And The Band Played On

Every so often, on a Saturday morning, a brightly coloured marching band invades our town and takes over the curiously-named Bucky-Doo Square to entertain and amuse the weekend shoppers. I've noticed it's not always the same band, according to the sashes and emblems that adorn their uniforms and instruments and this puzzles me somewhat. Firstly, if memory serves correctly, just about every town I've ever lived in has had at least 1 brass band, not including all the junior military bands that appear out of the woodwork for the occasional group march to a church, or in front of a float at carnival time. And secondly, try as I might, I can't really say with any conviction that there is anything noticeably different between them all, either in the way they look or indeed, what they play.

Now I'm sure if you are one of those who make up these fine traditions, that you will vehemently defend your band as one which plays new, modern songs, rather than the same old, weary tunes that they've been playing for 100 years, but why is it that I always hear the same ones? For the life of me I can't recall anything more modern than The Beatles or an Elvis tune, or to put it another way, anything that was written in my lifetime, and technically-speaking, I'm old enough to be a grandfather without anyone breaking any laws.

So why do these bands have to tour? Why does our band travel halfway across the country to someone else's town square while their local band travels the opposite journey to perform more or less the same repertoire, on the same instruments in ours? So far as I know, and please correct me if you know otherwise, there are not sufficient atmospheric differences to make "It's A Long Way To Tipperary" sound refreshingly different if performed 50 miles away. Similarly, if there are vastly different ways to play Colonel Bogey on a xylophone, then I can't pick them out.

And while we're on the subject, just because "Hound Dog" was a hit for The King, it doesn't mean it automatically translates to the military band with the same foot-tapping, rock and roll beat. Instead it sounds like something you would hear from a cheap electric keyboard on demo mode.

Having said all that, each Saturday I make my way, with camera, up to the town square with a little bit of hope that one of these bands might have decided to gather for our amusement, and there is often an equal sense of disappointment when all I see are a couple of tables of random, second-hand, let's be honest, junk being sold in the hope of buying a tiny primary school in a village I've never heard of a new set of colouring pens.

As you can probably guess by now, I am not eagerly rushing to the square to listen to the band, but rather to photograph them. They really are a photographer's dream when it comes to human subjects that can't move, hide, argue or object in any way, and with the added bonus of shiny, reflective musical instruments (which are always, always good in a photo) and brightly-coloured uniforms cleaned and pressed to within an inch of their military lives. Most of the time, when walking through the town with my camera, I feel I'm about to be arrested at any moment for accidentally taking a photo of someone's feet without written permission obtained three weeks in advance. But this will never happen with the band. In fact, the absolute worst that happens is that with just a cheery grin and a raising of the eyebrows (I don't actually know what sentiment I'm conveying with either of these actions) I reach an unspoken agreement that I can take as many photos as I like provided I've put £1 in their collection tin. Now that's got to be a bargain.

On this particular Saturday we had a band with a conductor determined to provide us more than the usual entertainment for our money. Whether that was because the Mayor (accompanied by numerous admiring ladies) had slipped almost unnoticed into the crowd of onlookers it's hard to say, but I suspect not.

Military bands do not usually lend themselves to much audience participation, I suppose mainly because most people do not take their tubas or glickenspiels in their pockets when they go shopping, but this guy took even that to the next level by allowing members of the public to actually conduct the band. Now, whether or not conductors are really needed to keep well-trained musicians in time is a topic for another post entirely, but you can't deny there is a little risk in handing over "control" to someone who may have just strolled out of a nearby pub after a thoroughly enjoyable liquid lunch. But in this case it worked a treat. Somehow, of all the people he could have chosen to hand the baton to, he picked the one person who you felt had lived their entire life waiting for just this moment to let her rhythmic energy loose. She took to it with such enthusiasm and passion it was a miracle she didn't take someone's eye out. Even the trumpet players, whose eyes always appear to be on the point of bursting free from their sockets, somehow managed to open them wider still and raise their eyebrows to yet another impossible level. It really was the icing on a musical cake.

Maybe one day I might have the confidence to travel with one of these bands, as their unofficial/ official photographer, to try and discover and document why on earth they swap towns with other, seemingly identical bands, but for now I thank them for making the effort, for entertaining us in the face of my cinicism, and allowing me a few different faces in which to poke my lens. Plus, whether I like it or not, I must say the uncontrollable tapping must have been good exercise for my foot.