Yesterday on the way in to school, Siena asked for one of her usual songs, something from Free to Be You & Me
This morning, Siena opened the car trip saying, “I want to listen to that thing we listened to before Free to Be You and Me yesterday. It was jamming.” After we listened to that first song, she said she wanted another jamming song, so I decided to make her listen to an old favorite (from a group that used to be a passion) of mine. She was enjoying it, but she saw our exit off the highway approaching and she really wanted a third song. I stopped that second one half way through because she wanted “the one where you can call me Al.”
So Siena’s playlist this morning was…drum roll please…
- “Hurricane Season” from Trombone Shorty’s Backatown
(excellent piece, great album, and yes, jamming)
- “Legend of the One Eyed Sailor” as performed by the winning Blue Devils in the 1976 DCI Championships (Siena was waving her arms pretending to play the drums during this; you can get a sense of how fun it is from the video*)
- “You Can Call Me Al” from Paul Simon’s Graceland
(starring Chevy Chase in the video)
So we have modern New Orleans jazz, drum corps, and 80’s pop, and a lot of links. All excellent.
* This is not actually a great example of DCI if you are new to the phenomenon. This tune was the middle of their set in 1976, and the first piece was presumably physically taxing, so the musicians are all just standing and playing for this second song in order to rest their legs and focus on the music. My brother, some friends, and I would, in our high-school years in the late 80’s, call this type of marching performance “park and blow” (hey, we were in high school). You could get away with this kind of thing (i.e., standing for several minutes) and still win championships back in the 70’s and, if you were awesome enough like the 1988 Madison Scouts, even into the 80’s, but park and blow just won’t fly in modern DCI.