This one time, at band camp.....

Band!  In my school in the 70's we weren't looked at as geeks - we played Chicago and Motown hits at the basketball games!  We were rock stars! :)  Class A size school, when I was in band we had 120 members.  at the start of my 8th grade year, our marching program had just begun to get seriously rolling (8th graders got to be in HS band)

I started out on cornet which is like a trumpet except has a better (IMO) sound.  We had beaucoup trumpet players and the band needed a French horn section so I switched to horn.  The school let me use a brand new nickel finish double horn for no charge.  For concert season I played that awesome sounding double horn and the first two years of marching season, I played an E-flat horn which looks like a mini-baritone.  French horn was in F, E-flat horn was in E-flat so I had to learn to transpose on the fly.  My Junior year the school bought us marching French horns called mellophones - those were in F so no more transposing.

We did real well in competitions - I remember us never taking home less than a "superior" or 2nd place.

Beginning my jr year, my 2nd elective class was music theory - I was the only one in the class.  I got a good bit of that under my belt and the last year and a half, I helped arrange our marching and concert pieces.

My future wife was in the same band - she was a trombone player.  So band trips were really fun for us.  :)  Like Lady C, we got to march at Disney World and went someplace special every year.  But our uniforms were hot and nerdy - big tall red q-tip hats.  We looked like we should be guarding a castle.

*waves hand*  Band Geek here, too.  I played sax,  not so much anymore.  I dust it off once every few years for the homecoming game, depending on what else I have going on that particular year, but that's about it.  

I can brag a little, we were good.  Really good.  And...different.   We did a different half time show each game.  Nine halftimes per season (we never, ever made play-offs.  Ever.) plus a pre-game show for all the home games, PLUS unique shows for any competitions we did (although we usually did a mash-up of bits of other shows for competitions, not necessarily new material)  It was a lot of material.  Our band director was a bit of a mad genius, he writes all the drills himself, on graph paper.  

While I was a member, we performed in Epcot Center, and on Main Street in DisneyWorld.  A few years later, we went to La Carnaval De Quebec.  It was a blast, a 3 mile parade in sleet, with 9 or 10 feet of snow already on the ground, haha.

Our band camp was nothing like what you see in the movies.  That kinda looks like fun.  Ours, not so much.  Looking back, my parents were pretty effing amazing for getting both of us there and back for 8 straight summers.  It was at our HS, the last week of summer vacation.  Monday through Friday, 3 sessions each day,  7am-11:30; 12:30-4:45; and 6:00-10:00.

All said, though, it was fun.  My best HS memories are all centered around band functions, whether it was a grueling competition, or one of the holiday semi-formal dances.  And, getting dangerously close to 20 years later, the few people from HS I still talk to are all former band geeks as well.   

"We are stardust, we are golden, we are billion year old carbon

And we've got to get ourselves back to the garden"

I'll start by saying that the shows we did in high school were: Styx, with Rocking the Paradise, Mr. Roboto, and Come Sail Away.

Next, we did a schools out theme, with Schools out for summer, Wipeout, Jaws, itsy bitsy teeny weeny yellow polka dot bikini, Barbra Ann, and Born to be Wild. 

After that, it was the International Show of Mystery: We had pink panther, James Bond, Austin Powers, and Mission Impossible.

My senior year, we did a superheroes show, with the tunes: Superman, Batman, and the Incredibles.... We had great shows.

---The dreams in which I'm dying are the best I've ever had---