Soundly Thrasched

This was Jazz Festival weekend at the college, and I think a good time was had by all. The guests this year were the guys from Thrascher, and they started things off on Friday night with their usual brand of zaniness (and one minor casualty that I'll mention below). On Saturday, they did individual features plus some group stuff, including a bit of "thrasching" in the middle of "The Chicken," which was renamed "Mechanically Separated Chicken Parts" for the night. Great fun.

I won't attempt to recount the entire thing here, but I'll just throw in some random thoughts about the weekend...

--Usually on this weekend I'm backing up the guest artist on Friday night and judging on Saturday, but having a self-contained group of four guest artists who doubled as judges rendered both of those things unnecessary this year. I had a pretty easy weekend, running the box office on Friday night and announcing bands on Saturday. There were times during the clinics when I was itchin' to play and to help with the clinic at the same time. Thankfully, the Saturday night concert gave me a small outlet in the playing area.

--Biggest horn section seen all day: 20 (8 sax/clarinets, 6 trombones, 6 trumpets).

--Biggest woodwind section: 9 (6 saxes, 3 clarinets).

--The Frodo hairstyle was really popular this year. At least one person had it in around half the bands, I think.

--Concerts where blood was drawn: 1 (Friday night). During the Thrascher tune "Abduction," there's a section where the guys make random noise dropping stuff and what-not. Ed took to tossing his mouthpiece cap up against the side wall of the stage, and one time it bounced back and hit him in the head, drawing blood. Though the forthcoming Thrascher CD (out this summer) is already titled ("Axes of Evil"), they now have the name for the one after that: "Blood Shed" (Ed's nickname being "Shed" because of his voracious practice habits).

--There was a sopranino sax on display out in the lobby, but I never was able to get away long enough to play it (d'oh).

--During my solo on "Misty," I once again threw in the "Four" quote, in reference to both Halfling's UNT audition (he was there and laughed uproariously upon hearing it) and the fact that two bands in my theatre played "Four" that morning.

--Oh, and I can now announce the cool stuff about Jazz Camp: The opening night concert will feature Kevin Mahogany. He was our guest artist in '97, and it was really awesome to perform with him. I bet we'll also do a lot of Mantooth charts with him, since he was all over Frank's CD's. (I had previously announced that Byron Stripling will be appearing on the Thursday night concert.)

It was a good weekend, and a long weekend, and I'm not done yet; I'm off to Denton for a Sinfonia ceremony.

QUOTE OF THE DAY: "He wasn't a halfling, he was more like a three-fourths-ling."--Ed, commenting on one of the taller guys with a Frodo 'do (and one of the only times you'll see the word "halfling" not capitalized on this blog).