If I only had a brain, just a brain! Yeah!

Burning Man Samba Moment #2 occurred during the marching band competition, which was one of the best events of the week. But I was a little late because I had run into some fire dancers. Yeah, I know you've all seen fire dancers - they're a dime a dozen at this point - ho hum, fire dancers, more common than alley cats - actually I've started feeling sorry for all the acrobats and street jugglers and buskers of the world, because I guess it's just not enough any more to just juggle machetes any more, or play drums - now the machetes have to be ON FIRE, the drums have to be on fire, your leotard has to be on fire, every goddam prop you have has to be on fire. Sheesh. BUT, I had not seen a hundred of the nation's very best fire dancers, top of their form, in a head-to-head competition in an actual gigantic Mad Max Thunderdome geodesic dome, complete with gas-masked spectators howling from the beams and a ruthless judging panel ripping the contestants to shreds. Seriously, I almost expected them to put the losers to death!.The girl who finally won could dance on her hands while keeping four flaming hula hoops going all at once. And during the whole competition, only 1 flaming fire implement went zinging into the crowd, and it hardly even touched anybody.

I could not ever seem to get anywhere at Burning Man because I was always running into random stuff like that. Anyway, so where was I, I was a little late to the marching band competition because I had run into some fire dancers. ANYway, the marching band competition was EVEN BETTER THAN THE FIRE DANCER COMPETITION. There were five bands competing:

The first band was an adorable old-school marching band composed of adorably cute people in their 60's with adorable cruise-ship type outfits, singing some kind of innocuous and adorable tune. I was afraid the cooler-than-thou, techno-dancing burner crowd would eat them alive; but to my surprise they got a HUGE ovation from the audience.

The second band was Gamelan X. Gamelan X's rhythms were so weird, and so highly arranged, and so tight, that I actually got kind of scared; it was sort of like a 60's Hitchcock film track, all gongs and cymbals going off at random moments until you almost expected Tony Perkins to come ripping through the crowd with a steak knife. Gamelan X had a large number of strange and eerie gongs, and they also had six people with teeny-tiny cymbals who were running around doing unbelievably tricky, syncopated, bursts of clattering at the most unpredictable moments. I could not get a handle on any of it, but it was UNBELIEVABLY TIGHT. Knocked my drummer socks off.

The third band seemed to be pieces of March Fourth and the Kazum acrobat troupe, but under another name. So, basically, a punk marching band. You know the type - a bunch of highly skilled drummer kids who have come up through the drumline ranks, but have finally escaped from their regimented college football bands, and who now want to put their skills to work in something much cooler and weirder and funkier, and who have drafted a bunch of crazy horn player friends to put together a slightly evil, twisted, funkified, sort of vaudeville act, with maybe some sexy dancers out front, and some fire dancers or acrobats or contortionists just to spice things up. There's a whole subculture of this type of punk marching band. Portland's got a couple bands like this, most famously March Fourth, who they are fantastically good, and man do they put on a show!

The fourth contestant was a samba band! Well, sort of. It was the Lloyd Family Players, an Oakland-based group who I've heard about but had never seen. I say "sort of" because they weren't playing traditional samba or samba-reggae; more like a funkified version of samba-reggae. But definitely samba-rooted and using a samba instrumental lineup. They turned out to be super tight. (generally speaking, the playing quality at this whole competition was off the hook) And I have to add that the Lloyd Family Players had The. Very. Best. Stage Presence. That I have ever seen from any bateria outside of Brazil. What I mean is, not only were they playing tight, but they were DANCING. They were dancing their HEARTS out! Like they MEANT it. Like they COULD NOT KEEP STILL. Like they were having the VERY BEST TIME OF THEIR ENTIRE LIVES. With GREAT BIG HUGE SMILES!! And boy did the crowd respond!!! I so wished that certain of my band members could have seen this. (And learned something from it.)

The fifth and final contender was another punk marching band, a really killer one from Seattle, Titanium Sporkestra.

All five bands gave stunning performances, but in the end the winner was supposed to be decided by audience response, which the organizers were carefully measuring with an actual decibel meter.

I felt sure Gamelan X would win, because not only were they tight as hell but they also seemed to me to be the most original. But the decibel meter turned up a tie between... Titanium Sporkestra and the Lloyd Family Players! Modern punk marching band versus a samba bateria!

The tie-breaker turned out to be that each band had to draw, at random, one of 5 possible song titles - classics of the American marching band tradition, I gathered. And then they had to perform that song. But wait, I thought, that's totally unfair!!! Why would a samba bateria know any American songs? This wasn't advertised as an "American marching band" competition, just as a "marching band" competition. Why should any Brazilian bateria - or Gamelan X, come to think of it - know any American songs?

More to the point, how on earth is a Brazilian bateria going to be able to perform any song at all WITH JUST DRUMS? The Lloyd Family Players don't have any melody instruments!

But them's the rules, and the Lloyd Family Players drew "If I Only Had A Brain". You know, the Scarecrow's song from the Wizard of Oz, the one that goes:
"I could while away the hours
Conferrin' with the flowers
Consultin' with the rain.
And my head I'd be scratching,
While my thoughts were busy hatchin',
If I only had a brain!"

And Titanium Sporkestra drew "Take Me Out To The Ball Game." As if the whole situation weren't unfair enough already, it turned out that Titanium Sporkestra ALREADY PLAYS "Take Me Out To The Ball Game" - it's in their repertoire - so all their horn players know it - damn! argh! and! plus! The Lloyd Family Players had to play immediately with no prep time at all. So, while the Lloyds were playing, Titanium Sporkestra had several precious minutes to plan their own strategy (and indeed they spent the next several minutes in a tense, excited huddle - right next to me - working out an elaborate arrangement).

I was standing over on the side positively STEAMING about all of this, when the Lloyd Family Players trooped out gamely to the center of the performance arena. What could they do, really? It was clear they didn't know the song. (why would they? They play Brazilian music! Not old American show tunes! argh! damn!) But, hell if they didn't just charge into an awesome funky reggae-based beat. Totally a damn-the-torpedoes moment. Dancing like hell and leaping around and having a grand old time, while one of their members grabbed the microphone and started singing the following song:

If I only had a brain!
If I only had a brain!
Just a brain, just a brain!
Yeah baby! A brain!

He was totally making it up. I could NOT stop laughing, the whole thing was so ridiculous. And the thing was, his randomly made-up melody was actually kind of catchy, and he had such a great funky voice, and the groove was so cool, and they all looked like they were having so much fun.

It was definitely the most creative, coolest, grooviest version of "If I Only Had A Brain" that I have ever heard.

Titanium Sporkestra then played a perfectly fine version of "Take Me Out To The Ball Game," And they won. But honestly, trying to describe it now I can't quite remember exactly what Titanium Sporkestra did with that song. I'm honestly sorry, but I actually can't seem to remember much about Titanium Sporkestra... (hey, they had the disadvantage of going last, and I was a bit sleep-deprived and had had to sit down at that point because I was so tired. I'm sure they were great, I just can't remember, I'm really sorry!). While I have an EXTRA-VIVID memory of "If I Only Had A Brain" that is probably going to stay with me my entire life. So in the end it was the Lloyd Family Players who knocked this one out of the park. Kudos, guys, and keep up the dancing.