The Good Times Are Killing Me

Last night I found myself looking through live performances of classical music on YouTube. There is just something about live classical music that is pretty awesome to me. Anyway, from there, I somehow ended up also finding marching band performances. During this search I ended up finding my favourite Drum Corps show of all time. It was by Santa Clara Vanguard from their 2000 season. Even though there are a lot of other shows by them and other bands that were really great, this one felt different to me in a good way. There was a passion that you could see in these guys that I didn't see in many other performances before or since (although I haven't seen that many since). I remember the first time I saw this and how I was. I haven't seen it in a few years before last night.

I'm not sure how long this clip will actually stay up because of copyright stuff, so if you're reading it after it's been taking down, you can trust that it was awesome (and I thought underrated that year).

Back to the story. So I was watching this and, as expected, it hit the same chord in me that it always has. I also started thinking about my own time in marching band while in high school (although we were nowhere near this good). Marching band was pretty much the best thing during those four years. It was something I looked forward to, and I didn't look forward to much else. Marching band, besides a lot of people of course, is what I miss most about grade school. The trips (especially the over-nighters), the practices, the football games, my band-mates (most of them), even the bad times were good. I ended up tearing up while watching this performance (right around the ballad, Adagio for Strings by Samuel Barber).

This was pretty late too and I was about to go to sleep. I had to watch something funny after this because sad is no way to go to sleep. Despite the bittersweet nostalgia, I'm glad I went on that random search.

The good old days of the Big Orange Marching Machine (from grade 11).