Bands

Near the end of "Live Sprawl," the Lucky Dragons' performance at the Geffen Contemporary at MOCA last month, a sly, silly orgiastic scene broke out, like something lifted from Woody Allen's "Sleeper." Awash in an eerie blue light, eight or nine swarming audience members groped at several colorful cords attached to a computer, drawing and modulating delirious sounds from the jury-rigged instrument with their own touch. Others danced around them or piped in on plastic recorders that were there for the taking.

Nine high school marching bands and their flag teams will perform Monday in preparation for a performance at the Freedom Bowl on Tuesday. The bands come from Oklahoma, Nevada, Michigan, Arizona, Wyoming and California. Organizers say the bands average about 300 performers each, and will perform complex routines involving music and dance. The winning band will play before the Freedom Bowl begins, though all the bands will play together for 12 minutes at half time.

Out of the numerous letters I'm sure you received regarding Robert Hilburn's article on the "20 Bands That Matter," did anyone ask, "Does anyone really care?" If Springsteen, U2 and Guns N' Roses are bands that matter, please let me place my hat over my heart and state "Rock is dead." Pseudo-political lyrics, three-chord songs and bad attitudes don't a band make. Like most, I'm in no position to pick 20 bands that matter. In fact, I'm a KISS fan. But heck, I wouldn't even think of putting them on the same list as Elton John, the Who, James Brown and others.

Jazz bands from nine San Fernando Valley high schools will compete this weekend for a chance to perform in the first-ever San Fernando Valley Jazz Festival in May at Lake Balboa. Both the competition and the jazz festival--named Jazz on the Lake--are sponsored by the Woodland Hills Chamber of Commerce and the Los Angeles Department of Recreation and Parks.

The Irvine Unified School District is hosting its first invitational field tournament from 3:30 to 8:30 p.m. today at Irvine Stadium with marching bands, color guards and drill teams from 18 Orange County high schools. The tournament is co-sponsored by Irvine and Woodbridge high schools. Music directors there hope to make it an annual event to help offset the impending loss of money from bingo games. A federal law, which goes into effect Dec. 26, will prohibit smoking in public school buildings.

It was a hot, dusty afternoon earlier this week. The door was closed tight to keep the air-conditioned air inside, but wisps of the blazing music leaked onto Laurel Canyon in Pacoima from a converted cinder-block garage attached to a modest bungalow. In this garage, every Wednesday afternoon for 33 years (since mid-1955 that would be), Frank (Ace) Lane's rehearsal band has gathered for a two-hour session with some of the best, most testing and forward-looking arrangements of the big band era.

Club Nack is the brainstorm of longtime Santa Barbara rocker Brad Nack, a firm believer in less-is-more and the its-over-before-you-can-get-tired-of-it theory of ephemeral attention spans, and it's the place to rock on Tuesday nights. Up to 10 bands play an acoustic set of no more than three songs at the venue, which in calmer times (every other night of the week) is Maikai Polynesian Restaurant. "The coolest thing about this place is that it's never been a club before," Nack said.

While UCLA marching band members played a flag football game with their counterparts at USC over the weekend, someone broke into their equipment truck and stole more than $30,000 in instruments, officials said. Authorities said they do not know if the theft was an act of school rivalry, but they have some leads. They found most of the equipment on the patio of an apartment complex near USC.

Around 1:30 a.m. last Sunday morning, Toast Boyd took what may have been the last stage dive at Al's Bar. Boyd, the music booker for the seminal West Coast punk club, had jumped on stage to play bass with the Warlocks, a garage rock band whose bassist hadn't shown up. She didn't know the song, so she faked it, then departed the stage in classic Al's Bar style--with a flying leap. "It's tragic that Al's is closing," Boyd said later.

The shutdown of the federal government Tuesday did not stop the marching among combat units in the U.S. military, but it did stop the music--at least for members of the Navy Band. While maneuvers and training continued unabated despite the budget crunch, the Commodores--the jazz ensemble component of the Navy Band--wound up stranded in a Midwestern hotel when the budget clock ran out. The 18-member group had just finished a Monday night stint at Ball State University in Muncie, Ind.