Once again: our fleet bands are the real deal.

I'm a fleet band kind of guy, and that's putting it nicely. Sure, I appreciate the expertise of our "special" bands in Washington and Annapolis, but the fleet bands have always done the heavy lifting.

Last year my wife and I went to see the US Navy Band's Sea Chanters here in western Illinois. They were tremendous, there's no denying it. Midway through the show, they took a few minutes to thank the audience for supporting them on their annual three-week tour.

"Wow," my wife whispered. "A three-week tour! Did you ever do something like that when you were in the Navy?"

"Yeah," I said. "Sometimes, one a month."

So I get bummed when I see well-produced Navy videos that feature fleet bands, but contain soundtrack music by the US Navy Band. Fleet bands are not chopped liver, I tell myself; why do we have to import audio tracks from the high and mighty?

That's what was going through my mind as I watched this video celebrating the 70th anniversary of the US Navy 7th Fleet, a 4 1/2-minute photo montage held together by concert band music. "Damn good video," I'm telling myself, "made even better by the damn US Navy Concert Band. Sure, they're good; great, in fact. But why couldn't a fleet band do the job? In fact, they shoulda had the 7th Fleet Band do the job instead of--"

Then came the closing credits. The music was, in fact, provided by the 7th Fleet Band.

Nicely done, shipmates. Those fancy-pants boys and girls in DC ain't got nothing on you.

I don't say this because I was a fleet bandsman (once leader of the 7th Fleet Ceremonial Band, in fact), or because the Navy Band long ago refused my entreaties to join them in their rigorous regimen of annual three-week tours. No, I say it because it's true:

Our fleet bands are the real deal.

 

Fun Silent, Fun Deep

The melody is the same...

...but the lyrics have been cleaned up.

Introducing: The Sousaphone Cam

After having watched only the first 20 seconds of this video, I had it figured it for the World's Worst Idea, simple in concept yet pointless in reality: stick a video camera in the bell of a sousaphone and film a Great Lakes bootcamp graduation ceremony.

But after sticking through it, I changed my mind. The Sousaphone Cam serves a valuable purpose. This video accurately portrays what it's like to be be the poor slob in the back of the band carrying 30 pounds of plumbing supplies on your shoulder. You have no idea what's going on. Most of what you hear is yourself. When playing in a drill hall, hanger or other acousical monstrosity, the sound of the actual band arrives after a five-second delay.

Watching this evokes vivid recollections of my days as a junior MU. I'm 64 years old, so I suppose that having bad memories is better than having no memory at all.

Score one for me

I grind my own coffee beans and brew the coffee in a French press on the kitchen counter. It's delicious, and I can make it as strong as I want, which is "Navy strong."

It's sloppy affair, though. I get beans and ground coffee all over the counter, and the pot leaves rings.

My wife hates this. She keeps moving the operation from one spot to another. She puts fancy-dancy trays and mats under it. It never works.

Yesterday, she said she's sick of it. "Every time you make a pot of coffee," she said, "I have to scrub the stains and sweep the floor."

I couldn't help myself. "I guess it's called a 'coffee mess' for a reason," I said.

Chick-a-boom!

Ahh---Bag Band

Despite any reputation I may have earned in the Navy as a jazz player--or worse--my favorite gig was not dance band, show band, combo or solo piano. It was bag band.

At least that was our name for it, derived from the black pouches of march-size music we carried slung over our shoulders, pouches full of "shitty ditties," some published for concert band instrumentation, many written for specifically for cut-down bag bands.

My preference for these gigs was partly based on--I'll admit it--laziness, or, as I called it at the time, efficient resource management. Bag band gigs were easy gigs. No hauling two tons of electronic gear. No hour-long set-up and sound check. Just a dozen or so MUs with horns, music and baton.

But I also liked the product. Our bag bands were good. A lot us us had come from seagoing unit bands and were accomplished at getting a big sound from a small band.

And often, spirited marches and razzmatazz patriotic ditties were exactly what a certain audience expected. The Northeastern Navy Show Band routinely traveled with those black pouches and packed the trailer with a tuba and bass drum easily accessible. You never knew when bad booking, bad weather or good sense might dictate that a certain audience would be happier with a little John Philip Sousa than a lot of Barry Manilow.

In this video, you can see the early a.m. shadows on the pavement as a bag band from Navy Band Southeast struts its stuff. Well, actually, there's no strutting going on, because this is an A+  tup-of-the-line operation: a sit-down bag band gig. It doesn't get any better than this.