PGOK wrote:One of the things that makes California parade bands unique, other then the use of real marches, is the use of banners, ID units (shields) and other "pageantry" items. You will see shields occasionally with bands from other states, but never in the unique manner of many California bands. Examples from the past are The giant VILLA PARK letters, the Mt. Miguel fans, and of course the often copied Loara banners. I have mentioned before the La Canada torches from the 70's. In that same period El Cajon ended a fanfare with a gong. Garden Grove use to have an Argonaut in a chariot with two timpani. Don't get me started on muskets, guns, cannon and other WMDs.
Of course many bands would go overboard. There would be tiny bands with GIANT banners. One band marched with what looked like a tent, and there was of course the "birdcage".
What I'm looking for here is some history. I know it starts with ID units. Who was the first to go away from a single banner?
How did banners and pennants get started? I once heard that an early influence was the IOF Robin Hood Band. Is there any truth to that?
Yes, I know "it will be in the book"
, but those of you were out and about in the 60's share some of your knowledge.
I don't know that I can add that much to this conversation. El Cajon's banners were before my time. I CAN tell you Chino first changed to indivdual letter banners in 1967. In 1971 I designed a new banner that we hoped would be more showmanship-friendly than the plain 1967 banners.
Monrovia had umbrellas, Mt. Miguel had fans, Inglewood had long spears with feathers, Antelope Valley had (has) that hideously large loud metal contraption, Mission Viejo had this bird cage thing up in the air with dangly things, Loara had the queen's courtiers and all sorts of different kinds of banners and pennants (although I never did understand why the style of lettering on their banners was different from the very unique style of "L" that was on the uniforms), Thousand Oaks tried to march their letters in two rows making it difficult to read (ThOouAsaKndS), Villa Park had monsterously large letters that could be seen for miles (the source of one of the classic stories of the girls marching across the football field backwords, spelling out KRAP ALLIV), Azusa had shields, La Cañada had their torches, Arcadia had the folding arrow, Alta Loma had arrowhead-shaped shields, I believe Baldwin Park also had arrowhead-shaped shields, Arroyo had shields on poles, West Covina had silver shields, Colton had yellow wing-shaped shields to support their yellowjacket theme. The banners I designed for Chino were black velvet pentagons with a silver star and blue glittered letter on each. We were trying to ease out of the "cowboy" theme so we compromised by putting circles on the points of the stars in the manner of a sheriff's badge. How original.
I do remember going to All Western during the 1970s and remarking that the individual shields and banners seemed to be more of a SoCal thing than NorCal. I remember a couple of schools - Selma and Chowchilla, maybe - that had the letters on the banner girls' uniforms, marching through the competition doing dril team type arm movements.
It's also interesting to note that while a lot of these groups did feature flags, the flags were static and not twirled. It was mostly a military marching style at that time and anything other than straight forward motion was frowned upon. There were some exceptions, of course, but the majority of groups simply marched forward. Any routines were usually limited to moving or twirling the banners. Or clacking that darn Antelope Valley sign!
I thought that Garden Grove only used the timpani the year they did Barnum & Bailey's Favorite. They designed the rolloff so that it ended with a timpani roll right into the first note of the march. Very impressive to me at the time. I even have a recording of them at either Hawthorne or West Arcadia (or both) I recorded from the street.
As for WMDs, the band that always comes to mind is Orange Glen, but Mission Viejo also featured a cannon or gun shot at stepoff as did Chino for a few years. I remember quite a rumble of conversation started in the 1970s when the Santa Monica El Primero Band Review directors decided to challenge the judges' impartiality by requiring the music judges to face away from the street and removing any references to the bands thus trying to create "pure" judging since the judges would not know which band they were judging. Don't get me started on the illogic here when most of the top bands had stepoffs that were instantly recognizeable even when you couldn't see them. But the topper was when Mission Viejo scored surprisingly well at the event. They fired off their musket or gun at stepoff for the first time and the judges thought it was Orange Glen. Orange Glen was a powerhouse at the time and apparently Mission Viejo was the beneficiary of Orange Glen's reputation. Even the best intentions can backfire.
Perhaps this summer I'll go through all my old tintypes, er photographs, and remember some others. I have tons of photographs of ID units in the late 1960s and 1970s.
