And One Time - At Band Camp .....

I've been trying to catch up on my blogging and had originally posted bits of this as a comment to Golden's review of Phantom of the Opera. Since she has at least 2 other posts up, it would have been unlikely that this would ever be read.
You are not that lucky.
When I was in high school band, phantom was the coolest thing there was. We would throw out bits of it during football games - not that it was in the playbook. The section leaders would write out contraband music sheets and pass them through the stands.
For example, when the opposing team would flub what looked to have been a good play, the trombones, tubas and assorted lower brass would stand up and play the beginning of the overture with a really bad honking noise at the end of the second phrase. Here is a textual rendition of what that sounded like. Remember that I'm a drummer - not a musician:
DAUMMMMMMMM ............. DAUM Da Daum bump DAUMMMMM .... DAUM Da Daum bump - Honk!.
It was funnier than you might think. Then again, I was in band.
Santa Clara Vanguard, a quasi-professional marching band, played Phantom for at least 2 seasons. Their on field show was majestic; to this day it remains the arrangement I hear in my head when I think of the Music of the Night - forget Michael Crawford!
The shows included magic tricks designed by David Copperfield like mirrors on either end of the field that the phantom would jump through and appear 100 yards away. The most amazing thing I ever saw on a football field was the entire band disappearing under a large flag bearing the now famous mask and a red rose. Three melodic percussionists played the remaining bars of the music box theme from the sidelines as the drum major pulled the tarp away and walked off the field.
The official score and arrangements for phantom proved to be too expensive for us to use my senior year - we played West Side Story instead.. snap ... snap