Lights, music, action

Marching bands brave elements for glamour of parade

By Michael Mehle
Denver Rocky Mountain News Staff Writer

They practice in the cold after most bands have called it quits for the season, lug lights and battery packs all over town, and learn to blow their instruments continuously to keep the valves from freezing or the wood from cracking.

Some even say their lips will partially freeze to their mouthpieces.

So why do these high school bands keep coming back to march in downtown Denver's Parade of Lights?

"Some of the students think we're insane," says Jay Goodmanson, an assistant director of the Horizon High School Marching Hawks. "And the majority of (the band members) might be. But they enjoy going out and marching in that stuff. They think that it's a badge of honor."

AT&T Parade of Lights When and Where: 8 p.m. today and 6 p.m. Saturday in downtown Denver. The parade will be televised live tonight on KUSA-Channel 9 and rebroadcast at 6 p.m. Saturday. Cost: Free throughout downtown, or you can buy grandstand tickets for $8 to $12. Information: (303) 478-7878 Parade route

And quite the badge of honor it is: the conditions can be grueling, but it's a rare and coveted opportunity to march in front of 400,000 people and thousands more watching on television. Only 10 bands are invited each year, and a few must wait until the day of the parade to see if they'll actually be able to attend (at least one school district didn't send its buses out in last year's snowstorm).

This year, the 26th AT&T Parade of Lights will wind its way through downtown starting at 8 p.m. today and 6 p.m. Saturday. And if you haven't seen the parade lately, it likely will look remarkably different: three new floats will be joining five rolling spectacles that debuted last year. Also, three new balloons will make their Parade of Lights appear this weekend.

And even the marching bands promise to be lit up a little differently.

True to its name, the Parade of Lights judges the school groups not only on how well they perform and march, but also on how creatively they adorn themselves in lights.

"I've been involved with a lot of Christmas parades, but usually the only requirement is you have to play Christmas music," says Wayne Manzanares, a parade judge and the chairman of marching affairs for the Colorado Bandmaster Association. "It's absolutely the first parade that I've ever heard of requiring the bands to have lights.

"One of the bands, two years ago, they looked like a Christmas tree. They had a tree right in the middle of the band, with tinsel and lights and everything running down to the players. I don't know how they did it, but it really was kind of neat," he says. "It's amazing what they can do, and still maintain the focus of being a marching band."

Ahh ... there's the rub. It's not enough for the bands to cover themselves in lights and lurch and stumble through the streets. They must march and play every bit as well.

"You don't want to get too extravagant that it will affect your performance," says Goodmanson, whose band last year won the parade's top honors. "The lighting and costume aspect can take away from the musical aspect. Plus, you have to remember that on TV, you can't really see the lights, but they can hear you."

Most bands have learned that the most effective way to light up their performance is to attach a small battery pack to each band member to power a string of bulbs.

"There have been times in the past when we've tried to outline the entire band with generators, but the generators create too much noise," Goodmanson says. "It drowns you out, and you end up pulling and tugging from the front to the back. So we usually go with the small, portable, lights.'

Parade sponsor StorageTek pays each band $950 to make the trek and an additional $150 to buy some lights. However, band leaders say that money goes quickly, and the trick is to count on a lot of duct tape, imagination, and above all else, fortitude.

The latter is key when the weather turns ugly.

"The drummers have to have dexterity, your lips have to be flexible," Manzanares says. "If you're stiff you can't do it to your maximum potential."

And then there's the issue with the instruments. The steel ones are the first to freeze. The trombone slides might stick, and the trumpet valves won't come back up after they've been pushed down. The pads inside the saxophones get soggy. The clarinets could crack.

Hand warmers wrapped around the instruments or a special oil help keep them working. But some say the trick is just to keep blowing.

"It's when the condensation starts to build in there that you start having problems," says Tana Knopf, the band director at North High, the only Denver school to participate. "The kids understand. The trick is to keep playing, but you don't always have the lip to keep at it."

So we pose the question once again: Why do bands keep coming back?

"They think, 'Oh no, this isn't going to be fun. I'm cold and I'm wet,"' Knopf says. "But it's a great adrenaline rush when the lights come on and they announce Denver North. They could march for 10 miles because they're so pumped up."

"What is so cool is that the kids don't understand how big a parade this is until the lights come on and they see all those people. That's when they light up."

Contact Michael Mehle at (303) 892-5346 or mehlem@RockyMountainNews.com.

December 1, 2000