When I retired from public school teaching 51/2 years ago, I had two quilts made of my old band shirts. The long-term plan was to have these quilted memories wrapped around me someday in my nursing home wheelchair as I listen to old band recordings. Each shirt holds a memory or two within its fibers, but two stand out, mainly because of the controversies they created.
If you have taught long enough, you know that controversies can come out of nowhere. Of course, halftime and contest show controversies are nothing new to band directors, but it’s still somewhat surprising when a director unwittingly picks a show that ignites the negative passions of a particular segment within the district population. (Sometimes, one person can stir the pot.) I suspect this problem has been minimized with the advent of shows that no one understands except the show designer, an AP student in the flute section, and possibly the band director, but I digress.
My halftime and contest show controversies centered on band T-shirts. In Arkansas, it is common for many bands to get a custom designed T-shirt that matches the theme of their halftime/competition show. In 2007, my band show featured the music of the rock group, Queen. Keep in mind that the hits we were playing (including Bohemian Rhapsody) had been popular since the 1970s. In fact, I had played their iconic hits Another One Bites the Dust and We Are the Champions many times when my high school won a state football championship in 1978.
So when I was called into the principal’s office the week of our first game, I was surprised that concerned citizens had complained about the Queen show we were going to be performing. One couple got the ball rolling by telling their church in Missouri (not in our state or school district) about our show. The church members then started calling me and our principal with their objections. Apparently, the church had a recent guest speaker who proclaimed that Queen’s music contained satanic messages that became apparent when their songs were played backward. The principal seemed reassured when I told him that backmasking was a controversial and dated topic from the 1970s. I emphasized that we would not play any of our show music backward.
Nonetheless, he had a problem with our band T-shirts because they promoted Queen. I told him that we were not promoting the group, it was just a shirt with the names of the group and songs that had been popular for decades. I also said that not only would it be a waste of money not to wear them, we would have to go in full uniform when the August temperatures and humidity are so hot you could fry an egg on a snare drum.
After a heated discussion, I said, “If you receive any complaints about the shirts after Friday night, we can talk about this again. However, I can assure you there will be no complaints. All of our kids and parents love the shirt except for that one family. If that family’s kids want to wear a plain black shirt, that’s fine.” As I suspected, there were no complaints, and the matter did not come up again.
The next year, I changed jobs but used the same T-shirt company. Our halftime show was titled Guitar Hero. I described the basic design to my company contact who forwarded the shirt concept to his artist; I just wanted the title of the songs we were performing plus a guitarist jamming away on an electric guitar. This seemed like a safe course in shirt design. (I briefly considered having just a black shirt with the words BAND SHIRT on it but thought that might be an overreaction.)
A week after the new shirts arrived, my new principal came by my band office to see me. He asked me who the guitarist was on the T-shirt. Puzzled, I said that I had no idea and that as far as I knew, he was from the design artist’s imagination. He then explained that he had a parent complain to him that the guitarist on the shirt was Brian May of Queen! As Yogi Berra would say, “It’s deja vu all over again.” I checked with the company artist, and it was indeed Brian May. What were the odds? Out of all the guitarists in the world – Jose Feliciano, Eric Clapton, Eddie Van Halen, Jimi Hendrix, my aunt Agnes, and hundreds more – he chose Brian May of Queen. I reported this to the principal who was unconcerned by that point, and the complaint from the parent fell out of his Top 40.
Fortunately, job-related headaches like this one often morph into amusing stories as the years pass. With that being said, if you have a problem with Queen or Brian May, don’t visit me in the nursing home when the time comes because they’ll be right there with me until “another one bites the dust.”
