Battle of the (Military) Bands

Never has there been a bet­ter musi­cal metaphor for the dis­as­ter of the Bush Pres­i­dency than this audio clip from the visit of the Pope Bene­dict XVI to the White House on April 16th. Thanks to my hero, Tom Allen of the CBC (who will be trag­i­cally let go this fall, much to my agony, but enough about that for the time being), his sharp ears picked up this amaz­ing fiasco of Hail to the Chief:

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Here’s the quote from Tom Allen’s Junk Drawer:

Here’s the musi­cal event Charles Ives waited for his entire life. On April 16, 2008, Pope Bene­dict XVI vis­ited the White House. Two musi­cal groups were there to wel­come him — the Her­ald Trum­pets from the US Army Band, and the President’s Own Marine Band. The Pres­i­dent, not sur­pris­ingly, was there, too. Pro­to­col says that any time the Pres­i­dent of the United States turns up in an offi­cial role, the band has to play “Hail to the Chief.” As you hear from the clip, pro­to­col appar­ently doesn’t say they have to play it in just one key. The story is that one group came to rehearsal and the other didn’t, so they ended up, at the big moment, play­ing the same piece in dif­fer­ent keys. I’ve received, pre­dictably, con­tra­dic­tory reports of which group, the Army or the Marines, fired in the wrong direc­tion, but the result was a direct hit for music fans who like their mil­i­tary bands on the exper­i­men­tal side. It’s fantastic!

I found out this morn­ing that it was because one of the groups was a ‘civil­ian’ group. This was the musi­cal equiv­a­lent of ‘friendly fire’ between Amer­i­can troops and Mil­i­tary contractors.

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By David Drucker | Filed in Music, Politics, US | April 29, 2008 8:52 am

6 Comments to “Battle of the (Military) Bands”

  1. AvatarScotty
    Posted: Apr 29th, 2008 at 7:34 pm
    1

    Where did you hear that Tom Allen was to be sacked? This is ter­ri­ble news! He’s the best!
  2. AvatarDavid Drucker
    Posted: Apr 29th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
    2
    Author Comment

    Hi Scotty,

    See my entries of March 9th, 28th, 30th and 31st, as well as April 1st and 3rd. The CBC is get­ting rid of most of the Clas­si­cal Music pro­gram­ming (includ­ing the superb Music and Com­pany with Tom Allen) except for the hours of 10AM to 3PM, when just about no one lis­tens to the radio (in other words No Com­muter or Wake Up Clas­si­cal Music, no Evening Clas­si­cal Music, and next to no Week­end Clas­si­cal Music. The cur­rent crop of CBC exec­u­tives like Jen­nifer Maguire (How I hate that woman!) clearly sees that stuff as ‘elit­ist’ fare that must make way for ‘more broad rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Cana­dian music’, which for her and the rest of them means pop music. CBC2 will, in Sep­tem­ber, become an ‘Easy Lis­ten­ing’ network.

    Com­plain as much and bit­terly as you want, but it will fall on deaf ears. My let­ters, protests and emails have been met with cheery form let­ters. I’m so sad about this that its almost like a death in the fam­ily. I will cher­ish the rel­a­tively few years I had wak­ing up to the incom­pa­ra­ble Tom Allen. In the next few weeks, I plan on a lengthy blog entry prais­ing him to the stars and decry­ing the morons run­ning the CBC who are essen­tially trash­ing a cul­tural treasure.
  3. AvatarInsider
    Posted: Apr 30th, 2008 at 5:24 am
    3

    Just an FYI regard­ing “Hail to the Chief”. This mis­take was nei­ther the fault of the Army Her­ald Trum­pets or of the Marine Band, both proud and very pro­fes­sional mil­i­tary (not civil­ian) units. The mis­take was due to mis­com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the Mil­i­tary Dis­trict of Wash­ing­ton, which tasks these events. Sug­gest­ing oth­er­wise is an insult to these groups, so I hope you will retract your spec­u­la­tion and misinformation.
  4. AvatarLinda
    Posted: Apr 30th, 2008 at 5:56 am
    4

    Not only was this fiasco in two dif­fer­ent keys, but one band played it at a com­pletely dif­fer­ent tempo. I am not sure what you mean by “civil­ian” group, since both musi­cal enti­ties are mil­i­tary. Hav­ing watched the video clip sev­eral times, my hus­band and I came to the con­clu­sion that, as you said, some­one didn’t come to rehearsal. Of course, it is more likely that some­one (one of the band­mas­ters) was unclear who was doing what.

    Hav­ing lived in Dan­bury, CT, I had oppor­tu­ni­ties to play Charles Ives (and his grandaughter’s) compositions…as odd as those were, at least they were INTENDED to sound that way. I know that no band­mas­ter wants his band to look or sound like this mess.

    As a musi­cian (and mar­ried to a mil­i­tary band­mas­ter as well), I felt quite badly for both groups. With some­thing as highly exposed as this, there will surely be a LOT of fall out…you know the guy who gacked a note in TAPS dur­ing Pres­i­dent Kennedy’s funeral was relieved of his position.….wonder which of these guys is gone?
  5. AvatarDavid Drucker
    Posted: Apr 30th, 2008 at 7:31 am
    5
    Author Comment

    Insider -
    I heard on the radio yes­ter­day morn­ing another addi­tion to the story (from Tom Allen again, although he did not give his source) that one of the bands was not in fact a mil­i­tary one. Given the administration’s fond­ness with ‘out­sourc­ing’ mil­i­tary activ­i­ties to civil­ian con­trac­tors in many gov­ern­men­tal tasks (See: Iraq), I wouldn’t at all be sur­prised if that was the case.

    Who­ever is at fault, it’s the kind of stu­pid­ity and pub­licly seen (or in this case, heard) incom­pe­tence that is one of the hall­marks of the Bush Admin­is­tra­tion and his appointees. Whether or not the groups were mil­i­tary or not is irrel­e­vant. This was another lit­tle embar­rass­ment in a long string that stretches eight years. Even third-world nations can man­age the play­ing of music in one key for a vis­it­ing dig­ni­tary. This per­for­mance was in the key of FUBAR, a term the Mil­i­tary Dis­trict of Wash­ing­ton should be famil­iar with.

    Linda -
    I got the chance to play some Ives in school in Cincin­nati and par­tic­u­larly remem­ber a per­for­mance of ‘Cen­tral Park in the Dark’ where I got to bang out (on the piano) some clus­ters in a dif­fer­ent rhythm and tempo from another group. It was great fun, but ini­tially a hard thing to man­age (kept want­ing to smooth out the crunch­ing of the gears that seemed out of whack).

    I wouldn’t worry too much about the bands. I don’t know what hap­pened to these guys, but given the way peo­ple have been rep­ri­manded (not — see ‘Heck­uva job’ Brown for­merly of FEMA)by the Bush admin­is­tra­tion, they could very well get the ‘Medal of Freedom’.
  6. AvatarEve
    Posted: May 20th, 2008 at 3:07 am
    6

    As a vet­eran of the U.S. Army Strings I can only laugh and say that this story doesn’t sur­prise me a bit.

    I remem­ber when the Army pledged to con­tribute the backup pro­fes­sional choir for Jessye Nor­man at Clinton’s sec­ond inau­gu­ra­tion after she declined the com­mu­nity choir orig­i­nally sched­uled. Con­ve­niently for­get­ting that the pro­fes­sional singers of the U.S. Army con­sist of a large male choir (sort of a coun­ter­part to the famous Soviet Red Army male choir) and a tiny madri­gal choir! After she asked at the rehearsal where the women were, the sergeant major in charge decided to send in the (mostly female) strings! Embar­rass­ing, but at least I can say I’ve sung at an inauguration!

    Let’s see, what else…oh, yes, play­ing a med­ley of “Ger­man Dances” to wel­come the Aus­tri­ans, and insen­si­tively for­get­ting that the Argen­tini­ans had specif­i­cally requested that we not play “Don’t Cry for Me, Argentina” to wel­come their diplo­mats and head of state…
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