I had the pleasure of going to a Boston Pops concert last weekend. It was a jazz concert (featuring Diana Reeves and a 15-year old Saxophone player named Grace Kelly who happens to be a student at the school where I teach), and I wondered as they reached the end of the program whether they would play Stars and Stripes Forever, as they have at the end of every BP concert I’ve seen on TV or been to. I kind of hoped they’d jazz it up in recognition of the concert theme.
Well, after the last jazz piece, Keith Lockhart, the conductor, raised the baton to start conducting SASF, and it seemed to me that he almost, kind of, slumped a little, as if he was thinking, “okay, here it is, dammit.” Obviously, as my seats were in the second-balcony, I was probably mistaken, but the rendition was completely traditional (and fun, as always–the crowd really gets into it), and I imagine that after conducting it for roughly 900 times, one might get a bit sick of the piece.
Of course, the actors who stayed with Cats for a long time might laugh at my assumption about SASF…
Every concert, Cal, every concert. The Esplanade performance is July 4, but the rest are in Symphony Hall. The flag is on a scrim that rolls down across the back of the stage. If there’s a celebrity being feted at that concert, he’ll get to “conduct” instead - I’ve seen the mayor of Boston and the president of UMass each “taking” one side of the orchestra, while the UMass band director conducted his own charges.
In reality, the orchestra knows exactly what to do and when, in their sleep even, and even when some yoyo is waving a stick at them, even when it’s Lockhart doing it in the absence of a celebrity to do it instead. If he doesn’t enjoy it, he does a fine job of faking it.
If the Tanglewood Festival Chorus is there too, they’ll sing along - you can impress your neighbors by singing along with them (yes, it has words, and they’re not about ducks’ mothers).
There was some movie in the Eighties about a mad bomber loose in Boston, who had somehow rigged a charge to go off during the Esplanade concert. There was a scene of the Pops at rehearsal, with the conductor saying “The Fourth is only two weeks away! We have to keep rehearsing Stars and Stripes to get it right in time!” Right, as if.
May I say, as a piccolo player who toured Norway for a few weeks as a teenager with my High School Band, after the second time playing Stars and Stripes Forever one begins to wish for death. Or a sore throat. Or a canker sore.
I played that song at LEAST 100x’s in a month what with rehearsal and multiple concerts in one day.
I still cringe when I hear it. And I snark out the piccolo solo.
And I just want to say as a drummer that with any Sousa march one either begins to wish for death or loses the place in the interminable sheet music. Or both.
IIRC, the “Tonight Show Theme” that Doc played was written specifically for Johnny Carson , who took it with him when he left. Doc (was he there for the Steve Allen and Jack Paar and whoever years?) only played it from the early 1960s (1964?) through 1992.
Still pretty long, though.
Guy Lonbardo had a longer streak (although fewer performances, I’ll wager) with “Auld Lang Syne”.
Actually, it looks like he was hired by Skitch Henderson after Johnny Carson took over the desk, joining around 1962-3. So, 29-30 years playing that song, probably 200 nights a year or so. That’s 6000 times, roughly.
And Paul Anka made money every time it was played.
Yes, he probably does hate it with the fiery passion of a thousand suns, but so what? What’s he gonna do? It goes with the territory. Plenty of under- or unemployed musicians who’d leap at the chance to take his job, or that of one of the orchestra members.
Now I can boast that I can whistle the piccolo part. Pretty well, too.
Whistle, heck, I can play the piccolo solo on the bassoon. Although, technically, not in the original register.
I am curious to hear from some professional musicians how the feel about repeatedly playing the same piece over and over.
I think a lot of big artists who perform a lot of their old stuff over and over and over (Elton John, Rolling Stones, Billy Joel, Paul McCartney) get really bored when performing some of their songs for the umpteenth time.
I remember an interview with Billy Joel where he addressed just that question and showed how his mind wanders when performing certain songs. He then demonstrated by singing/talking:
“Don’t go changing,”
(hmm, I wonder what I’ll have for dinner tonight)
“To try and please me.”
(maybe I’ll order takeout)
A friend of mine is acquainted with Don McLean, and apparently he’s the poster child for this sentiment. He tells people that if there’s one thing worse that being known for one big hit, it’s being known for one big hit that’s eight minutes long. He always does it early in the show, and he says he just goes into a trance.
You can pick up this attitude in his concert rider, which says that if you list any of his songs in your promotional materials, you have to list five of them. That way he isn’t billed as “The ‘American Pie’ Guy”.
I’m wondering if there are any other musicians on the SDMB who feel the same way about “Stars and Strips Forever” as I do.
When the city band that I participate in plays S&SF (at the end of every concert, no less), during the end of the song, the entire brass section stands up – trumpets, tubas, trombones, everybody except the French horns. And then the trumpets, which as a clarinetist, I have the dubious privilege of sitting in front of, proceed to play as loudly as they can, leading the rest of the band to have the crank their volume to the top. The poor piccolos then have to nearly asphyxiate themselves playing that stupid twiddly part, and the rest of the woodwinds are ready to impale the trumpets because we’ve been playing for the past hour and get to end with a piece that includes octave jumps and excessive twiddly bits.
The audience then applauds for the brass section, because, boy howdy, aren’t they LOUD. And they stood up, so it must be them doing all that work.
Maybe I should ask if anybody else has had any experience with a showboating trumpet section. I honestly do not know a single woodwind player that enjoys playing S&SF. I’m halfway convinced that they only people who enjoy it are people who don’t have to play it.
Ha! Same here- I was in our Jr/Sr High marching band and we did Stars and Stripes Forever at every football game. 6 years worth. Every single game. Piccolo. I’ll bet after all this time I could pick one up and play it from memory. Oh, the humanity!!
As a former bassoonist who play SaSF a LOT (the California Youth Symphony toured around Europe and every concert we had two encores: The Blue Danube and SaSF*), I must admit that I just really love it. It’s a damn good piece of music, and I have yet to get sick of it. So the brass stands up and plays loud? Well, the piece is designed for it and that’s what the audience wants.
(*Tangent: Has anyone remarked upon the parallels between The Stars and Stripes Forever and The Blue Danube? Both are far and away the best known example of a very formalized genre, usually thought of as fairly boring, which consist of sections that repeat way too often. Both are the masterpiece of the acknowledged master of that genre. Both have incredibly familiar hummable melodies. And both are patriotic songs.)
By the way, there’s a recording of Sousa himself conducting SaSF recorded in 1909, which is linked to from the Wikipedia page, along with a discussion of the various sets of lyrics.
Went to the Pops concert last night. The program listed not only last night’s offerings, but also all of those for the rest of the weekd. Stars and Stripes Forever was listed on none of these.
However, at the end of the evening, after the standing ovation, Lockheart and the Pops launched directing into SaSF, complete with the flag zipping down (although a bit more clumsily than at the Hatch Shell on the Fourth of July. It’s nmot listed, but it would seem to be the Standard Encore performance.
This may be the way they’ve operated, but for the life of me, I don’t recall it being standard. I’ve been to the Pops non-4th Esplanade concerts (back in the fiedler years) and to more recent performances at Symphony all, and I don’t recall SaSF being a Standard Encore. Nor does Pepper Mill. But I can’t swear that it Wasn’t, either. My memory’s going, do doubt.
Perhaps some Doper can help my flagging memory in other SaSF matters:
Pepper remarked this morning that Bugs Bunnt ruined SaSF for her, because she couldn’t help thinking of the lyrics “Be Kind to your Web-Footed Friends…”
I remarked that this long predated any parodying by Bugs. I thought that Groucho Marx did it, and suspected it predated him. She was skeptical.
So:
1.) Who did come up with those lyrics, and when?
2.) Did Bugs Bunny ever do it? (I can’t recall those lyrics actually showing up in any Warner Brothers cartoon)
3.) did Groucho? (I associate it with him, but can’t recall any concrete example of this.)
I remember the conductor of a New Year’s Concert in Vienna (no, I’ve never been to Vienna, but they always have it on TVE), during one of the signature pieces, just stop conducting and turn to the audience with this “see, they don’t need me at all!” gesture
