All Western Dreams

[Ryan H. Turner]

... we did that thing around the Big A in Anaheim for my Senior Year.

The Pacific States Band Review sponsored by the City of Anaheim and SCSBOA.

vore

SCSBOA's official sanctioned boycott of Don Gill and the Long Beach All-
Western Band Review. It's not nice to fool with SCSBOA....

You'll have to wait for THE BOOK for the gory details.

You mean the VOREY details.



Ohhhhhhhhh my...I kill me again.

[vore]

The Pacific States Band Review sponsored by the City of Anaheim and SCSBOA.

vore

SCSBOA's official sanctioned boycott of Don Gill and the Long Beach All-
Western Band Review. It's not nice to fool with SCSBOA....

You'll have to wait for THE BOOK for the gory details.

You mean the VOREY details.



Ohhhhhhhhh my...I kill me again.

Who is this Ryan kid?


vore

[guardthepiccolo]

I understand that Roxanna Macheel was considering it one year at Benicia too, but they too ultimately rejected it.

JCYS

Hah. Yeah it was tested every year I was there; I always feared we would play it, mostly for pure hatred of the most boring flute part in the world. But luckily, we didn't. I'd probably like it more if I didn't have to play it. I haven't heard it since we sightread it, so maybe I'll go through a search of my xmas present and find it and try to like it again

[Bandmaster]

... we did that thing around the Big A in Anaheim for my Senior Year.

The Pacific States Band Review sponsored by the City of Anaheim and SCSBOA.

vore

SCSBOA's official sanctioned boycott of Don Gill and the Long Beach All-
Western Band Review. It's not nice to fool with SCSBOA....

You'll have to wait for THE BOOK for the gory details.

Will it include that fact that Larry Curtis and William Johnson resigned from SCSBOA over it? Both became judges for the All-Western during the boycott and resigned when SCSBOA pressured them to drop the gig. I was one of Bill Johnson's students at Cal Poly back then and I was involved with the All-Western and remember how mad Don Gill and Marvin Marker were at SCSBOA for trying to dictate how they were to run their band review. Then SCSBOA put out the word for any band director that dared to cross them... the threat only worked on some local SoCal band directors. We still had plenty of bands to the review that year.

[dr]

The Pacific States Band Review sponsored by the City of Anaheim and SCSBOA.

vore

SCSBOA's official sanctioned boycott of Don Gill and the Long Beach All-
Western Band Review. It's not nice to fool with SCSBOA....

You'll have to wait for THE BOOK for the gory details.

Will it include that fact that Larry Curtis and William Johnson resigned from SCSBOA over it? Both became judges for the All-Western during the boycott and resigned when SCSBOA pressured them to drop the gig. I was one of Bill Johnson's students at Cal Poly back then and I was involved with the All-Western and remember how mad Don Gill and Marvin Marker were at SCSBOA for trying to dictate how they were to run their band review. Then SCSBOA put out the word for any band director that dared to cross them... the threat only worked on some local SoCal band directors. We still had plenty of bands to the review that year.

That and the ugly truth about the breakup between the Mater Dei Tournament of Champions and the SCSBOA FASC will likely be some of the juiciest stories about the SCSBOA in THE BOOK. Sometimes truth IS stranger than fiction.

[Kuxica]

Hah. Yeah it was tested every year I was there; I always feared we would play it, mostly for pure hatred of the most boring flute part in the world. But luckily, we didn't. I'd probably like it more if I didn't have to play it. I haven't heard it since we sightread it, so maybe I'll go through a search of my xmas present and find it and try to like it again

I was going to disagree with you on this but now that I rethought the part in my mind, I am deffinitely going to have to agree with you that this piece has the MOST boring flute line in the world. I was getting ready to put up the parts to Under the double eagle and the Belle of Chicago as the most boring flute parts in the world, but when I realized how much quarter note action there was in the conqueror (roughly about 80- 90%,) I figured I would have lost that debate. But the one thing I like about the piece is the challenging Key signature....

[guardthepiccolo]

Haha, yeah, the Belle of Chicago was the first march I ever played in middle school, and it was more challenging than Graf Zeppelin. Bleh.

[Sixfdsteve]

26 years ago today I was busy organizing the formation area for the band review so it could move indoors at the Long Beach Convention Center. It had been raining all night and into the morning, so they called it a rain day. Only 15 minutes later the clouds parted and the sun came out, but the decision had been made and the police blockades removed... so the band review would be indoors. Half of the huge exhibition hall was at my disposal, so I could line up 20 bands at one time inside a giant concrete hall. All the band directors were furiously practicing/teaching counter-marches to their bands in preparation as we fed 79 bands, one at a time, into the arena where they performed for the judges.... I was so busy all morning that I only got to see the last band perform, Arcadia... playing Stars and Stripes Forever


If my memory serves me correctly (let's face it, it may not!) that was my freshman year at El Cajon Valley.

[Ryan H. Turner]

26 years ago today I was busy organizing the formation area for the band review so it could move indoors at the Long Beach Convention Center. It had been raining all night and into the morning, so they called it a rain day. Only 15 minutes later the clouds parted and the sun came out, but the decision had been made and the police blockades removed... so the band review would be indoors. Half of the huge exhibition hall was at my disposal, so I could line up 20 bands at one time inside a giant concrete hall. All the band directors were furiously practicing/teaching counter-marches to their bands in preparation as we fed 79 bands, one at a time, into the arena where they performed for the judges.... I was so busy all morning that I only got to see the last band perform, Arcadia... playing Stars and Stripes Forever


If my memory serves me correctly (let's face it, it may not!) that was my freshman year at El Cajon Valley.

Playing on leather skin battle drums with rocks tied to sticks, no doubt...

[Sixfdsteve]

26 years ago today I was busy organizing the formation area for the band review so it could move indoors at the Long Beach Convention Center. It had been raining all night and into the morning, so they called it a rain day. Only 15 minutes later the clouds parted and the sun came out, but the decision had been made and the police blockades removed... so the band review would be indoors. Half of the huge exhibition hall was at my disposal, so I could line up 20 bands at one time inside a giant concrete hall. All the band directors were furiously practicing/teaching counter-marches to their bands in preparation as we fed 79 bands, one at a time, into the arena where they performed for the judges.... I was so busy all morning that I only got to see the last band perform, Arcadia... playing Stars and Stripes Forever


If my memory serves me correctly (let's face it, it may not!) that was my freshman year at El Cajon Valley.

Playing on leather skin battle drums with rocks tied to sticks, no doubt...

Wait....

It's true....
Of course I believe in high school Ryan played the really, realy long horn to announce the arrival of King Arthur......

[supermutant]

sixfdsteve wrote:

Of course I believe in high school Ryan played the really, realy long horn to announce the arrival of King Arthur......

Sadly, Ryan was the youngster amonst us.....

[dr]

Of course I believe in high school Ryan played the really, realy long horn to announce the arrival of King Arthur......

I believe that was King Tut. Arthur was MUCH later in H.'s career. Of course, his most famous contribution was the sackbut. The name came from a common nickname he had in his youth - don't know why....

[vore]

Yeah it was tested every year I was there; I always feared we would play it, mostly for pure hatred of the most boring flute part in the world.

'tis the reasons I "paper airplaned" the original flute part and rewrote it.

vore

[Sixfdsteve]

Of course I believe in high school Ryan played the really, realy long horn to announce the arrival of King Arthur......

I believe that was King Tut. Arthur was MUCH later in H.'s career. Of course, his most famous contribution was the sackbut. The name came from a common nickname he had in his youth - don't know why....

I forgot about that king! But I had to guess the era because the only real way to tell the time period correctly is to count how many rings he has!!!

[fidave]

Like others, I too miss the All-Western. I watched my brother compete in 1972-1974. I watched my sister compete in 1976-1978. I competed in 1980-1982. At Arcadia, we practiced on the Friday between Thanksgiving and the Saturday band review, and since it was a holiday weekend, many alumni returned to watch. Sometimes I think trying to impress the alumni was more difficult than the actual event.

My favorite memory is still the indoor "warm-up" area in 1981 with its concrete floors, ceiling, and walls. While it was certainly a controlled sort of chaos, having an entire division of 12-14 bands in an enclosed space was remarkable. As each band left to perform in the arena, the intensity of the remaining groups increased. With every musical release, each of the remaining bands received immediate feedback as the sound bounced off the nearest wall and came right back. Arcadia's actual performance was strong despite marching everyone and the coda at the end of Stars and Stripes was well-received by the spectators.

When Long Beach died, I thought that the band review might soon be a victim of cost-cutting by schools that had fewer dollars to spend on education. Today, I'm very happy that I was wrong.