Turntable Talk #29 – The Jury Says Guilty (Pleasure)

Once again, Dave Ruch from A Sound Day has offered up a unique musical topic for his feature “Turntable Talk.” If no one has already, let me give Kudos to him for hosting this every month. To his credit, he can come up with topics that one month I know instantly what I am going to write about and another month I really struggle to come up with something. That being said, Here is our instructions for this month:

“This time, let’s think cheesy, sugary delites… The Jury Says Guilty! (Pleasure That Is).  Be bold and tell us one musical guilty pleasure of yours … it could be one song, or a whole artist’s catalog. Stuff you think you shouldn’t like… but do! Of course, most minds go straight to some of those sappy ’70s and ’80s songs, but it can be anything…. the soft rocker who loves AC-DC or the person with good musical taste who loves hearing The Chicken Dance.“

As someone who loves all types of music, I found this to be a really hard topic to write about. If you were to grab my iPod and listen to it, you would hear a LOT of different genres and artists. If you just hit “next” for a few songs, you could go from Chuck Berry to Barry White to the White Stripes to music from the soundtrack of the movie Stripes. Then you could hear Beethoven, a radio jingle, a song from Weird Al Yankovic, and ZZ Top. Keep going and you will hear songs from cartoons my kids grew up with, TV theme songs, and Big Band/Swing music.

Do you see what I mean? Most people know that I was a radio DJ and that I was exposed to a lot of music. So what type of music could possible surprise them? What would YOU think would be “odd” for me to listen to? Just for the heck of it, please answer in a comment. I’d love to know.

After mulling it over for some time, I almost just caved and went with Polka Medleys by Weird Al. I LOVE those things. He takes hit songs and does a medley of them as a polka. But does that really surprise anyone? I doubt it. I have made it no secret that I think Al is a musical genius.

At this point, I did what I normally do when I need to think – I grabbed my iPod and began to listen. It didn’t take long to find what my guilty pleasure is. As a matter of fact, I tried to convince myself NOT to write about it. Why? Because by admitting this, you will truly know what a nerd I am.

As the Nostalgic Italian, I tend to look back on a lot of things from my past with fond memories. There are some years (under the heading “First Marriage”) that I would rather not look back on. I loved high school. I didn’t want it to end. This was mainly because of band class. My core friends were in band and we have so many wonderful memories of those days in the band room. We would often stay after school and pull out songs we had played before just to play them again.

After I graduated, we’d come back during summer band camp to help our band director with charting and marching techniques. We created the Alumni Band so that us old guys could come back and march in the homecoming parade. We played Christmas carols in the auditorium lobby before the band’s holiday concert. I was there so much, my parents used to ask me, “Are you EVER going to graduate?!”

That is a pretty long backstory to get to my musical guilty pleasure, but hopefully it explains why there is plenty of “band” music on my iPod. When I began to search iTunes for random titles of songs we played in school and actually found some of them played by various bands and orchestras, I started downloading them.

A buddy of mine still had all of the band concert programs and he sent me copies of them. The search for songs brought me to more and more of them. With YouTube, I began to find even more of those songs (often played by other high school bands). I found a way to make MP3’s out of those videos and added them to the iPod.

I suppose the only songs you might know would be the popular ones by John Phillip Sousa or Leroy Anderson. Every once in a while we would play a medley of Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin songs from Tin Pan Alley, and even Beach Boys songs. We played The Navy Hymn when the Challenger exploded a couple days before our concert. I would say that most of the songs we played were things you wouldn’t recognize.

When I was working on midnights, I would often pull up my “band” music, throw on headphones and begin tapping my foot. I can still recall the melody and counter melody lines I had in various marches that we played. I can remember Mr. Shaner, our band director, talking to our trumpet section about this one beat in a trumpet feature where the four parts blended into what he called a “flourish.” One beat in the whole song. We played that “flourish” a few times so we knew how important it was.

I wasn’t going to share links, but after trying to describe the “flourish,” I thought the song might help. I hope it will play for you as it is not a You Tube link. This is the demo created for the song by the music publisher. This was a Trumpet section feature. It featured four part harmonies and each part had a solo. The one note “flourish” is underplayed by this demo, but happens at the :58 second mark

https://www.jwpepper.com/sheet-music/media-player.jsp?&type=audio&productID=2160125E

Listening to those songs takes me back to the high school band room. A place that was our headquarters. Our safe place. Those songs bring back memories of the black, metal music stands and all the warm up scales. Mostly, it brings me back to a place where I was happy. I belonged. I was cared about. I was loved. I was creative. I had fun. We shared laughter and tears. We all came together with one purpose – to make music.

There is one song that has always caused me to “get lost” in it. It is a piece by JS Bach. We played this song at a band festival and it is hauntingly beautiful. The song is called “Come, Sweet Death.” When I listen to it, I close my eyes and just “feel” the music. The melody carries me off and I tend to picture something different every time I listen to it. According to Wikipedia, “Bach, by means of melody and harmony, expresses the desire for death and heaven. It is among his most popular works and has been adapted and transformed by several composers.”

Grant me a small favor? Put on some headphones, close your eyes and spend about 4 minutes in the song. If you don’t feel something, well, then I guess I’m nerdier than I thought.

I suppose I shouldn’t end this piece on such a somber note. So, here is one more memory.

While Sousa was known as the March King, one of my favorite marches was one we played at band festival one year. I think every group had to have a march to play as one of their three songs and ours was called Hall of Fame. I love this one because of some great fanfare trumpet parts, a pleasant melody and counter melody, some really great bass parts, and the fact that it sounds happy. The year we played this we got a first division rating at festival. Give it a listen, if you want to…

Maybe I am not alone here. Other band students remember their time in band as fondly as me, right? Maybe they don’t go to the extreme that I do, but, ok, I’m going to just wrap it up. I think I have embarrassed myself enough, so I will close by thanking Dave for taking me out of my comfort zone and for hosting another great topic. I am very interested to see what the other contributors offer up, too.

Thank you for reading. I’ll pass the baton (pun intended) to the next guy ….