Er, It's Called a Public Parking Lot for a Reason

Update:
Chalk one up for the dirty hippies.

========

Imagine for a moment that you're building a city from scratch. You're given 12.5 sq. mi. of land in which to comfortably fit about 55,000 people. In the US, a large chunk of that space will inevitably be sold off to build private housing and commercial space, but if you want your city to be a place where people actually want to live, you'll have to retain a sizable portion of that land for parks, roads, schools, municipal buildings, hospitals, fire houses, transit infrastructure, and other shared items that benefit everyone. The people who live in your city will pay you taxes so that you can pay other people to maintain these public spaces and services, and that's pretty much just the way things go. Of course, the people who pay these taxes will probably want to use the space you've retained as "public" on the assumption that it is actually accessible to them and will be used for the common good, and when they do, you will probably arrest them and issue them summonses.

Uh-huh.

The Santa Cruz Trash Orchestra and their community have been dealing with this on an escalating basis for at least a few months now. It seems that a weekly drum circle in a public parking lot is, let's say, underappreciated by the city administration. In fact, this drum circle is actually illegal, according to this entry on the Trash Orchestra blog. Quoth Valerijan Ercegovic,

The City of Santa Cruz's parking lot panic law is in effect and being enforced. For those unfamiliar the law restricts the use of downtown parking lots and garages to parking and retrieving of vehicles (the person must be in and out in 15 minutes), and for pedestrians passing directly through from one sidewalk to another or a bordering store. Anything else (waiting in your car for a friend, eating lunch, talking to friends, playing music...) is trespassing, illegal, will get you hassled by Santa Cruz's finest, and, ultimately, fined

It has gotten to the point where drummers are being hauled off to the pokey for it. So let's call this law what it is: a hot, steaming pile of horseshit.

This is not dissimilar to the crackdowns on Critical Mass that are happening or have happened in Atlanta, San Francisco, Minneapolis, and New York; not unlike the restrictions on street musicians in Northampton, MA that Michele previously wrote about; and it's not a far cry from any effort to systematically harass or arrest homeless people for being, uh, homeless. So why is it that urban administrators seem to almost universally hate the use of public space for just about anything other than driving? A couple of good reasons might be:

• some people who saw Footloose understood the John Lithgow character to be a tragic martyr
  


• the police union demands overtime


• homeless people just don't have much money or political clout
  


• if you are not making or spending money, you are giving aid and comfort to the terrorists
  


• people who ride bicycles are effete and probably even know what "effete" means because they are so into being all Franch and everything
  

Well, regardless of the whys and the wherefores, I cast my lot in this case with the dirty hippies because, as a wise prophet once said, fuck 'em if they can't take a joke.

pop goes the...

What I feel sheepish about, in regards to Joe's reference to this blog, is not having heard of the "first downtown NYC community-based brass band in a century," Tri-Battery Pops. 

Granted, New York is a big place, and Tribeca and Battery Park City are neighborhoods I wander into only once year to have expensive drinks with my former dissertation advisor. I suppose it's a good thing for there to be so many community street bands around that one can't keep up. 

Growndswell Intro to Honk Bands: Part Deux

Bless their little hearts: The good folks of the Groundswell collective have published part II of their Honk rundown.

Related: The context isn't entirely flattering, but someone just compared HMB with the Dorsey Band. What the hell does that mean? Anyways, good on you, HMB.

Unicorns vs. Douchebaggery: Unicorns Win!*

I'm freshly returned to the land of Kotter after spending two weeks riding to the Twin Cities and back in a veggie oil-powered school bus motor home as helper monkey to some 30-odd Rude folks. It's sort of hard to break the whole thing down into a two-dimensional form like this. But a boy can try, can't he?

Hand-crafted magnetic lettering by Turt on the ceiling of the bus.

It originally spelled out "NO MORE WAR," but the N got mangled. And RMO loves cats.

I met the band in Pittsburgh as they were wrapping up some repairs on the lounge area of the bus. The lounge is where the nightly dance parties happen and is lined with the pelts of dead plush toys. It is, of course, available for wedding receptions and bar/bat mitzvahs. The bus itself is capable of transporting up to 342 passengers, each with their own milk crate's-worth of stuff, so small wonder that a concentration of bodies would put an inordinate strain on a few sheets of plywood and some 2x4's. Anyways, they repaired the lounge with no problem and I pretty quickly tested its durability by sleeping on it.

Our bus driver was a really sweet man who, despite his best intentions, seems to be going by the name of Joey Bananafoot these days (yikes!). Though young, Joey has already embarked on his second career as a roller derby referee (his first was as a middle school bus driver, natch) and was graciously taking some time off to chauffeur us halfway across the continent.

From Pittsburgh we moved on to Cleveland where we were greeted by a unicorn and friends bearing food and moist damp, peppermint-scented towels (I kid you not). Unicorn food being the secret to eternal youth, the band was instantly rejuvenated and stomped off to play the local Food Not Bombs support march, followed by a kickball party and a set in the park.

Here I am bouncing on shit in a campground in Wisconsin.
Photo by Phil Not Bombs.

For the next several days it was much the same: hundreds of people on the bus stopping in various Midwestern cities, meeting mythological creatures, and eating very well. Dare I say it was idyllic? I dare. We escorted a class of doe-eyed children to their first day of school in Columbus, stared down a gang in Chicago, and learned that "in Milwaukee, we jump on shit!" Educational. Very educational.

The far end of our pendulum swing was in Minneapolis/St. Paul, where the malignant forces of douchebaggery incarnate were having their quadrennial freak-off. Let me not complete another sentence without first stating the goodwill I feel toward the Twin Cities. They are a source of culture, good ideas, tall bikes and punk rock in a country that is sadly short on all of these things. I would advise anyone reading this to go and spend some time there. That said, the policing in the area was what we common folk describe as batshit crazy. The preemptive searches and detentions, tear gassing of permitted rallies and marches, taser action, and overall climate of fear were not necessarily unexpected, but damn, do we really need that? (No. The answer is no. For the Wingnutteria.)

But at least we're not China.

Luckily, the RMO has secret weapons in the form of delicious snacks and a unicorn-run Llama Homo Spa!

[Make up your own caption. Words escape me.]

Which reminds me: There were llamas along the way too, but somehow I missed them.

We spent four days in Minneapolis with friends who were far more generous than we had a right to expect, after which we closed up shop and headed back east, stopping in Madison, Chicago, and Ann Arbor for food, lodging, hair cuts, and bouncing on shit (definitely not the same thing as jumping on shit, which only really happens in Milwaukee) before a final show in Detroit (which I like to pronounce in its proper Frahnch form so it sounds something like "deh-TWA").

On the last night of tour, we were sadly split in two, as there were parties with things to do the next day and, more importantly, Bananafoot was needed to keep the peace among the wheeled women of the West. So, down to only about 170 people, we made our way back home just in time to get soaked by the fringes of a rare and precious Northeastern tropical storm. In the midst of it, though, a handful of hardy souls were kind of enough to welcome us back with the dulcet (if soggy) tones of Down By the Riverside (adapted for the Gowanus Canal) and A Message To You, Rudy. Suh-weeeeet!

There's more to it, of course. I didn't even get into the bra that was shared by the entire entourage or the night I took a shower with an off-duty bartender and his girlfriend in Minneapolis. Another day, perhaps. Track me down, buy me a beer, and I'll lay one on you.


* Come now. Unicorns always win.

Quick & Dirty

The Groundswell Blog has posted part I of its rundown of the bands that'll be at Honk this year. One that's new to me is the Scene of the Crime Rovers from Durham, NC. Video here:

YouTube also has a video of them doing Zorn's Cobra, but the sound isn't so hot.

If you scroll down a bit on the Groundswell blog, there's also some footage of Rage Against the Machine doing an a cappella performance after the cops shut down their set at the RNC. Never let it be said that we here at Mystery Parade are narrow in our support of free, participatory street music.

I'll have some commentary up shortly on me own experience going to and from the RNC, but you can get the gist of it here.

Banksy in NOLA

Graffiti artist Banksy has been putting up stuff around NOLA, e.g.:

Marching band in inconvenient gas masks. See more here.

Olympic drumming, new Honk! posters, life in Northampton...

After hearing so much about it, my TV-less self has spent the morning searching for a full video of the Olympics opening ceremony, with its 2,008-member (the ceremony was heavy on numerology) drum battery.
I found a video here:


Olympics 2008 Opening Ceremony - video powered by Metacafe
It's the apotheosis of the marching band halftime show! Instead of making the links to Leni Rienfenstahl's "Olympia," or asking Anthony Lane's hypothetical question, "what kind of society is it that can afford to make patterns out of its people?" (well, A.L., let's remember those selfsame halftime shows—while this ceremony explodes the scale of any American halftime spectacle, we at Mystery Parade often ask similar questions about our own regimented ceremonies), or (on the logistical side) ask how such a large group of drummers was conducted (earpieces? a conductor in the crowd? disciplined intuition?) I just want to comment on the type of drum that those 2008 drummers were playing. According to this blog, the instruments, called fou drums, were not originally drums at all but vessels for wine. Well! How and why were these vessels transformed into drums? Our blogger solves the puzzle: "Very simple. When you are drinking high and you want to sing, what will you do? Grab anything you can reach and make beat." Right on! But could the drinking party that this blogger invokes be any further from the spirit of that tightly controlled Olympics opening ceremony, as impressive as it was?

So, more in the spirit of the original kind of fou drumming (in the sense of collective music-making fueled by spontaneous joy and, often, wine), I here report that Titubanda - Rome's 30+ renegade banda di strada - will be attending this year's Honk! Fest in October in Somerville, MA. Titubanda hosted the first brass band fest I ever attended, the 2004 Sbandata Romana, where my band was kept constantly surrounded by other bands, and constantly supplied with local red and white wine siphoned from huge glass wine casks (like these). Titubanda probably won't be able to fit such casks in their carry-ons, but I'm sure they will bring with them all that old-fou-spirit, and lots of horns and drums. Stay tuned to their website for their show dates after Honk! in Providence and New York...

And speaking of Honk!, I just saw some wonderful new Honk! posters online, designed by the Groundswell Collective:

Of course, here in the streets of America the wine does not flow so freely as it does in Rome. And in Northampton, MA, where I've just relocated, the beats don't flow so freely in the streets. Somehow I've managed to move to a city that, while seemingly so similar in spirit to Somerville, the home of Honk!, is cracking down on street music instead of celebrating it. According to what Dave DelloRusso of the local street-music-hero band, the Primate Fiasco, has told me, you must have a $20 permit to play on the sidewalks of downtown Northampton, and if you're a drummer or a member of a group numbering more than three, you're out of luck, permit or no.

Well, clearly I have grown spoiled by that small collection of legal rights enjoyed by musicians in New York. It's too early in my residence here to make any declarations of what should be done about the crackdown, (for that, check out Dave's take on the situation here, and read Tommy Devine's blog about the linked crackdown on panhandlers here [As Devine quips, "some people want a bohemian atmosphere without having to put up with any bohemians. "]), but expect more from me in the months to come...

Hornucopia!

Wow, so Mr. Dave Richoux just posted an alert to the Streetband list (see sidebar) about the HORNUCOPIA festival - a festival of horns and brass - happening in in Bay Area this September. The lineup looks divine -- Frank London's SF Klezmer Brass All-Stars (call me provincial, but I didn't know about his second group of all-stars out west!), Brass Menazeri, Extra Action Marching Band, Brass Liberation Orchestra, Polkacide, the Yard Dogs, and some other groups, for example: Lord Loves a Working Man (hope it's a Steve Martin reference), the Shotgun Wedding Quintet, and the Brass Mafia. More than 35 bands are in the lineup! You west coasters should check it out - and get excited about the marvelous proliferation of the not-so-clandestine street band underground... AND REPORT BACK!

http://www.hornucopiafestival.org

The New Orleans Diaspora and the People Who Love Them

This project is new to me, but it looks great. In their own words:

During the Finding Our Folk tour, high school and college students supported by community elders and grassroots organizations toured America and visited cities where Hurricane Katrina survivors were displaced. The tour partnered with local and national community based organizations and learning institutions, to identify evacuees and the cities where they were, to develop curriculum and provide training for high school and college students to facilitate workshops and support the overall documentation of the tour.

In each city, we convened survivors and local community residents to share their stories, and to participate in the different tour activities. In selected cities, the day of learning and healing culminated in a large-scale celebration of the people and culture of the Gulf Coast region. These events allowed evacuees to share their journey through art and culture and featured performances by national and local performers, musicians, poets and visual artists, intertwined with speeches by veterans of the civil rights and current resistance movements.

They've got the Hot 8 on board, and have been organizing second lines in cities around the US. They've also got a bunch of documentation up on their website.

The tour will be in the NYC area over the next couple of weeks before heading to the Democratic and Republican National Conventions. They appear to have an email list and could probably use some support.

What Becomes a Big Weirdo Brass Band Most?

Ah, West Philly. It's kind of mythical. Back in my days as a capitalism-hatin', pepper spray-dodgin', train-hoppin', would-be abandoned building-squattin' young(ish) punk-ass good-for-nothing misanthrope* it seemed like that neighborhood was always on someone's lips with a kind of reverence now reserved for -- well, no place (maybe Berlin, but omigod Berlin is so last June). It was an overlooked Shangri-la that became sort of conspicuous by dint of its overlooked-ness. I never did move there, like a lot of people said they were going to, but maybe I should've.

The blog Stranded in Stereo has an interview with Gregg Mervine of the West Philadelphia Orchestra up. WPO has been together for something like two years, but seem to have turned up in an inordinate number of out-of-town places in that time (no link for that tidbit -- it's just an impression, not a fact). It's interesting to read the interview and go through a mental checklist of what's the same and what's different from other bands I know. I.e., flexible lineup [check!]; musical backgrounds tending toward Eastern Europe, jazz, and punk [check!]; brass and strings in happy-go-lucky collaboration [huh?]. Yeah. Emperor Norton's and Mucca Pazza manage that balancing act, and more power to 'em, I say. It's not so much a difficult thing to do as a difficult thing to do well.

Anyways, this interview is a good introduction to what WPO does. Which is nice, 'cause I hardly know what they do, having only seen them do one rocking set late on the second night of last year's Golden Festival. Hopefully there'll be more of that down the road.

By the way, WPO has a CD out, which I haven't heard yet so I can't say anything about it, but if you have, don't be shy about using the comments section, eh sparky?


* Whence I evolved into a capitalism-hatin', rent-sweatin', BA-havin', hygiene-neglectin', freelance hermit-livin' fancy pants know-it-all misanthrope.

Follitarians United Will Never Be Defeated

Here's some old footage from last Folly Day that I was just reminded of recently. It prominently features the Top Secret Attack Band, which you can't actually see because it doesn't actually exist. Please destroy your computer immediately after viewing and report for reeducation at your earliest convenience.

Attack of the Top Secret Attack Band!

Hot BB

Here's a video interview with Big Peter from the Hot 8 on Boing Boing TV. Not much to say about it because it (er, literally) speaks for itself.

As kind of an aside, though, right next to the part I video on the website is an ad for Michael Ondaatje's book Coming Through Slaughter, which I recommend rather highly. It's a fictionalized account of Buddy Bolden, the legendary ur-cornetist of jazz. It's really thoughtfully done and kind of sucks you into its turn-of-the-century New Orleans world.

Interview Part I (with clips of the band playing What's My Name):


Interview Part II (with clips of the band playing Sexual Healing):

Halftime's Not Just for Halftime Anymore

I opened up the New York Times website this morning (yes, yes, I'm a hopelessly reactionary liberal metrosexual appeaser yuppie and I like my baguette with a little Camembert -- but I really think that Obama's going to change everything) to find this picture staring back at me from just below the masthead:
Well, I thought, brass has arrived!

And it's kind of true. At least in some places. This article is all about a summer camp program that Florida A&M University's Marching 100 has been organizing for the past 18 years, and it just about puts the last nail in the coffin of the complaint that Drumline was a totally crappy movie. (It was, if you really only care about things like plot, character development, and the nonexistence of hoary cliches.) The article itself really nails part of the reason why a program like this is a good thing for all of us:

[T]he rise of hip-hop and the computerized music programs like GarageBand has depleted the pool of young instrumentalists. In addition, many public schools have reduced or eliminated music classes to provide double periods of math and reading, which are tested annually under the education law No Child Left Behind.
[Links added]

Hallelujah! I mean, not like any of this is a big secret, but it's nice when it's prominently acknowledged by the Journal of Record.

This stuff is important partly because, as was pointed out in another recent post, teaching kids to play music often makes them better students in other areas, but also because (with all due respect*) marching band/drumline apparatus has a lot of advantages over the equipment that's usually used to create pop (as opposed to popular) music. Specifically (and incompletely): wind and percussion players don't need electricity, so they have a way easier time breaking down audience/band barriers than most rock bands do and they don't have to rely on the existence of clubs at all, if they don't want to; each band member's status as a producer of (essentially) one note/beat at a time at least points in the direction of a pretty egalitarian structure and group interdependency; the total absence of the cliches of the brooding guitar god and the charismatic lead singer.

More from the article:

The Marching 100 has created a revolution in band style, radically infusing the traditional catalog of songs and formations with the sounds and dances of black popular culture. “It slides, slithers, swivels, rotates, shakes, rocks and rolls,” the band’s founding director, Prof. William P. Foster, wrote in his memoirs. “It leaps to the sky, does triple twists, and drops to earth without a flaw, without missing either a beat or a step.”

Damn, I don't usually commit that many verbs in a day! Is it getting hot in here?

I do have one caveat about the Marching 100 and highly regimented bands like that in general, though. For kids who grow up in really unstable situations, that kind of military-style discipline and order might actually be a healthy thing (for a week, at least). Personally, I grew up with more "discipline" (read: adults with crazy control issues) than I knew what to do with, and by now I'm highly suspicious of people who really like being told what to do.

“They’re serious down here,” said L’Dante Brown, a 14-year-old drummer from the Virgin Islands. “When they tell you to stand still and be quiet, you can hear the mosquitoes flying.”

And when they tell Mr. Brown and the rest to move and make noise, and all the French horns and piccolos and saxophones and trombones sashay into action, the syncopated sound echoes across the hilly campus.

Remember, kiddies: obedience is not always the best response to an order.


* Maybe it's a non-issue, but I'd like to point out that I don't really have a problem with hip-hop or electronic music in general leading to fewer people playing horns today than 20 years ago, if in fact that's even the case. There's something pretty great about people with little or no musical experience having the capacity to create and manipulate whatever sounds they want in their own bedroom and then transmit what they've made halfway around the globe, if they want to. Actually, the growth of non-professionalism in music is part of what's so great about the spike in new brass bands that I see happening these days.

New radical band in L.A.!

A message from our Streetband list, which you can join by clicking on the link on the right side of the page -
There is a new band starting up in L.A.! Fantastic!

****

The FIRST DRUMCORE rad marching band has taken place.
We now have enough people to make a start and to start
seriously practicing, thinking about performances, etc.

Our NEXT PRACTICE is this sunday July 27th.
We will be meeting at Macarthur Park.
4p.m - 6/7.
We don't have a set spot where we meet.
It's wherever we can find shade on either side of the park.

If you want to be a part of this band.
PLEASE come to the next practice.
Help us make it happen.

REMEMBER
BRING water !
BRING marching drums or a pots, pans & sticks.
A strap for your drum.
Lots of enthusiasm.

& again no experience is neccessary ! All instruction provided.

Pass it on !

And THANKS AGAIN

Linda for L.A DRUMCORE

http://www.myspace.com/ladrumcore
drum-core (at) live.com

Second Line, Home and Away

Here's a couple of pretty good articles about two of the really great New Orleans-based brass bands today: Rebirth and the Hot 8. Rebirth, obviously, are kind of the pioneering superheroes of the modern second line bands. They started doing what they do more than 25 years ago when playing in a brass band just wasn't all that cool. If that has changed since then, it's largely because of them. Now snare player Derick Tabb, along with Trombone Shorty and several other brass band folks from the area, are starting up a program to teach elementary school kids how to play instruments.

It will draw students mainly from five Recovery School District elementary schools, which don't have marching band programs, and put them in summer music classes. During the 2008-09 school year, the students will attend after-school classes for three hours.

...

"I lost a little brother to gunfire, and Derrick has lost cousins," said Corey Henry, Rebirth's trombone player and a product of a Treme elementary school marching band.

Andrews said, "If we get them at the age Derrick is targeting, they'll also be getting a similar education as they would get at (New Orleans Center for Creative Arts), only they'll be starting younger."

...

Until the program finds more money, the teachers will volunteer their time, said Lawrence Rawlins, one of the instructors working with Tabb. Teaching students music can lead to them learning far more, [Pam] Breaux [assistant secretary of Louisiana's Office of Cultural Development] said.

"Take it a step at a time. You get a better student, you get better test scores," she said. "You get better test scores, you get more of an opportunity for higher education. You get better educated workers, you get a better work force for the state."

The Hot 8 always seemed like a kind of underdog in a city of underdogs. Until recently, they never seemed to get the recognition that they deserved (and maybe they still don't, tho there seem to be a lot of articles about them cropping up lately). And they've stuck it out through a nasty pile of hardship over the past few years, even by the rough standards of their home town

[T]he Hot 8 experienced its own private, yet sadly typical, tragedy in December 2006. Drummer Dinerral Shavers died, age 25, shot in the back of the head while driving his car.

...

[I]t's very hard to make a living on the local scene; venues aren't paying enough. "You want to work, because you want to play for your home crowd," he says. "We still do a lot of second-line parades and private parties. It just makes you want to do your own thing, free performances for the people."

This matters, of course, because New Orleans brass-band music is organically of its city and has always thrived on interplay outside, on the street, in the parades where folks perpetuate old dances and invent new ones. Separate the sound from the street and you stunt it, take away the point.

...

"We need to keep the music going," Pete says. "It don't make no sense to break up. I wanted to leave, I didn't want to play, I was tired. But I made a commitment to the other band members - and to the forefathers on whose shoulders we step."

Anyways, if you're not familiar with the background of the modern second-line bands, these pieces might give you a couple of hints about where they're coming from. And if you already know, then here's what two of the best are up to at the moment.

EARTHQUAAAAKE!!

I notice that What Cheer and Mucca Pazza are touring the West Coast at the same time.

Thisnthat

I promise to have a big ol' multi-record review coming up soon. But in the meantime, I would like to point out (for anyone in the greater-Seattle metropolitan area) that the Weapons of Marching Destruction (spawn of INB, grand-spawn of ¡Tchkung!) are looking for members. To wit:

Radical Marching Band Seeks Drummers and Brass Players.

Weapons of Marching Destruction, Seattle's loudest radical drumline is looking for collaborators. We need confident, competent drummers and brass players who are not afraid to play with some flair. Previous experience on your instrument required. Marching experience encouraged. BenjaminBearMusic@gmail.com

Instrument: Drums/percussion and Brass

=======

Beyond that, for your viewing pleasure, I give you some pretty well shot footage of Extra Action at a Halloween party a few years back. I like to amuse myself by trying to identify band members' faces (I see Josh and Wiley and Simon and Ena ... it's like a frickn episode of Romper Room).

Atlanta Sedition Orchestra in the Atlanta Journal-Constitutional!

Last year, Becca and Phil from the Rude Mechanical Orchestra departed from our fine island and headed south, like little marching-band Johnny Appleseeds, and started a new band. Now Atlanta can boast not only the Seed and Feed Marching Abominable, but also the svelte and rowdy Atlanta Sedition Orchestra. Along the way, and much to my delight, Becca picked up the sousaphone, and not just any old sousa—it's a double-belled badass sousaphone decked out in flames. B&P are heading back to New York, and the ASO just received a very nice treatment in the Atlanta Journal Constitutional -  

Atlanta Sedition Orchestra marching band mixes politics, punk and parade

By JAMIE GUMBRECHT
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Published on: 06/26/08

It started as a parking lot party, more friends than strangers, all drinking beer and enjoying a cool night near the end of May. They were celebrating the opening of the community arts center WonderRoot, touring its fancy new digs and waiting in the breeze for the bands in the basement to turn on the amps.

It didn't take long for the drags of an old familiar tune to blow through the parking lot off Memorial Drive, no amplifier necessary. After that first brass bellow was a tap on a drum, the shuffle of movement, then a full marching band in black-and-purple stripes, ribbons and tassels. It wailed "Saint James Infirmary Blues" and poured from the basement led by a double-belled sousaphone painted like a fire-breathing dragon. Euphonium, trombone, alto sax, tenor sax, bass and snare drums, cymbals, tambourine, a whistle.

Conversations stopped. Rookie audience members raised their eyebrows; regulars at protests and benefits smiled. It took a few songs before they were officially introduced.

But the drums were labeled: ASO.

"Some people were just shocked," says Chris Appleton, a WonderRoot founder. "A marching band?"

Like every gig the Atlanta Sedition Orchestra plays, it wasn't just a party. It was a parade.

The band started in late 2007, rehearsing in living rooms and borrowed spaces with half a dozen musicians. Since then, its membership has grown to 30 or so, and its list of gigs includes a Cabbagetown benefit, feminist talk show on WRFG-FM (89.3), bicycle auction and a fund-raiser for Grannies for Peace.

With traditions borrowed from high school football fields, New Orleans jazz funerals and protests marches, it attracts musicians without a venue and activists without an organization. The sound is unpolished, but soulful and spirited. The band is political like Infernal Noise Brigade, a well-known, now-defunct Seattle marching band that formed to protest 1999 World Trade Organization meetings. But it's all ages, spontaneous, community-oriented, fun and local like the Seed & Feed Marching Abominable from Inman Park.

No musical experience necessary, purple-and-black "uniforms" requested, passion required.

"We all share a kind of joy in taking public spaces," says Rebecca Miriam, 25, a sousaphone player who helped to start the group after she moved to Atlanta in August 2007. "People come to the band because they're on the same page and want to use their talents."

In radical bands and dance teams across the country, those talents range from superior musicianship and composing skills to willingness to pick up a cowbell and make it rock. New York City has its Rude Mechanical Orchestra; Somerville, Mass., the Second Line Social Aid & Pleasure Society Brass Band; Greensboro, N.C., the Caka!ak Thunder; San Francisco Bay area, the Brass Liberation Orchestra.

These motley bands of amateur aficionados and musical newcomers formed around the country for the last decade, sometimes with other groups as inspiration, but just as often without it, says Kevin Leppmann, an organizer for HONK! Festival, an annual gathering of street bands to be held in October in Massachusetts. The surest way to get people behind a cause, he says, is to tell them to bring a tambourine or a horn.

"The whole idea is to have fun reclaiming our public spaces, reclaiming our connections to each other," says Leppmann, a trombone player. "We were surprised as anyone to find that [bands] keeps emerging and producing all over. Something about the present sociopolitical situation leads people to pick up and instrument and make some noise."

Miriam organized Rude Mechanical Orchestra's dance team before she moved to Reynoldstown with her partner, Phil Andrews, 29, a trombone player. His story is typical of the Sedition Orchestra: He loved playing music during high school in Pennsylvania, but didn't like the structure, so he gave up his horn to play in a punk band. When he found the marching band with "a punk rock sensibility" as an adult, his mom mailed his trombone.

The Sedition Orchestra recruits through word-of-mouth and Craigslist. Their ad is simple: "We perform at marches and fundraisers around town in support of local causes ... If you've just started playing, you play every day, or haven't picked up the thing in years, we invite you to come play with us."

Joining gives people a chance to say with a straight face that they play the washboard or the megaphone for the ASO, if not the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra.

The going rate for a performance: free.

Whichever members are available make up the band that day. They play in whatever space is available. That usually means playing as part of the crowd, like in the WonderRoot parking lot, where the band tangled itself in the bikers, drinkers and artists who'd moved outside. The band paused sometimes for a tune, took dramatic sideways steps forward, laid down on the ground and played in the air. Then they'd spring up and dart to another side of their crowded, asphalt stage.

"It's challenging people to move around," says Appleton, the WonderRoot founder. "As soon as people got comfortable and got in their little spot to watch the band, they would move. That was a nice parallel with [Sedition Orchestra's] purpose."

That purpose varies member to member.

• Alessandro Chapman, 20, who borrowed a pair of cymbals so he could be involved: He wants to see the end of capitalism in the United States, and says the band can be a part of it.

• Hiron Roy, 22, a Georgia Tech student and alto sax player: He wants a group that keeps him playing and performing.

• Amy Plasman, 28, a euphonium player of eight months: She wants a different level of political involvement. "I don't usually just go to a march or a protest, but I will go with the band," she says.

Principles and purpose aside, they all agree with the good, old-fashioned idea that everything, from a sporting event to a protest, is more exciting when a marching band shows up.

The repertoire is a bit of a surprise too, ranging from "We Shall Overcome" to Salt-n-Pepa's "Push it."

Miriam and Andrews brought the idea for a band to Atlanta, but they moved back to New York this month. They'll tour with Rude Mechanical Orchestra this summer. Sedition Orchestra members pout about how much the organizers will be missed, but say they're not nervous about what happens next.

They make decisions together, sticking to what might be rules, if this were a rule-making kind of organization: Everyone in the band is an individual, everyone is there because he or she supports the cause (whatever it is that day) and everyone in the band matters.

They democratized quickly, finding others to lead rehearsals and create new pieces for the band. They want more members, a fuller sound, to see some faces from the crowd at rehearsals, a color guard to fly the purple and black.

There's no shortage of rallies and fund-raisers that could use a boost. Their services are in demand.

It's a parade. They just try to keep moving.

RMO fundraiser 6/27!

A message from the RMO:

CAMP IT UP! with the RUDE MECHANICAL ORCHESTRA

Friday, June 27th at DCTV
87 Lafayette Street, NYC (just south of Canal)
$0-$20 suggested donation - $20 gets you a special gift!
Doors open at 7pm
Wear something CAMP-y!
HELP US GO PROTEST THE RNC! ***

Bike valet! Silent auction! S'mores! Stripes! Khaki shorts! Fun!

Buy a raffle ticket and win your chance to have the RMO perform at a
personal event of your choosing! Yes, we're serious. 1 for $3, 2 for
$5, 10 for $20. Available now until the party. Your event must take
place after our tour and be in one of the five boroughs.

Also featuring:
Veveritse
Inner Princess
Melora auf Rasputina
Frank London
Jennifer Miller of Circus Amok!
DJ Dusty Walker
And, of course, the RMO

*** In August 2008, the Rude Mechanical Orchestra is taking our show
on the road - in a low-impact, environmentally-friendly manner (no
stretch SUV limo for us). We will be converting a school bus to run on
waste veggie oil and traveling cross country for a two-week adventure
-- to cross-pollinate with progressive grassroots organizations and
other amazing movers and shakers, and to loudly register our dissent
at the Republican National Convention. Along our journey, we plan to
raise awareness about and support groups and individuals fighting
against racism, sexism, homophobia, war and violence in all its forms.
So come party with us and help one of the hardest-working bands in
town send our rabble-rousing brassy selves to speak music to power!

Mad, Baby, Mad

Check here for some well made video of Mucca Pazza + assorted ephemera (Frankie, Annette, and Dick Dale - no joke!).

Where does it lead?

Simon Balleyguier of FS at Barbès, originally uploaded by Piratejenny.

Fanfare Samenakoa's name is a phonetic rendering of the French phrase, "Where does it lead?" The answer for the past week, luckily for us, has been New York. However, next week will lead FS back to their home port of Marseilles. Their last gig's happening tonight at DROM. 

I saw FS for the third time last night at Barbès, where the tradition  continued whereby an oversized European brass band squeezes into the bar's back room, and the capacity crowd tests the fidelity of the floorboards by pogoing through the set. They played a long set composed almost entirely of tightly arranged originals. And if my reading of the liner notes of their 2007 CD, Souk, is correct, almost everyone in the band has contributed to the repertoire, which ranges from jazz, to funk, to hip-hop, to surf rock, to balkan brass. Every member is an impressive player, but their chops are coupled with silliness. Simon hands off his sousaphone once a set to rap quite competently in French about the ridiculousness of a French brass band doing hip hop. He and Alex B., who plays bari sax, do beat-boxing standoffs with their horns, the novelty of which tends to reduce the audience to giddiness. My favorite aspect of the band may well be Alex S., on bass drum, who doubles as a singer whose megaphone-aided voice is a sultry croon that reminds me of Beth Gibbons from Portishead--which is somewhat surprising, since crooning is not what you expect to hear through a megaphone. (Those who know me way not find it surprising that I, who play bass drum and sing--though rarely capable of doing both at the same time--would be drawn to the chanteuse on the grosse caisse [as they call the bass drum in France], but I assure you: she really is spectacular.)

So, we have the Hungry March Band, and especially Samantha the cymbalista, to thank for going to France and luring yet another French band (this is the third one in as many years!) to New York City to brighten our spring. And soon I'll be posting about another French fanfare who is already planning a trip--not only to NYC but to ten other U.S. cities--for spring 2009. Vive la France!

More Folly!

Emperor Norton's has a post up recounting their Folly Day experience -- with video!

Fanfare Samenakoa

***CORRECTIONS***
Samenakoa is NOT playing at Zebulon due to a fire at the club. They are instead playing at Drom for Frank London's birthday party, which is on the 7th, not the 11th (though they're playing at Drom on the 11th as well). Anyways, the schedule below should be right on now, so just go see them!
**********************

Samenakoa is an 11-piece fanfare from Marseilles, Fraunce (audio clips here). They're going to be in NYC until Tuesday the 13th and they'll be pretty busy while they're here, so make sure you check them out along the way.

• Weds. 5/7, Drom, 85 Ave. A, Manhattan, (Frank London's 50th b-day party, w/ Klezmer Brass All-Stars, Maracatu NY & others)

• Thurs. 5/8, 7p: Rocks Off booze cruise with the Hungry March Band

• Fri. 5/9, 8p: Jalopy, 15 Columbia Street, Red Hook, Brooklyn, with Veveritse

• Sat. 5/10, 11p: Barbes, 376 9th St. (@6th Ave.), Park Slope, Brooklyn (the extraordinary Mamie Minch will be playing at 8, so if you can make both, your time will be well spent)
  

• Sun. 5/11, Drom, 85 Ave. A, Manhattan
  

They will no doubt be popping up in other random places as well, so stay tuned.

What I Did on My Weekend, by jTuba

Photo by Pirate Jenny

This year's Folly Day wasn't just fun and exciting, it was educational too! Here are a few things I learned:

1. If you are a brass band and, having just sonically assaulted another brass band, you want to retreat quickly, you should still turn around slowly and carefully before actually running away so as to avoid nasty lip injuries among your brass-playing membership.

2. The NYPD seems to think that there's something unlawful about more than one person playing music at a time without a permit.

3. Point 2 is total bullshit; according to the Rules & Regulations of the City of New York Parks & Recreation, section 1-05(d), the sound prohibitions within NYC parks are against (1) "unreasonable noise," (2) use of "sound reproduction devices" (meaning radios & other amplification) without a permit, (3) playing instruments between 10p-8a, and (4) playing music for the purpose of commercial advertisement without a permit.

4. People in brass bands are reluctant to give themselves up when other bands try to borrow them by force. Should've seen that coming, I suppose.

5. The wonderful Jessica Lurie sometimes jogs through Prospect Park on Sundays.

It should also be noted that, though aggressively courted, Disaster remained aloof throughout the day: the rain held off, no one was actually summonsed, the Top Secret Attack Band managed to attack all of the other bands in succession, sending them scurrying away in mortal terror, and, oh yeah, the RMO got their aforementioned big gay bus (which is not to say that they don't still need some loot). The RMO, by the way, gets props for having the foresight to use a couple of their dancers as "jogger"-spies. You people are too clever for your own good, I tell you.

Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band also deserves a special nod just for making it all the freakin' way down here from Boston (well, Somerville, really - which is where the cool's at in the Boston area).

HMB gets its kudos for knowing how to play dumb with the 5-0 and for, can we say, dressing holy-crap fabulously? Dayamn, that man has some wardrobe!

The good people of Grub deserve your respect just for existing. To wit:



Unfortunately, photos are not as plentiful this year as last because some of our favorite photographers were otherwise preoccupied. We'll have to do this again, maybe.

Folly Day post-facto

Folly Day has occurred! The TOP SECRET ATTACK BAND has attacked!

Reports to follow.

There are some photodocuments here.

Folly Folly

poster by colin from grub.

see the post below for the details....

Next Sunday, April 27th is FOLLY DAY!

(photos from Folly Day #1 and #2, by Dogseat. See more Folly here.)

NEXT SUNDAY is the 3rd annual Folly Day, now delinked from its bossy sibling, April Fools Day. (After all, April is almost five weeks long this year, requiring twice as much foolishness.) In case you weren't there for the first two years: In 2006, multiple marching bands cavorted in Fort Greene Park with a renegade bridal procession; in 2007, the bands joined up with a human petting zoo at Coney Island and smashed lifesized human piñatas that gushed forth unnamable joys -

And this year, April 27th, starting at 4pm, some delightfully foolish, itinerant and quasi-stationary bands will be taking an afternoon stroll in a certain Brooklyn park, which seems a fine Prospect for mass-mischievousness.

Not only that, but these wandering minstrels (and YOU) will be courting Disaster, a fine bride for any Fool, and ultimately we will all - together - be tying the proverbial knot.


What Exactly Are We Talking About:

Between 3:30 and 4pm, come find yourself in the North end of Prospect Park.
The Hungry March Band, Rude Mechanical Orchestra, Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band, and others will begin rambling at 4pm from three starting points:
*Grand Army Plaza
*3rd Street @ Prospect Park West
*Flatbush Ave. just north of the zoo entrance.
These bands will be on a scavenger hunt for things New, Old, Borrowed, and Blue, and they will also be looking for a Wedding Party - and that means YOU. To join the wedding party/second line of any of these bands, court them with the offering of a wrapped Wedding Present (see Registry below). At approximately 6pm, bands and their Wedding Parties will converge at the Neptune fountain in Grand Army Plaza to doff our garters and collectively tie the knot.


Our Humble Gift-Registry:

*glittering rings, any kind
*cakes or other sweets
*tiny bottles of liquid happiness
*birdseed (instead of rice, because we love the birds)
*tin cans on a string
*flowers (all varieties, but especially marigolds)

All gifts should be somehow WRAPPED and should include a tasteful CARD.


There also will be aliments provided by our lovely friends from GRUB


NO RSVP NECESSARY. We'll see you there.


BUT THERE'S MORE!

The Warm Up:
Sat. April 26th: Emperor Norton's Stationary Marching Band (from Boston!), Veveritse, and Stagger Back Brass Band are playing at Chelsea Market, 75 9th ave. (btwn.15th/16th Sts.) No cover (we'll pass the hat).

Wherein the Tuba Player Forms Complete Sentences, Lauds Friends

With thanks to Michele for getting this thing started, here I am writing my inaugural post. Go team!

There's a lot of stuff worth writing about in weirdobrassbandland. One project that's been making me really happy lately is the RMO's collaboration with the Automotive High School in Williamsburg. The project is basically this: RMO does a series of workshops with the school's band in exchange for the school working a biodiesel school bus conversion into their curriculum. The bus, not coincidentally, will have been purchased by the RMO to be used on their 2008 summer tour*. The tour itself (if I'm not mistaken) will involve other community workshop-type things along the way and generally rocking the socks off of people who haven't yet made out with experienced a green and stripey, 30-odd member brass band that redefines the meaning of "forte." It will likely end at the Republican convention in Minneapolis at the start of September.

D-d-d-dayyamn! that's some fine project, if I may say so. They're already deep into the workshop part of it, which is some pretty cool community networking right off the bat. And try saying this sentence out loud to yourself: Sure, we'll work on some music with your band if you don't mind helping us never have to pay for gas again. Bonus that the students are learning stuff on both ends. There's also something fabulously Tank Girl-ish about dumpstering fuel for the purpose of going halfway across a continent to where a bunch of megalomaniacal yahoos are meeting and attacking with sousaphones and trambones**. I could go on.

Anyways, I think that what we have here is a pretty sweet example of how to take this sub-subculture of ours and work it into the community that surrounds it. And I say again, go team!

---

* Last I heard they were still actually looking for a bus, so if you've got any leads, do cough up. And if you don't, you can still donate here.

** No, I don't remember a lot of brass in Tank Girl either. Maybe indulge me for a moment.

let's inaugurate this thing, dammit!

I guess what one does with a blog is just begin. No big launch; no long collection and collation of content. One entry and it's off, right?  I started this blog (actually made the page over a month ago now, but posted nothing) to document my encounters with the brass band underground as they happen, so I suppose I should just begin documenting. The entries are going to be brief for now (I write with a sideways glance at the pile of papers I need to grade this week, the Philip Roth novel I need to read before his birthday event on Friday...), but I might as well begin. Already there's a backlog of encounters both fabulous and bittersweet: that big show at Union Pool with the What Cheer? Brigade, Slavic Soul Party, and Veveritse; Honk Fest West in Seattle; the second line for Vi in New Orleans and the smaller affair in New York...and last night, on the Union Square L platform,  I ran into yet another brass band: the Stumblebum Brass Band.

This was a band I'd heard before--I was lodged deep within the press of a subway car on the 2/3 line, when the doors opened (at 14th st? Times Sq? I wasn't paying attention.) and, from the opposite platform, the squeal of a trumpet rose above the cacophony of the crowd. I strained to see who it was, and I could see the flash of a tuba, but I didn't recognize any of them. A new band?? I didn't see them again. Then, last night, I was traveling to a wedding in Bushwick, bass drum in tow, where I was going to play in an ad hoc processional band (Jenny dubbed us the Everybody Auxiliary Wedding Band) to get the wedding party from the couple's loft over to Asterisk--and I ran into the mysterious subway brass band. There were just three of them—trumpet, tuba, and snare--but they had the power of twice their number. AT least once a song, the trumpet player (whose name is either Josh or Smidge, depending on the source) would lower his horn from his lips and take up a megaphone, growling the dirtiest, loudest kind of melody. I sat there watching them while I waited for the train, wishing I could take out my bass drum and play along. When I talked to them between songs, however, I found out they were playing at the same party to which we were going to be processing...and later at that party I did get to play with them. They are dreamy tight, and you ought to travel to their myspace page and take a listen...