Frank Mullen's very unofficial source of poop, skinny and bitching for present and former U.S. Navy Musicians.
Tuesday, January 27, 2009
Monday, January 19, 2009
The voice heard 'round the world
The voice that will announce the arrival of dignitaries at the inaugural ceremony tomorrow--members of Congress, present and former high-ranking government officials and, of course, the President-elect, will be that of a U.S. Navy Musician.
MU1 Courtney Williams is the concert narrator for the United States Navy Band.
According to this story in the Washington Post, Williams is experienced at announcing arrivals at military ceremonies. I think he'll find a presidential inauguration is slightly different from the typical change of command:
People, for once, will be paying attention.
MU1 Courtney Williams is the concert narrator for the United States Navy Band.
According to this story in the Washington Post, Williams is experienced at announcing arrivals at military ceremonies. I think he'll find a presidential inauguration is slightly different from the typical change of command:
People, for once, will be paying attention.
Wednesday, January 14, 2009
It's still true . . .
"Any man who may be asked in this century what he did to make his life worthwhile, I think can respond with a good deal of pride and satisfaction: 'I served in the United States Navy.'"
-- President John F. Kennedy, remarks at the U.S. Naval Academy, 1 August 1963.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
Navy Tradition # 49: Marching Band Practice
The most mind-numbing naval tradition flowers in the springtime. The parade season is near, and the bandmaster fears that, over the winter, the band may have forgotten how to march. He walks to the grease-board, spots an afternoon currently scheduled for liberty and writes "1300: Marching Band Practice."
The afternoon arrives, and the band forms up on the grinder, which is Navy nomenclature for "Parking lot that has been soaking up heat since sunrise." The drum major orders the band to stand at Attention. Every one of us has done this five hundred times before. We automatically snap to Attention in perfect symmetry.
But this symmetry does not meet the drum major's standards. He has a job to do, and his job is to bore his shipmates to the very boundaries of tedium.
The drum major begins by standing at the head of the first column and grasping his mace as though it were some sort of divining rod. He uses it as a sighting-device and looks down the line of sailors.
"Half a pace to your left, Smith," he calls out. "No, too much. Okay, back a little more. Good, right there. Okay, Jones--slide a skosh to the right. No, a bigger skosh. Too much, go back just a--there! Don't move."
When every bandsman in the first column is perfectly aligned with Jupiter, Mars, the Pentagon and the Naval Observatory, the drum major takes an officious pace sideways and repeats the process with members of the second column, ordering bandsmen to move a hair's-breath this way, a micrometer that way.
Let me interrupt here to point out that this is pointless, nonproductive, time-consuming and murderous to morale. No matter how perfect the formation, as soon as the band steps off, it will--
Whoops, I'm getting waaay ahead of myself.
Eventually, all columns are lined up to the satisfaction of the drum major, who is clearly AWOL from his berth in the obsessive-compulsive ward of the nearby Naval Hospital. The band has been standing in the sun for ten minutes now and has covered a collective distance of less than six inches. Isn't it time to get this show on the road? If this is marching practice, shouldn't we practice a little marching? That's what we came out here to do, isn't it?
No, no and no. We came outside to act as puppets for a damn First Class with a big head and a long stick. We're still a long way from actual marching.
It is now time for Petty Officer Perfect to micro-manage the formation from a different angle. Now, His Majesty stands at the end of the first row--the trombones--and repeats his previous exercise. He does the hocus-pocus with his mace and orders Johnson to move forward 3/16 of an inch, Farrell to edge backwards just a tiny bit--in fact, don't even move your feet, Farrell, just lean aft into the breeze. Perfect! Now on to Davis, who is standing six bothersome molecules out of line.
The expression "reshuffling deck chairs on the Titanic," so often used to describe minutely-detailed activities that will, in the face of coming events, be proven irrelevant, may be appropriately applied to this situation. When Dickie Drum Major finally gives the signal to march, this ridiculously perfect spacing will be--
There I go again. Where were we? Oh, yes. The drum major has moved to the second row and is telling grown men and women to move their feet half a pebble's-length forward. The sun is hot out here on the grinder. The beer is cold in the E.M. club. In the minds of a score of bandsmen, the drum major has been stripped naked and tied to a spit which rotates slowly over searing flames.
After twenty minutes, Der Führer is finished. He marches to the front of the formation and turns to face the band.
"We'll march to the middle of the grinder and try a countermarch," he says. He executes a sharp About Face, signals with the mace, and the band steps off.
Because the first row consists of trombone players, the countermarch does not go well. Before the drum major gives the signal for the maneuver, one of the trombones falls out of step, causing a traffic jam among those in the column behind him.
The drum major halts the band and has a few words with the trombones, demonstrating steps and procedures until they all claim to understand.
"Good," he says. "Let's try it again." He moves to position in front of the band and calls the unit to Attention.
This is the part of marching band practice that, as I think about it decades later, still makes me want to scream, curse and snap precious family heirlooms over my knee. Now that the problem has been corrected, do we get on with business? Does the drum major now give the signal to march? Do we pick up where we left off?
No, no and no.
The drum major once again stands at the head of the first column and does that artsy-fartsy alignment thing with the mace, like it's a magic GPS device. We're not going anywhere anytime soon; we're going to spend another half-hour standing at attention while the Big Kahuna tells grownups to move sideways a distance equivalent to the width of a chipmunk's left nostril.
What always made this so galling to me was that, all along, I had the solution. But would anyone listen to my idea, consider it and give it a fair try?
No, no, and no.
To any trained musician, marching is the simplest, most brainless activity imaginable. All you have to do is walk behind the guy in front of you, putting your feet in the exact place his feet were two beats ago. That is the limit of intellectual and physical involvement required to perform the activity known as "marching."
The only bandsmen who must accomplish anything more challenging than playing Go Fish with a five-year-old are the trombone players in the front row. They must maintain a consistent distance behind the drum major and from each other. Only the trombone players need to march perfectly; the rest of the band merely duplicates their moves.
Trombonists should be the only bandsmen involved in marching practice. They should line up and follow the drum major around the grinder all afternoon long. They'd get a lot more practice without the rest of us taking up the drum major's precious time.
I've recently thought of offering this suggestion to the Navy Music Program; I got to wondering if, since my discharge, common sense may have become a core value of the United States Navy.
But I can just see my suggestion working its way up the chain of command, doing a countermarch and returning in triplicate:
No, no and no.
The afternoon arrives, and the band forms up on the grinder, which is Navy nomenclature for "Parking lot that has been soaking up heat since sunrise." The drum major orders the band to stand at Attention. Every one of us has done this five hundred times before. We automatically snap to Attention in perfect symmetry.
But this symmetry does not meet the drum major's standards. He has a job to do, and his job is to bore his shipmates to the very boundaries of tedium.
The drum major begins by standing at the head of the first column and grasping his mace as though it were some sort of divining rod. He uses it as a sighting-device and looks down the line of sailors.
"Half a pace to your left, Smith," he calls out. "No, too much. Okay, back a little more. Good, right there. Okay, Jones--slide a skosh to the right. No, a bigger skosh. Too much, go back just a--there! Don't move."
When every bandsman in the first column is perfectly aligned with Jupiter, Mars, the Pentagon and the Naval Observatory, the drum major takes an officious pace sideways and repeats the process with members of the second column, ordering bandsmen to move a hair's-breath this way, a micrometer that way.
Let me interrupt here to point out that this is pointless, nonproductive, time-consuming and murderous to morale. No matter how perfect the formation, as soon as the band steps off, it will--
Whoops, I'm getting waaay ahead of myself.
Eventually, all columns are lined up to the satisfaction of the drum major, who is clearly AWOL from his berth in the obsessive-compulsive ward of the nearby Naval Hospital. The band has been standing in the sun for ten minutes now and has covered a collective distance of less than six inches. Isn't it time to get this show on the road? If this is marching practice, shouldn't we practice a little marching? That's what we came out here to do, isn't it?
No, no and no. We came outside to act as puppets for a damn First Class with a big head and a long stick. We're still a long way from actual marching.
It is now time for Petty Officer Perfect to micro-manage the formation from a different angle. Now, His Majesty stands at the end of the first row--the trombones--and repeats his previous exercise. He does the hocus-pocus with his mace and orders Johnson to move forward 3/16 of an inch, Farrell to edge backwards just a tiny bit--in fact, don't even move your feet, Farrell, just lean aft into the breeze. Perfect! Now on to Davis, who is standing six bothersome molecules out of line.
The expression "reshuffling deck chairs on the Titanic," so often used to describe minutely-detailed activities that will, in the face of coming events, be proven irrelevant, may be appropriately applied to this situation. When Dickie Drum Major finally gives the signal to march, this ridiculously perfect spacing will be--
There I go again. Where were we? Oh, yes. The drum major has moved to the second row and is telling grown men and women to move their feet half a pebble's-length forward. The sun is hot out here on the grinder. The beer is cold in the E.M. club. In the minds of a score of bandsmen, the drum major has been stripped naked and tied to a spit which rotates slowly over searing flames.
After twenty minutes, Der Führer is finished. He marches to the front of the formation and turns to face the band.
"We'll march to the middle of the grinder and try a countermarch," he says. He executes a sharp About Face, signals with the mace, and the band steps off.
Because the first row consists of trombone players, the countermarch does not go well. Before the drum major gives the signal for the maneuver, one of the trombones falls out of step, causing a traffic jam among those in the column behind him.
The drum major halts the band and has a few words with the trombones, demonstrating steps and procedures until they all claim to understand.
"Good," he says. "Let's try it again." He moves to position in front of the band and calls the unit to Attention.
This is the part of marching band practice that, as I think about it decades later, still makes me want to scream, curse and snap precious family heirlooms over my knee. Now that the problem has been corrected, do we get on with business? Does the drum major now give the signal to march? Do we pick up where we left off?
No, no and no.
The drum major once again stands at the head of the first column and does that artsy-fartsy alignment thing with the mace, like it's a magic GPS device. We're not going anywhere anytime soon; we're going to spend another half-hour standing at attention while the Big Kahuna tells grownups to move sideways a distance equivalent to the width of a chipmunk's left nostril.
What always made this so galling to me was that, all along, I had the solution. But would anyone listen to my idea, consider it and give it a fair try?
No, no, and no.
To any trained musician, marching is the simplest, most brainless activity imaginable. All you have to do is walk behind the guy in front of you, putting your feet in the exact place his feet were two beats ago. That is the limit of intellectual and physical involvement required to perform the activity known as "marching."
The only bandsmen who must accomplish anything more challenging than playing Go Fish with a five-year-old are the trombone players in the front row. They must maintain a consistent distance behind the drum major and from each other. Only the trombone players need to march perfectly; the rest of the band merely duplicates their moves.
Trombonists should be the only bandsmen involved in marching practice. They should line up and follow the drum major around the grinder all afternoon long. They'd get a lot more practice without the rest of us taking up the drum major's precious time.
I've recently thought of offering this suggestion to the Navy Music Program; I got to wondering if, since my discharge, common sense may have become a core value of the United States Navy.
But I can just see my suggestion working its way up the chain of command, doing a countermarch and returning in triplicate:
No, no and no.
Saturday, December 27, 2008
MUCM James D. Thumpston, 1933-2008
Tonight, I am particularly glad to be a part of the Navy Musicians Association. Because I belong to that community of MUs, I know I'm not alone in pondering the loss and remembering the life of a friend, teacher and shipmate.
Speaking today with NMA President Terry Chesson, I mentioned that Thumper achieved a fleet-wide measure of respect and admiration.
"Jim Thumpston was everybody's chief," Terry said.
No sailor makes his or her mark alone. We are each the product of those who trained us, who showed us the ropes, who praised us lavishly when we succeeded and chewed us out mercilessly--we thought--when we fell short. Sea stories about furious reprimands from Thumper are as numerous as waves in the ocean. Yet, it is a mark of unusual respect that so many stories of being chewed out by Master Chief Thumpston conclude with these words:
"And it was just what I needed."
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Funeral services for MUCM James D. Thumpston are private. Messages of condolence for Jim's family may be left online at the funeral home's website by going to Newcomer Funeral Home & Cremation Services and clicking on "View messages."
Friday, December 12, 2008
If you want a job done right...
Somebody high up, one of the chiefs, wanted acoustical tiling on the bulkhead of the rehearsal spaces. I suspected it was Master Chief J.J. Connor, whose office was on the second deck, directly above the saxophone section.
MU1 Doyle Church was in charge of the working party.
I was the working party.
"Why me?" I asked Doyle as he showed me the tools and stack of tiles.
"You're the junior man." This was true. I was the leading seaman of Navy Band San Francisco; in fact, I was the only seaman.
Doyle handed me a putty knife and pointed to a can of dark brown gunk next to a pile of acoustical tiles. I was aghast. My leading petty officer expected me to do menial work, the sort of low-skilled, high-mess labor generally performed by janitors and convicts.
And seamen.
The thought of working was intolerable. I am a Mullen, a special race put on the earth for a special purpose. Mullens do not perform manual labor. We are idea people, thinkers, not doers.
"Doyle," I said. "You'll get in trouble if I put up these tiles."
"Me? You've got it backwards; it's you who will be in trouble if you don't."
I shook my head. "You just don't understand," I sighed.
"What's to understand? A petty officer tells a seaman what to do, and the seaman does it. What have I missed?"
"The obivious," I said. "If I do this work, I'll screw it up. Royally. You'll be p.o.'d at me, sure, but still, you'll have a crappy job on your hands." I jerked a thumb at the overhead. "And Master Chief Connor will be p.o.'d, too." I thought for a second and added, "But not at me."
"Who will J.J. be p.o.'d at?"
"You," I said. "Think it over: I warn you that I'll screw up this job, but you bullheadedly go ahead and make me do it. When I'm finished, it looks like hell, and J.J. goes ballistic. Now, ask yourself: who does J.J. blame? The moron seaman who, everybody knows, can barely clean a toilet? Or the career-minded petty officer who used poor judgment in assigning a difficult task to a worthless bozo like me?"
Doyle pondered the situation.
"Prove to me that you're incompetent," he said.
"Let's see," I said, sticking the putty knife into the can of tile glue. "I guess I use this spatula thingie to get the brown gooky stuff." I yanked out the knife, catapulting globs of dark brown goo onto the bulkhead, my dungarees and the carpeting. "Then I put it on one of these white tiles."
"Be careful," Doyle said. "That's the front of the tile."
"Whoops, too late," I said, applying a generous dollop of brown, pasty glue to the wrong side of the tile, creating an object that looked like a turd on a serving platter.
"Let's put it here," I said, smooshing the nasty object against the bulkhead, waist-high at a rakish 32-degree angle to the horizon.
"That was sort of fun," I said as I reached for another tile.
"Stop," Doyle said, taking the encrusted putty knife from me. "I get it."
"What the hell is this mess?" came a gruff voice from behind. Master Chief Connor's eyes swept across Doyle and me, settling on the lone, crooked tile, which popped off the bulkhead and fell face down on the deck.
J.J. looked at the putty knife in Doyle's hand. "Church, who taught you to put up tiling?"
"Well, actually, master chief, uh,-"
"Give me that," J.J. said, taking the putty knife from Doyle and dipping it into the can. "Here's how it's done." He applied a thin layer of glue to the back of a tile like a master chef spreading goose liver jelly on French bread.
"I see," Doyle said, reaching for the tile.
"No, let me show you," J.J. said, bending down to slide the tile squarely into the lower left-hand corner of the bulkhead. "You have to start at the edge and work horizontally in rows."
I took one pace backwards.
"And don't use too much glue," J.J. continued, reaching for another tile.
I took another pace backwards.
"You can apply the glue straight to the bulkhead, if you're careful," he said. "That's how we did it back in ComNavCruDesRonLantMedPac."
At least that's what I think he said. By this time, I was sliding out the door, and Doyle wasn't far behind me.
I've always thought that my remarkably high sense of self-esteem was a morale-boosting plus for the Navy. It certainly was true in this case.
I, of course, got out of doing actual work, a skill I would later develop to magnificent proportions.
J.J. Connor got the satisfaction of passing along his hard-earned skills to a new generation of sailors.
And most important, Doyle got the right man for the job.
MU1 Doyle Church was in charge of the working party.
I was the working party.
"Why me?" I asked Doyle as he showed me the tools and stack of tiles.
"You're the junior man." This was true. I was the leading seaman of Navy Band San Francisco; in fact, I was the only seaman.
Doyle handed me a putty knife and pointed to a can of dark brown gunk next to a pile of acoustical tiles. I was aghast. My leading petty officer expected me to do menial work, the sort of low-skilled, high-mess labor generally performed by janitors and convicts.
And seamen.
The thought of working was intolerable. I am a Mullen, a special race put on the earth for a special purpose. Mullens do not perform manual labor. We are idea people, thinkers, not doers.
"Doyle," I said. "You'll get in trouble if I put up these tiles."
"Me? You've got it backwards; it's you who will be in trouble if you don't."
I shook my head. "You just don't understand," I sighed.
"What's to understand? A petty officer tells a seaman what to do, and the seaman does it. What have I missed?"
"The obivious," I said. "If I do this work, I'll screw it up. Royally. You'll be p.o.'d at me, sure, but still, you'll have a crappy job on your hands." I jerked a thumb at the overhead. "And Master Chief Connor will be p.o.'d, too." I thought for a second and added, "But not at me."
"Who will J.J. be p.o.'d at?"
"You," I said. "Think it over: I warn you that I'll screw up this job, but you bullheadedly go ahead and make me do it. When I'm finished, it looks like hell, and J.J. goes ballistic. Now, ask yourself: who does J.J. blame? The moron seaman who, everybody knows, can barely clean a toilet? Or the career-minded petty officer who used poor judgment in assigning a difficult task to a worthless bozo like me?"
Doyle pondered the situation.
"Prove to me that you're incompetent," he said.
"Let's see," I said, sticking the putty knife into the can of tile glue. "I guess I use this spatula thingie to get the brown gooky stuff." I yanked out the knife, catapulting globs of dark brown goo onto the bulkhead, my dungarees and the carpeting. "Then I put it on one of these white tiles."
"Be careful," Doyle said. "That's the front of the tile."
"Whoops, too late," I said, applying a generous dollop of brown, pasty glue to the wrong side of the tile, creating an object that looked like a turd on a serving platter.
"Let's put it here," I said, smooshing the nasty object against the bulkhead, waist-high at a rakish 32-degree angle to the horizon.
"That was sort of fun," I said as I reached for another tile.
"Stop," Doyle said, taking the encrusted putty knife from me. "I get it."
"What the hell is this mess?" came a gruff voice from behind. Master Chief Connor's eyes swept across Doyle and me, settling on the lone, crooked tile, which popped off the bulkhead and fell face down on the deck.
J.J. looked at the putty knife in Doyle's hand. "Church, who taught you to put up tiling?"
"Well, actually, master chief, uh,-"
"Give me that," J.J. said, taking the putty knife from Doyle and dipping it into the can. "Here's how it's done." He applied a thin layer of glue to the back of a tile like a master chef spreading goose liver jelly on French bread.
"I see," Doyle said, reaching for the tile.
"No, let me show you," J.J. said, bending down to slide the tile squarely into the lower left-hand corner of the bulkhead. "You have to start at the edge and work horizontally in rows."
I took one pace backwards.
"And don't use too much glue," J.J. continued, reaching for another tile.
I took another pace backwards.
"You can apply the glue straight to the bulkhead, if you're careful," he said. "That's how we did it back in ComNavCruDesRonLantMedPac."
At least that's what I think he said. By this time, I was sliding out the door, and Doyle wasn't far behind me.
I've always thought that my remarkably high sense of self-esteem was a morale-boosting plus for the Navy. It certainly was true in this case.
I, of course, got out of doing actual work, a skill I would later develop to magnificent proportions.
J.J. Connor got the satisfaction of passing along his hard-earned skills to a new generation of sailors.
And most important, Doyle got the right man for the job.
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