June2000.htm

2000: BTB Year in Review Part III - A New Beginning

June:

All change in the Commitment League! We Judases who went to Canada with Sussex Brass slipped heavily in the rankings. Russell ("Mr Committed") was left as the last person with a 100% record, which he promptly blew by going to something as trivial as a mate's wedding instead of playing on Battle Bandstand. Shame on him. Anyway, the upshot of all this was that Chloe and Stuart took over at the top, with Ron in hot pursuit representing the um..."other end" of the age spectrum...

June saw the band's first concert of the year on our home bandstand in Battle. It was such a scorchingly hot afternoon that the audience (such as it was!) was scattered around the edge of the square in the few bits of shade they could find, leaving the area in front of the bandstand completely empty. This created the impression that we were playing to nobody, a feeling that is not unusual for some of us! A few weeks back Chris Willard was stand-in Soprano, this time he was stand-in Flugel. His rendition of The Way We Were didn't bear an awful lot of resemblance to the way it's usually played, but at least it wasn't anything like his version of The Padstow Lifeboat...

The annual band day out was once again very enjoyable. This time the band returned to Portsmouth, and while it didn't tip down with rain, it blew a gale instead. Nevertheless, the band played well enough not to drive the holidaymakers and local families out of the park, and the usual rent-a-mob audience that we carry around on these trips is easily pleased anyway! They wouldn't come if they weren't I suppose. Thanks to Matt Poulson for coming along to bolster the trombone section. Thanks also go to Pete Wright for coming up with the goods again. Actually, he'd better start planning next year's trip, as he left it a little late this year...

Social Secretary Kemp arranged a band meal while I was away (out of pure jealousy!). This time the venue was an Italian restaurant (which shall remain nameless!), and although the food was a little disappointing the turnout was very encouraging, and included several of what I shall, out of diplomacy, call the "more mature" members of the band as well as the usual suspects. That was quite a long sentence, sorry.

Our Youth Band performed in Battle Abbey for the Battle "Marvellium" Millennium celebrations (which, unfortunately, did indeed turn out to mean a hybrid of "marvellous" and "millennium", rather than a celebration of Valium, jelly and Hank Marvin as this site had confidently predicted). Hopefully someone will write me a report at some point (I couldn't go, naughty fellow that I am), but I should imagine that it all went very well!

Funky Bexhill once again provided the year's most concentrated bandstand effort (that's concentrated as in "lots squashed into a small space" rather than "full of mental application"). The De La Warr crowd braved the gale as usual however, and were richly rewarded with fine solos from William and Christopher (the "Two Gimps"), William again (on trumpet, the multi-talented fellow), Russell and Jon. Thanks to Ricky, Darren and Michael "3 Creme Eggs" Standen for helping out. I don't remember that much more about it, maybe I'd had a heavy night the previous evening...