ONE BIG PARTY
Steve Hayman, systems engineer with Apple in Toronto and "musical dictator" of Argonotes, the Toronto Argonauts Band, provides an outsider's view of Picnic Day.
Perhaps, like me, you've been reading about Picnic Day for years and always thought, "That sounds really cool, but alas here I am in Toronto all the time.
"But you never know--I'm lucky enough to travel to the Bay Area once in a while, so maybe it'll happen sometime when I'm out there, provided I can figure out exactly where UC Davis is, assuming it's in a town called 'Davis,' which does not actually appear on the map I happen to have with me, so I must remember to get a bigger map."
So imagine my delight when my employer happened to haul me out to the Bay Area and insist that I stay over a Saturday, and that Saturday was Picnic Day.
I showed up for the parade not really knowing anything at all about UC Davis, but one thing quickly became apparent: I should have brought a thesaurus. UC Davis has schools that were conspicuously absent from my own alma mater, including a department of "viticulture," not to mention a considerable number of parade floats depicting cows being repaired or giant black widow spiders, often being hauled by tractors, driven in a very nonchalant way by students who seem to be saying, "Here I am, driving this big honkin' tractor right through the middle of campus, and this is no big deal--and who's that city slicker over there writing all this down? I bet he thinks food just comes from the store." (Guilty.) And of course, right behind all this agriculture in action were dozens of the absolute latest high-tech electric cars, followed by the fencing club, and so on.
UC Davis also has--and I thought the parade committee was kidding when they mentioned this over the PA but I saw it with my own eyes--a nuclear research building located right next door to a genuine hog barn. Your nuclear reactors sure have an interesting aroma.
I enjoyed all of this tremendously! Picnic Day is just a big party for the entire campus, and even a total outsider like myself had a great time. But the parade and all the festivities were just a warm-up to the big Battle of the Bands.
As a spectator, your job is easy: Sit on the side of a hill at the edge of a lake in the middle of the lovely UC Davis campus, watch five bands come in and play and play and play in their various contrasting styles (not to mention contrasting garments), and ask yourself, "Were people kidding when they said this would go for eight hours?" (And after about two hundred thousand different songs you ask yourself a follow-up question: "Why didn't I bring a lawn chair?")
Watching this battle is just about the most wonderful event you could imagine if you love bands (and especially if, like me, you are lucky enough to be a band leader and want to steal as many ideas from other bands as possible in one setting). To all five bands, I offer my warmest thanks for a wonderful afternoon of entertainment. I suppose it turned into a wonderful evening of entertainment but around about 6 p.m. I started thinking, "I have to leave soon," and there was one more great song after another, and I kept sticking around for just one more, and eventually at 7:30 (just after Davis' "White Rabbit") I somehow tore myself away. For all I know, the bands are still going.
Some personal highlights:
Stanford: If you're looking for a band that poses the musical question "What the heck is that guy wearing?" this is the band for you. Among other things, I loved the energy and movement in "The Obvious Child." In fact just about everything that everyone played was a visual as well as audio treat.
UC Berkeley: You were joined by the UC Davis trombones who did this amazingly impressive and dangerous-looking bit of choreography in one song, swinging the horns wildly back and forth, and I had to wonder: How many teeth were lost rehearsing this?
Humboldt: You reminded me of my alma mater's band in so many ways. Well, in one way. We had helmets like that. "The Stripper" was a treat; one thing I don't remember from my alma mater's band was any actual disrobing by the leader. Plus the whistle solo on "Louie Louie" lent a new musical dimension to what many people think of as an annoying noisemaker.
UC San Diego: A lot of your repertoire brought back warm memories--those were a lot of the tunes we played to death in the University of Waterloo Warriors Band ("One of the Bands in Canada"), so I hope you didn't mind someone miming the second trombone part from the back row of the crowd.
UC Davis: I must extend many thanks to those who took the time to explain to me what exactly was going on, how this event got started, whether or not people in the different bands genuinely hate each other, how UC Davis has the home field advantage in that they can just saunter over to their band room and pick up another 2,000 pieces if it looks like they're in danger of running out of material, how the Davis band managed to warp the very fabric of space and time itself by appearing both at the start and the end of the parade and so on. From you and the other folks I talked to in the various bands, I got a great sense of what fun this whole event is and what brings people back year after year.
Everyone: "Beginnings." Suddenly the circus broke out and there were some very creative activities going on during this approximately three-hour-long song. What happens when the saxophone players all decide to hold the instruments upside down? What happens when all the trumpets bolt for a jog around the lake? Do trombones sound better or worse when you play only half the instrument? What does a 600-piece band sound like anyway? And if the trombones are disassembling their instruments, how does that affect the piece count? It quickly became apparent that the deconstruction movement is spreading beyond the English department.
I'm desperately trying to think up a way to get my own band down there some time, but alas, the Canadian Football League's grand experiment of adding U.S.-based teams, including the nearby Sacramento Gold Miners, evaporated a couple of years ago, so it's unlikely that we'll just happen to be in the neighborhood. Oh well. I'll have to keep my fingers crossed that work draws me back on the eve of Picnic Day in some future year.
To those of you who have no particular connection to any of the participating schools, I say: So what. Go anyway. It's one of the more marvelous things you could imagine.
-- Steve Hayman |
