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!
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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!

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* 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...