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Best Nor-Cal Street Bands in History

Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2004 2:16 am
by Bass2tubagod
See Best street bands in Parade. :D

Posted: Sat Jan 10, 2004 2:22 am
by formermarcher
Hey-
I can see why you put up north cal bands...alot of the south cal bands get mentioned.
But if you could post those along with the already existing thread, that'd be great.
Thanks!

Posted: Sun Jan 11, 2004 1:12 pm
by JCYS
Well, if you look through old programs from various band reviews I would mention these groups in Nor Cal:

70's: The Armijo "Superband" under Ray Lindsey was a top group.
Lindhurst HS in Marysville under Eric Hammer too.

In the 80's:

Chowchilla had a run on sweepstakes that was pretty notable.

Merced. Both field and street. An awesome group under both Mike Selleck and later, Greg Christiansen.

90's:

Fairfield...under Russ Campbell literally changed the concept of Nor Cal street band.

Honorable Mentions:
Other great Nor Cal Parade bands of the past 20 years:

Ukiah...year in and year out, one of the top bands. Many sweepstakes and many more music sweeps. Hard to beat Rowland Nielson.

Foothill, Pleasanton...Again, year in and year out, ups and downs included, a fine band.

Del Oro under Ron Jones...had some awesome years, and despite only marching about 65 kids, and being not the "standard" parade band (doing drill on the street, not playing traditional marches, etc.) they were excellent. Their rendition of "Sinfonians" on the street in 87 sticks out as being awesome. Again, many sweepstakes awards for this band.

Santa Cruz...a fine smaller school parade band for many, many years. Notable under Sylvester McElroy, but has done well under other directors too.

Lodi...in the 80's this band was also at the top of their game. Played incredibly hard stuff (like Barnhouse's "Battle of Shiloh" march) on the street and won many awards. The director was Luis Gonzales (sp?) who left to get his doctorate, and last I heard taught in So Cal.

Stagg HS had a few years in the early 90's when they were one of the top 3 bands on the street.

Lincoln HS under Art Holton in the 80's and 90's was a fine group, again a top band that had its ups and downs in size, but always a contender.

I'm sorry if I forgot anyone, you have to remember, I have only been in Nor Cal for about 20 years, and I was just naming groups off the top of my head whose names I have seen on the "past sweepstakes" pages of many band reviews.

I'm not mentioning any groups of the past 10 years, I figure everyone knows that.

JCYS

Posted: Tue Feb 10, 2004 3:47 pm
by mightyhorn
Ditto for Eric Hammer's group at Lindhurst.

You forgot Sunnyvale High School under John Riggle in the EARLY 70's,
and the great bands at Dos Palos & Wasco h.s. in the 70's.
All the bands mentioned had exceptional musicianship and usually played
TOUGH stuff.