Tag: WGI

A list of delightful things, lately

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1. The discovery of Cher’s twitter account. You guys, how did I not know that tweets like this have been happening since 2010? These days, she and Ringo Starr combined probably use more emojis than the collective rest of the internet.

Screen Shot 2015-04-16 at 9.50.07 PMFair warning: Cher is also prone to explosive caps lock and the occasional angry political tweet.

2. “Foreign Object” – My current favorite song (and lyric: “I personally will stab you in the eye with a foreign object”), from the new Mountain Goats album Beat the Champ. Can’t wait for my third—and possibly fourth—Mountain Goats concert in June!

3. I recently watched Help! again, and what a good idea that was. It is just the silliest movie.

4. Fun updates from David Byrne: DB and friends went to a WGI (colorguard) show and then he blogged about it! A video update was also posted on Facebook (my thought process while watching the first 15 seconds: “Why is there only one person clapping OH MY GOD THAT PERSON IS DAVID BYRNE LOOK AT HIM HE’S SO HAPPY”).

5. Speaking of WGI (percussion), huge congrats to RCC for winning gold in Dayton! As always, a proud alum. <3 You can watch their finals show here.
Side note: the first time I heard the show name, I thought it was “Guardians of the Bread.” Which would be a whole different show entirely.

6. Other delightful things: it’s spring, taxes are over, and the weekend is near. Everyone deserves a pick-me-up!

An unexpected collision of interests

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Ok, clearly I am not interested in publishing blog posts in sensible intervals. Sorry for the rather spastic blogging recently, but certain things are really exciting me right now and I can’t keep it in. Namely, a collaboration between my most recent musical hero David Byrne, and an activity I love dearly: WGI.

More information here, complete with quirky, KVHS-inspired promo video.

To be clear, I was always involved in the percussion division of WGI, but winterguard is the OG “sport of the arts” and it’s so cool to see it getting some unique recognition!

When Byrne agreed to lend a composition to a high school performance team back in 2008, he knew little about the color guard phenomenon, which is wildly popular in high schools across the North American continent. … At the time, Byrne’s only request was to see for himself how his music was used. Upon viewing an electrifying DVD of the Winter Guard International’s World Championship, the creative seed for Contemporary Color was planted. “I was stunned at what I was seeing,” Byrne recalls, “and being a musician I naturally wondered to myself: what if these performances had really great live music? Wouldn’t that lift it to another level?” 

You mean, like drum corps? :) Seriously, though, it makes my heart sing that he would be so interested in the activity to want to collaborate with WGI. It’s awesome that he asked to see the performance in the first place. I am almost done reading Byrne’s book How Music Works and it’s cool to see that throughout his career, music and the visual arts have been consistently intertwined. And that’s the special thing about WGI and DCI, it’s art and music and athleticism all at once.

“I’d never seen anything like it,” Mr. Byrne said. “Because it was in an arena, I could tell that this was a hugely popular thing, but completely unknown to 98 percent of New Yorkers.” – NYTimes

Story of our lives! Here is a throwback video of the colorguard I am most familiar with, Fantasia from good ol’ Riverside, CA:

I would love it if anyone could share with me their favorite WGI videos from the past few years. I’m still stuck in 2009. (PS – not every WGI show has a large monolith in it. I just happened to pick two monolith-centric shows, haha.) Anyway, I guess it’s unlikely that I’ll be in the New York area at the end of June, but if I am, you’ll know where to find me………

I can’t live without YouTube

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I swear I’ll try to stop posting so many entries about RCC. If it suits you better, this entry can be about the Maori haka and jazz fusion instead, haha.

The video below basically explains what the haka is, but in case you didn’t know, it’s a war dance by the Maori people of New Zealand. In our show, the “opponent” was the totem. In the 1800s, Europeans came to New Zealand and the tribal culture suffered as a result. Our third movement was about the coming of Christianity (hence the crosses and the sacrifice). The fourth movement was the final acceptance of the totem and new life, etc. ANYWHO, dunno why I went into all that…this video is just a clip of the New Zealand rugby team doing a haka:

The real reason for this entry is below. I CAN’T BELIEVE THIS EXISTS:

Now onto some jazz fusion (where does Jim find this stuff??). Watch the first 20 seconds of this video:

Then this one to see our rendition (in my opinion, ours is way cooler):

Haha, Megan’s penguin dancing and Mikey’s cameo at the end make me laugh. I MISS THIS!!!

Also, Jolesch pics are up. Added some of my favorites to the end of the RCC album. Note: Hector and I don’t wear contacts, but we decided for the authenticity of the show we wouldn’t wear our glasses. It wasn’t a problem seeing visual cues or anything, but it was weird playing with such blurry vision, haha. And I didn’t get to see the audience reactions, which is always one of my favorite parts of performing. At least I could hear them!

More RCC hypin’

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Noteworthy: In observance of the date today, the Daily Bruin ran a front-page article on how to roll a joint. “Medicinal”, of course…haha.

And although this stuff usually goes in my other blog, I am plugging RCC everywhere, because I can’t stop watching our show and I already miss it SO SO SO MUCH.

I’ve uploaded a bunch to Facebook and Myspace, but my biggest collection of RCC pictures is on Picasa, including a bunch of other people’s pics. Looking at the pics from the beginning of the season, it seems like it was just yesterday. Where did the time go?? :(

Some favorites: