2003 FEBRUARY 10 #041
The Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band - Roundabout
Picked this up at the WFMU record fair in 2001 for a dollar bill. It's insane and it rocks! Go marching band... GO!
- Otis Fodder
TT-1:59 / 2.73MB / 192kbps 44.1khz
from the LP, "The Incomparables" 1977
Ned writes:
Leland high school is right down the street from me,
in San Jose CA. Its the "artsy" high school
around here and all the drama students and 'band camp'
kids go there. Infact my bassist is from there... I
personally went to Pioneer High School, where Nikki
Sixx went to for a year before getting kicked out for
dealing... and Kevin Pollack (was in The Usual Suspects
amongst other things) went there too. I think they (Leland)
had a partnership with Stanford band that stopped in
the mid 80's, although I could be wrong. The Stanford marching bands rocks and does a wicked cover of 'Touched'
by VAST and 'November Rain' by Guns N Roses.
Phil writes:
Much as I enjoy the thrashing madness of the version
of "Roundabout" on the site, I wanted to mention
that I think the track may be going at the wrong speed.
The recording as performed is in a _really_ weird key
for a marching band (F-sharp minor). The original Yes
version is in E minor; I tried telling my MP3 player to
pitch it down 10% (which is approximately the difference)
and the results sounded pretty plausible to me, though
much less exciting! (One could split the difference and
say they played it in F minor, which is a fairly natural
choice of key for a band with brass in it.)
Phillip Jackson writes:
I discovered recently that it is a version of Don Ellis's
arrangement from the "Connections" lp. which
also rocks but not like the school kids can.