Band-O-Rama

So, in case any of you didn't know, I play the mellophone in the marching band here at our school, and I love every second of it.

When I came into high school as a freshman, my mom literally had to force me to join band. I had the typical stereotype in mind for band kids, ya know? Well I was totally wrong. I ended up meeting some of the coolest people at ALHS and I had the time of my life.

Freshman year was the year that totally turned my life around....and I'm totally not saying that my life was bad before or anything, it was great! But, when I joined band unwillingly freshman year, that was the start of my friendship with Katie Mel, Mike, and Evan. And I wouldn't trade anything in the world for their friendship today.

I was extremely shy before I got to highschool. Then when I met Katie, that all changed. She totally helped to get me out of my shell, and it was awesome, because then I ended up talking to all these people I never thought I would.

That's one of my favorite things about band.  You throw all these kids together, and pretty much the only things we have in common is that we love music and can play an instrument, and somehow we all become friends.  If I wasn't in band, I wouldn't have talked to half of the people I do today, and I would have missed out on meeting some really awesome people.

But anyways, enough background information.  So, every year the Avon Lake Marching Shoremen invite around ten other bands to perform with them on a night in September.  This year, we invited the bands from Oberlin, Firelands, Elyria, Edison, Olmsted Falls, Clearview, Eastwood, and Bay Village.

This is called Band-O-Rama, and this year was the 47th annual one.

I love Band-O-Rama because it gives you a chance to see what shows other bands are doing, and it gives you a chance to meet a bunch of other kids from other cities.  It's super fun, and you can listen to another band's music without straining to hear over the sounds of a football game.

This year was pretty good I'd say!  All the bands seemed really good.  Especially Bay Village, because they did a Beatle's Medley ;D

It's always interesting to see show bands perform, because they are always very large and theatrical.  Avon Lake's band is not a show band, we're a contest band because every year we travel to and OMEA contest to get a rating.  Show bands don't go to contest and just play at football games.  So, in turn, they tend to be more laid back and do crazy things.  Last year, Edison had fire extingushers attactched to their drums and the North Ridgeville band had a kid that spun a bass drum on his back.

 I'm kinda glad that our band is a contest band, because even though I think being a show band would be EXTREMELY fun, it does give us a good goal to work towards when we go to contest.

I do wish we did different music though.  My freshman year our contest show was nautical, and included Proud Mary, and excerpt from a song in Pirates of the the Carribean, and Bridge Over Troubled Water.  It was awesome! We had a show that we did sometimes when we didn't know the nautical show well enough to perform it, and that was our Queen show, which was SOO much fun to perform.  It included Crazy Little Thing Called Love, Bohemian Rhapsody, We Will Rock You, and Fat-Bottomed Girls.

Then, my sophomore year we did a Cirque de Solei show, which had really really cool music that was fun to play, but no one really knew what it was, so it was harder for the crowd at the game to get into the music.  This year, our show is called Codes, and again, the music is really awesome, but I'm just afraid no one will be into it because it's not something you hear everyday. 

I definitely think this year we have great potential with our show.  We learned 36 pages of our drill during band camp alone, and we're moving along pretty steadily. We're already two thirds done with learning the entire show.  We just have to learn how to march the third movement completely.  So, hopefully we'll make it to states again this year :]

So, anyways.

GO BAND.

until next time.

Emily.