Yeah, I was a band geek, mitigated only somewhat by playing drums. I thrived in this environment, as the pure structure of it all was exactly the kind of thing I liked at the time. My arrival in high school coincided with the music department's hiring of a percussion instructor for the drum squad, which helped us as a functioning unit within the band.

The Raider Marching Band was, and still is, a powerhouse in Central New Jersey. I can't even remember how many awards we won, although I'm hard-pressed to remember if the drums were ever singled out for recognition.

I do remember that there was a stick toss involved in our percussion feature my sophmore year, where everyone would pass one stick to their right. I would end up with three, and would throw one back across the line to Al Brown on the other end. We had a streak going of something like 18 or 19 catches in a row, all in performances.

Other memorable moments included playing in Giants Stadium three times, twice for the Giants and once for Doug Flute and the New Jersey Generals of the USFL. The last Giants game was when I was playing sideline percussion, and got to play a gong. In Giants Stadium. When you're a band geek, you take your rock star moments where you can find them.

I started off playing snare drum for two years, where I immediately learned I wasn't as good as I thought I was by not being able to play five-stroke rolls with alternate sticking (R LLRR L RRLL) in Sousa's "Stars and Stripes Forever." From there, though, I was able to develop some strong rudimental chops, and moved on to tri-toms in my junior year, my first as drum squad co-captain with Bob Kloss. In my senior year, I did my back a big favor and played timpani and other auxilliary percussion on a rolling platform dubbed "Coz-o-rama" that year by one Tom Beattie.

This kind of thing is always going to help your raw technique, and certainly helped that underlying sense of structure that I tend to rely on across the musical spectrum. The sense of musical phrases in multiples of four bars is pretty crucial when you're choreographing the movements of upwards of 200 high schoolers on a football field.

I was also able to use this as an opportunity to help my writing, purely from a percussion standpoint. I would write cadences in my spare time, coming up with some rather intricate interplay amongst the squad. That said, it was usually too much interplay, or occasionally seen as too much of a challenge to the guy who was getting paid to do that sort of thing, so I don't know that we ever really implemented any of my writing. It was still fun to do, though.

Oh, like I'm going to post pictures of me in high school and in a marching band uniform? Actually, I might, if I ever get a hold of a scanner and my parents' photo collections.