BaritoneDM

What do you play and do you have your own horn?

Bob are you not able to make any of the rehearsals, or just the first one?

A word from Mr. Prototypical Old School himself B) . In 83 we did play "Breaking Up is Hard to Do" Good choice.

Believe it or not I did not remember that phrase even made it on the recordings. Until last year, I had not heard '83 Freelancers since Sept./Oct of '83. Someone from the Kinsgmen Alumni Corps brought it to my attention at rehearsal. I had forgotten that I had even said it. Well, if you are interested, here is a bit of trivia about the way that 'Shout out' came into being. The push in "Even Now" was always so powerful so I originally starting turning to the crowd to give them a look of "Hey, check this out" B) . However, our horn instructor told me that the half turn that I was doing with a glance, over my shoulder at the crowd, looked as though I was angry with someone in the stands. Well, so as not to have my intentions misunderstood, I did a full turn and smiled and held my arm out and presented the corps. Then after doing it a few times, I thought "Wow, they seem to like that, maybe I can milk it and get some extra GE points out of it. Sooo...I decided to verbalize exactly what I was trying to communicate, and that's what you hear on the recordings. Thanks for saying I was not too shabby on the bari. Without trying to sound puffed up. My two favorite baritone solos that I played were in '80, in "Sambandera Swing" and in '81 in "Malaga". My least favorite was what I played in '83 during concert. <**> . The most frightening were in '78, at the end of "I've got Rhythm" and the Baritone Quartet in Sabre Dance. I was 15 and so afraid that I would mess up for all time sake.

1977 Does hold a special spot for me. Bellavia was our signature closer, it still stirs me up when I hear it. As far as the drumline, TOTALLY awesome. If memory serves me correctly, we lost high drums at Finals by 0.2, two lousy ticks.

My favorite Freelancers year was 1982. The horn book that year was great. I loved Sunshine as th OTL, and certainly had a blast with Genji. Up to that point, for the years I had marched, it was the best horn line. Truthfully, I actually had a hard time picking a single year because I loved 81 - 83. '81 is on my favorites list because of the raw emotion and determination to make it back into the top 12. In '78 we missed the top 12 by 0.65 to the Kilities after having beaten them all season. '79 we had an identity crisis and ended up 14th. Throughout '80 we were contending and tussling with the corps in the 12 and 13 spots. We went on early morning for prelims, only to wind up in 19th. So once we made 12th in prelims of '81 we had nothing to loose for the night show in finals, and that is exactly what the staff had told us before we went on. So the night show was electric, and sure enough we moved up a spot to 11th, beating the Troopers. Not only that I really loved Malaga. '83 was on the list because, once again great horn book and horn line. It was my age out year and I had a great time. That night I said it all, "We've got something you're really gonna like....Here it is ..... do you like it?" B)