactive due to marriage" alums took place every year at St Patrick Day and Memorial Day Parades - some years all the way to 4th of July. Nothing stirs the blood of a guy that wants to march like the sound of drums and bugles as Spring arrives. Used to be good for 1 - 3 horns a year, and occasionally a percussion member. One of the reasons corps should really take parades seriously, and be ready to look and sound good. Although I hate parades with a purple passion from all the 5th Ave, NYC parades I had to do starting at the age of 10 or so, I always stressed being ready for parades, including arranging and teaching specialty parade tunes like "Wildwood Days" and "Under the Boardwalk" for Archie (just as an example - there are more if I can think of them - hey - it's 7am).

Maybe not a good idea for me to introduce the BOSCRU given that I used to work with them - who knows, maybe I'll be in the baritone line? I'm going to make as many of these as I can.

Dang - I'm sorry Nat!!! I didn't read the signature! I'm sorry we're all getting together for this reason, but of all the folks you and I have worked with over the years, I can think of no one more deserving of honor and celebration. I emailed you the other night, but either way I'll be in Hauppaugue on 4/4. Only time I ever get to the Island any more.

This is a great post! This is like the day (in a week or two) that the truck leaves Fenway Park heading down to Fenway South and JetBlue Stadium for Spring Training. I love that these shows are in the works.... Gotta be almost Springtime!!!! Thanks for the notification!

Right about now I'd settle for pictures from Tom's cruise. Not pictures of Tom Cruise though, ya know? Just wanted to make Suri you know what I mean... I don't have the technological expertise, or the pictures... the no pictures is a long story. but I'd love it if someone could jumpstart this bad boy because I have wicked bad cabin fever, plus I've given up Twitter for Lent. Trying to cleanse.

One more snow and I may not be able to find Florian Hall. This has been a tough snow year for Boston. I just spent 4 hours shoveling out my driveway and 2 cars are still buried.

Geez Glen - for a second it sounded like you were worried about hurting my or Andy's feelings! I'm going to guess that of all the gin joints in all the world, that should be the least of your concerns. Certainly not as big a deal as leaving out Ginger Rogers, or Rogers Hornsby... I worry when you get all serious - sounds like someone somewhere is drinking, and I'm not.

There you are again with that rapier wit and encyclopedic memory. You're making me feel less than adequate... Don't worry - you're not my first...

(cue the music) It's Mu------rray... Murray the K with the swingin' soiree... Not sure how many of our colleagues here get that one... Some people think of Pete Best as the 5th Beatle, but I tend to think of Billy Preston, who played piano on a lot of their stuff, or maybe Clapton playing along on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" Could make a case for the piccolo trumpet on Penny Lane or the french horn I started this stuff about... For me, it's Billy Preston - they shoulda been integrated anyhow by 1966 or so...

Amen. Gotta figure out how to respond the Nat as a non-FB person. Prob have his email address somewhere. Sure to see you there, Easter not withstanding. And you're right - Gene was one of those cornerstone guys we spoke about recently. Some people you can build a section on - some you can build a corps on - some like Mickey, Gil, Red Corso, Lefty, Bob Glovna you could build a circuit on. Folks like Gene you build on activity on. One of those guys.

If Gary's horns are in decent shape at a decent price, they're pretty good horns - they're not Kings, and they're not Kanstuls, but they play better than a lot of what people were playing on (even in the top 12) toward the end of the G period.

I'm sure that describes a number of people on this forum... none of whom have iron lips of course...

Ya know, whenever I listen to Eleanor Rigby I see Blessed Sac at the Dream. Can't help myself. What a loser... Wish I had been classically trained so I could have a well honed disdain for all this mundane music.

I hesitate to pull us OT, except for the fact that we haven't had any T to be pulled O of. I was listening to one of the seminal albums for people my age, "Revolver" by the Beatles. Like any pseudo brass person, I was focusing on the french horn solo in "For No One" ... (always liked that solo). There was no wiki anything when I was 15, so I could never look up anything about who wrote what, who played what, so I went and looked it up on "The Beatles' Bible" webpage - interesting... OK, so why am I posting this stream of semi consciousness here? After the basic article, which was pretty good, listed the names of all the players, and some details, I read some of the forum comments and thought I was reading DCP (other threads of course) The poster "Happiness is a warm gun" wrote: "I think this is a well-written song, but that french horn solo, Ugh. With all due respect to Mr. Civil [my note - the British musician that played the horn solo]. it was a bad call. It just doesn't mesh with the arrangement, IMO, with the stripped down instrumentation centered around the piano/clavichord part. It just sounds stuffy and incongruous. But then again, as a classically trained musician, my loathing for the french horn is highly refined and extensive. I confess a bias." Is it just me? How often do we get that "classically trained musician" (by the way, aren't almost all musicians "classically trained"? How many people were taught from scratch by Bucky Swan or Pepe Notaro? And even those folks probably used the Arbans Method - just like the "classically trained" ones.). What makes folks post stuff like this? Do they think we're all in awe of their general incredibleness? OK, all done here... hope Tom is enjoying the cruise... hope Andy is getting his voice ready for the I&E season... I'm a drum corps trained musician, and you know how i feel about the G-D slip slide french horn, especially the Ludwig.