Vox

Vox magazine is the magazine that the Missourian puts out every Thursday. It’s done by students, and like switching chefs at times, also reflects a lot of what the stories are and its look. Although I must say that under Kelsey Whipple as editor, I have enjoyed many of the stories and the covers are eye catching and very well done. All in all, I highly recommend you picking a copy up, you will not be disappointed.

That said, this last one was over My First Time. Skydiving. Given that would make any one a little nervous. Even though you are never too old, I don't think I want to do it. In my younger days I would love too, but like the military does. When you jump, you are hooked up and your chute deploys. That way I could concentrate on the ride down. So I would be a little nervous if I did that now. Ok, a lot nervous.

Having babies, and twins no less. Scary and painful. I am not a woman, don't know, and don’t WANT to know. It would be scary just being a parent these days.

Roller-skating, for a 4 yr, is the height of being nervous. Although I can't recall being nervous. In fact, I have my own pair of roller skates (no blades here) and I have very fond and warm memories of the 80's and roller-skating at the rink in Boonville while I was at Kemper.

Now here is where I can speak: marching band. I did marching band in grade school (grade 5-8) and coming from a small town, not really nervous, not a lot of people. Then at Kemper, in Band. It would be like coming from a small town band to Marching Mizzou. Only even more intense. Don't get me wrong. I have known band people from Marching Mizzou and they are intense. They have to be. ANY marching band that competes in the spotlight that can go national in a heartbeat HAS TOO. So I KNOW she was nervous. And if she and the rest are honest, they are all a little nervous going out. And these days, with recording capturing EVERY LITTLE THING, any mistake will be remembered and re-watched for years to come. At Kemper though we had the same intense training as they did. Chief made sure of it. A military band also has the focus on it. Chief treated all his people as professionals. And that meant adults. For kids from 7th grade to junior college. Age, class, didn't matter. Your performance did. And I can say and this is a hot button for me: by the time my 4th year, our band for our size, could out play ANY marching band of any size. Think I am just talking shit? We played in the homecoming parade once and even those in Marching Mizzou came up to us after and were impressed by our sound for our size. Did I say better? No, but our sound, which was good, caught them. Chief ALWAYS instilled in us that you do your best. As he always said, 'there was only one perfect man and he died on the cross.' We tried to play perfect, and a few times we probably succeeded. But you have to understand, we were younger than a lot of the bands and smaller by a fair margin. And yes we could play as well or better and had a better sound. Though we didn't do any fancy maneuvers or spell anything out, our formations always looked good. In step, our drummers played and played and played. That was another thing. Very little rim tap, unless we knew we would be travelling a far distance or playing a lot. And our A LOT was different than most. Examples? Well, we played in the World’s Fair parade in Knoxville in '82. Ask any person who has ever played a parade that may not be run smoothly. I mean, we had to play and play and play. With very little drums in between. And usually those same strains as we had people all around us, so they didn’t want to just hear drums. I think it was 2 miles, and it felt like 2 hours. You might think I am talking about carrying a tuba for that length of time. Naaah. After a while that weight didn't register. I mean my lips. The chops. You march, carry a tuba and play for that length. Making sure that you kept up, looked good and all the time in the summer heat. Luckily we weren't in our dress uniforms. But we would have done that had it called for it. If Chief asked, we did it. We were Band. We knew we were special. And we did out of love and respect for Chief. We did it out of the professionalism that we felt. We did it as not too many people can say that they did what we did. Some of the places we played: Cherry Blossom Parade in Washington, DC. World’s Fair parade, Knoxville, TN. Dallas Grand Prix, Dallas TX. Division Review at Ft. Riley, KS. And numerous parades and other events all over Missouri. We were the voice of Kemper. And that last event, the Division Review, here is another time we blew away another band.

Let me explain for those who have never seen a military pass and review. You may have seen it on TV, but unless you are THERE, it’s hard to comprehend. First off, you are basically in an open field. A very LARGE field. Think of three football stadiums side by side and three football stadiums deep. You have reviewing stand and other stands for the onlookers close by. And you have about 15,000 people plus equipment that, after setting up, saluting, people moving around, are going to pass by a certain spot so the general and/or honored guests can look at them. All the while music or drum cadence was going on. The 1st Infantry Division Band, excellent musicians all, are a unit of the 1st Infantry Division, and as such are part of that formation out there. The sequence of their playing and things were all in accordance with military FM 22-5. If you ever get a chance to see a military band or a pass in review; do it. In any case, we were there to play the pass in review. Because of Chief, we were going to play during their pass in review. This was in part because OF Chief. Bands in the Armed Forces are like any other elite units. There aren't a lot of them, the people of those units are professional and a bit cock-sure as you are doing things that not too many can do, and you tend to know the movers and the shakers surrounding the different special units. Chief was one of those. Again, it’s hard to explain to someone non-military and even some in the military who aren't familiar and take bands for granted; you have no idea how much hard work goes into it. Needless to say, for a band to have the honor to play a division review was big.

So when a pass in review is giving, people start marching around the field until every unit goes by the reviewing stand. Since we were not part of the 1st Infantry Division, we were off to the side of the reviewing stand in formation. We waited. This was not our day, never was intended to be our day, and we are there as a courtesy to both Chief and Kemper. We are a mere presence. Everyone here is military. Army proud and strong. No one has to be swayed. We are the little sprinkles on the top of the whip cream on top of the icing on the cake. Barely noticeable, but nice never-the-less.

Then the pass and review starts. We have played pass and reviews at Kemper before. But playing for 250 is different than playing for 15,000. But ok, we are up for it. I mean we owe them. They feed us, put us up the night before and we are not going to do anything that brings bad light to Chief, Kemper or us. These aren't peers. These are more. These are the professionals who we look up to, both in the band and in the Army. So we played when they started marching.

Now I don't know if you realize, but it takes some time for 15,000 people with vehicles to move past one spot. But we didn't have to march, it was a cool fall day, the weather was perfect, we were in light uniforms and all we were playing were military or Sousa marches. And a lot of it we did from memory, as we had been playing the same pieces, at least some of us had been, for years. Also, we had a strong brass section. Trumpets and trombones. A strong percussion section. We had good people playing sax and yours truly was the bass section. So we played while they marched. And marched. And marched. Probably 45 minutes later we were done. Long, yeah. But we handled it. As we were leaving some of their band people came up and congratulated us. Professional courtesy I know, but they were amazed that we played all the way through a pass in review. Played all the way through. Normally, they would start them off witha song, go into drum cadence for the majority, and then finish off with the Army song.

But I'm not done. As we were boarding the buses to come back to Kemper, we were informed that we would have to play again for some function there. There was a lot of bitching that went on. But we had a 6 hour down time, on the busses, to recoup. Then we would play. We bitched. But when we got back, we played. We were professionals.

And I was amazed at the caliber of musician I met at Kemper we had. One of our first trumpet players had been to band camp many times, and, in my opinion, one of the really great trumpet players. Bunch may be a lot of things; but when it comes to music, he's a professional to the bone. I used to love to hear him play. And after a while I could pick out when he played and when he didn't. A first trombone; his whole family was musical inclined. It literally ran in his blood. George was another true professional. There were others that were good. But the three of us were the same grade and we went through Kemper together and learned each other. Do I consider myself a professional? No. I am a talented armature that got lucky. A band needed a bass player after their other two left; I was it. I took up the slack and I did ok. I could hold my own. But professional. No. That word is used to describe those guys; Bunch, Speidel-Martin was also very good. Put Martin and Bunch together, no stopping the trumpets. George had any and all trombones, owned. He was the man. As for others who came along and tried to play tuba. Let’s just say that to play the tuba you are usually drafted. And it’s usually the big or tall guys, as we can stand to carry something like that around. And those big guys who don't make it as a tuba player; a lot I knew carried the bass drum. In any case, I always felt lucky and honored to play with those people and also privileged to play all over the places we did. Was I ever scared? A few times maybe. But we had been drilled so much, so thoroughly, that if something happened, it wasn't because of our playing. It was an "x" factor. Some days were long, hard, my lips hurt, travel sucked, this was before mp3s and portable devices; our transportation at times were never the best. Either too hot, too cold or raining, and yes, I remember playing in the rain. That was one of those times I was lucky, as I had the bell over me and kept some of the summer rain off me. And you know what? I'd do it all over again in a heartbeat.

Back to the article.

Drag Queens. Its acting. That venue, as I have known a few drag queens is very forgiving. Nice people that I have meet.

Marathon. Thought about it. Maybe someday try it. Short ones. 5K. More power to those that do. As you can tell from being a tuba player, I am not a runner.

First day of pre-school. Mine was kindergarten. And I can remember a few things; but it’s more like I am watching me, than coming from my perspective. And like being a 4 year old roller-skating for the first time, you have no frame of reference for this, so yeah, terrified beyond belief I can see. And in my day, it was much more structured and strict, even in Kindergarten. Nothing bad, just different. And in some ways, much better from what I see.

All in all, a good article by Vox.