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OvertureA man is at the dentist’s office for a routine visit when the dentist notices that his plate is severely corroded. “Your plate is severely corroded,” says the dentist. “Have you changed your diet recently?” “Why yes,” says the patient. “Six months ago my wife introduced me to eggs Benedict. I fell in love with the hollandaise sauce and now I put it on everything.” “That’s it!” says the dentist. “Hollandaise sauce contains lemon juice, which is very acidic, which explains the corrosion. I can replace your plate, but I have to make it out of chrome.” “Because,” replies the dentist, “there’s no plate like chrome for the hollandaise.” |
The Band Played OnIn keeping with our major activities this year, we present this Annual Recap of Our Fascinating Lives in the form of a musical extravaganza. So while our readers are still in stunned silence from the overture – hit it, boys! |
Climb Every Mountain [1]Our story opens on Mt. Hood on a snowy February day, with the Power Pep Band (PPB) riding the Ski Bowl chairlift and hoping to be reunited with the tuba forlornly disappearing up the mountain behind a snowmobile. One thought predominates: back in the fall, a benefit performance for the Scotty Graham Memorial Extreme Games seemed like such a good idea. But hey, the show must go on! So we schlep to our open-sided tent and start honking on our large brass heat sinks. The tricky parts prove to be keeping fingers nimble [2] and ignoring the gentle downhill slide as the snow under our feet deliquesces into a delightfully icy slope. Nonetheless, we live to tell the tale despite discovering you can “bottom out” a descending chairlift on the snow-covered roof of a warming shed if you put enough large people on one section of cable! |
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Boogie Woogie Bugle BoiseOur ‘exotic’ trip this year took us to the wilds of Idaho with 75 other Get A Life Marching Band (GAL) members for the Boise River Festival. We terrorized the “normal” people on a Southwest Airlines flight, spent a drenched-but-fun-filled afternoon at Roaring Springs Water Park, oohed at hot air balloons, aahed at the Night-Lite parade, and learned Comeau’s Commandment for Road Trips.[3] And of course strutted our stuff (with Janet dodging a road-kill squirrel[4]) on parade day, the first time we’d been in a parade with Macy’s-type helium balloons. |
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| But possibly the most fun was the two high-energy
shows that the PPB did on the sidewalk outside Boise’s well-known Bitter
Creek Ale House for a raucous crowd. We got paid in pitchers – which our “band buddies”
promptly drank for us while we performed.
Want more stories and photos from the trip? Click here. |
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A-Maizing GraceIn October the PPB did a Halloween show at The Pumpkin Patch just outside Portland. The place is huge – hay rides, fresh produce, food booths, the obligatory orange gourds,[5] – and a huge cornfield maze that we got to trek through for free. Naturally, we took full instrumentation and played Hall of the Mountain King and other Halloween favorites at Maize center. Wanna share the whole day (including "the glint of horns in the corn)? Step right this way! |
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Halloween happened to fall on
our usual PPB rehearsal night this year – waaay too much of an omen to
ignore. Yeah, we played a few tunes, but most of the
evening went into a party filled with ghoulies, ghosties, long-leggedy
beasties, and things that go bump in the night.[6]
Janet went as nature’s most perfect food, [7]
while Steve indulged his new-found fascination with the Nickelodeon cartoon
character Spongebob
Squarepants. Lots more photos from the evening available by clicking here. |
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| Melts in your mouth ... | Spongebob rules! |
On the Streets Where We Live GAL and the One More
Time Around Again Marching Band did a record number of |
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Post-parade story of the
year: As we walk back to the car in Multnomah Village,
band buddy Wayne grabs us: “There’s
a blues band playing in the
bank parking lot. They asked if anybody would like to sit in, and I
told ‘em I knew some people who would.” Yeah, right.
But we can’t resist checking out the band, which in the middle
of a chorus as we wander up. |
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That’s when the keyboard
player says “you’re next, blues in C, here comes the turn.” Suddenly Steve’s a busker thinking “well, at
least there’s not anyone here who knows us if we screw up” – until we
discover an old Purdue classmate sitting in the front row. Ah well, nothing like incentive!
We improvised
two choruses apiece, left with our pride intact, and even got a
free CD out of the deal. |
| Goofing with the crowd in downtown Portland on July 4th | Bubbles shorten the waiting time | |
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The I Have A Dream class[9] that Janet and I help sponsor got a special command performance – including an “instrument petting zoo” that gave the kids a chance to try out nearly every instrument in the band including the sousaphone. No longer content with gradually eroding the musicality of the bands as a performer, Steve has launched a full frontal assault as GAL director and PPB co-director, and has written a couple of arrangements for PPB. To hear a MIDI rendition of Steve's Hap–PPB Birthday (which combines the classic tune with the Beatles' Happy Birthday to You), click here. |
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Shall We Dance?Second Wind Jazz Ensemble, our 14-piece dance band, now
rehearses weekly in our bonus room.
The neighbors claim to enjoy the music – in fact, they complain
if we don’t open the windows on warm nights. This summer we held a successful Monday Margarita
Madness neighborhood bash at the end of our driveway, dragging
extension cords from the garage to power the amps and the blenders. Notable gigs included Sail for the Cure (raising
money to combat breast cancer) and a fund-raiser for South West
Music School that we taped and turned into our first CD.
Still Breathing
has extremely limited distribution, but we
can probably rustle you up a copy if you’re dying to hear it. If
you'll settle for a few selected tracks, they're
available here for your listening pleasure. |
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