Drumline Safari
Catagory: wood-shed
When I was in band I always used to imagine that the different sections in the band were like herds in the plains of Africa. We’d all flock together and get water together and do the same things. And we’d all have our instruments with us out on the plains, and they would be like our features. By features I mean like, giraffes have long necks, rhinoceros have horns, drummers have drums, you know… And our features (instruments) would be our weapons.
The thing is that, we’d all act like animals that really do exist. I always imagined drummers to be like those lions that just sort of lay around in the shade of a tree yawning and being all like, don’t bother me.
I always thought that the flutes and piccolos were toast, and that’s pretty much what the drums ate. They were the gazelles. I also pictured the clarinets and the saxes to herd together, and it was like the clarinets were the girls and the saxes were the guys. And they would breed, and create weird things like those straight saxophones. The sax/clarinets had by far the biggest numbers, but their effectiveness was hurt by the fact that their weapons sucked, and they never could do anything as a whole. They always just wanted to do their own thing. They were hyenas.
The trumpets would be the other dominant section. They were not as big as the sax/clarinets, but their weapons were mediocre as opposed to pure suck. Though they were never established for sure as the best, they always said they were. The trumpets had 3 strong leaders who were always competing to be in power; the rest just sort of followed the current leader quietly, but they all secretly had a favorite. I’m not quite sure what the trumpets were. I guess I’ll have to go with cheetahs or something like that. Just say generic carnivorous animal.
The trumpets and the sax/clarinets had an intense rivalry going, and whenever one met the other there’d be a fight. There was never a huge showdown though. The sax/clarinets could never attack all at once, and the trumpets were too afraid to lose. Even though they would never admit it, they would know in their hearts that they were not the best.
Which brings me to the low brass. The low brass did not group into herds as much as the rest of the band. They, with the exception of the sousaphones, which were the elephants, were more the loner types. They were the solitary rhino that you found out in the grass. In numbers, the low brass would be unstoppable, but they didn’t do things in numbers, they did things in ones.
Before I go on, I should add that the guard was inconsequential in this. They were the flamingos or something. The drums would run through them scattering them into flight just for fun.
Anyway, so, back to the drums. Being that the drums are battery, their drums were artillery, and they launched things like sticks. Sticks, then could be used in close combat, but they never actually cause damage, they just sort of sting. Also, when confronted by large groups, the drums would run through spinning, taking out large numbers of enemies.
The drums were ultra disciplined, close, and secretive. They had 1 definite leader of the entire section. They also had the advantage that, a sax player couldn’t say, pick up a drum, and pretend to be a drummer for espionage purposes. They would be spotted in a second.
That’s about it for the whole band/plains of Africa thing.
Oh yah, one other thing, there were mysterious disappearances in the night with greater and greater frequency. Every section except the drums were victims of this, but no one knew this except the drums because they were so secretive.
The drums as a section did not know who was doing this, but they never asked either, because it was not their business. I never did quite figure it out, but I am pretty sure that it was the snare drummers. Once everyone was asleep they would leave their drums and go off into the darkness to make someone “disappear”.
The whole disappearing thing gave the whole world a sense of heightened tension, especially between the sax/clarinets and the trumpets.
So that’s it. This is just speculation now, but now that I think about it, it probably was a drummer plot. The center snare was leading it in order to spark a war. That way, once the two biggest sections obliterated each other, the drummers could take their place as masters of the plains. That’s just what I think though.