Members Blogs
Jo Teverton’s weblog – “Batteries Not Included!”
Toynbee School & CGN Finals Weekend
Hi, I’m Jo Treverton and I’m 19 years old. I am the Section Leader for the Front Ensemble and this is my fifth year at the Senators Drum and Bugle corps.
Wednesday 22 March 2006
I’m on my way to Eastleigh for a top weekend in Holland! I cant wait! Plus it means two days off work! I live in Sandy so it means a two hour journey from there to Eastleigh, it’s all part of the fun. Just got on the M25 and got a phone call from John Mc that Claire, one of the pit members, passport hasn’t arrived yet and she wont be able to come to Holland. Whoops!
Arrived at Porteous Palace, Eastleigh at 8pm (This is the home of several members of the Senators). I was greeted by Christian Daly one of our Tenor players. We had some dinner then decided to go out and hit the streets of Eastleigh!! We met up with some Eastleigh folk and all those who had travelled down that night. The local public house the Litten Tree was doing drinks for £1.75 all night, I managed to blag a couple of drinks, especially from Nelly (Snare) who had already promised to get them in! Thanks mate ;o)
I cant believe it’s mid-week Wednesday night, we’re in Eastleigh and we’re ‘living the dream’ in the Litten Tree, surely this is the start of what promises to be one of the best weekends we’ve ever had.
Thursday 23 March 2006
7.05am Bleary eyed but I made it for breakfast, and I wasn’t the first down either!! But I managed a quick round of toast.
Woke up at 6am to get ready to meet at the Nightingale Centre for 7am, feeling slightly rough!! Today we are doing a performance and a workshop at Toynbee School in Eastleigh. We are going to perform the Indoor Percussion Show “The Heist” , we are also featuring four members of the Senators Brass section, Paul, Adam, Rob and Helen who will be performing one of their warm up pieces “Scooters Slam”.
We got to the school about 7.15am and whilst waiting for the caretaker to open we were given our new Senators training jackets, they are black waterproof style jackets with the new Senators logo on the back along with our initials and the traditional Senators ‘S’ logo on the front. They are pretty cool and look great when everyone has them on!
Joe Fitzpatrick our Corps Director, then set up a projector which was playing a looped video of the Senators performing on stage with the International Pop Star Gwen Stefani, along with clips of our 2005 show “Mission Incredible”. This was to be played while the school children entered the hall to give them an idea of what we are about.
It’s now 8.45am and we are all set up and ready to go. There is over 200 School children ages 11-14 sat ready in the Sports Hall, Ian Abbott who is the Corps Section Leader and one of our Snare Drummers explained to the children who the Senators are and what we were going to perform for them.
The first part of our performance was the four Brass players, who did one of their warm-ups. It sounded really good and the kids really seemed to enjoy it. Go Brass!! That was our cue to get the Indoor Percussion show “The Heist” ready. I was wondering if it was going to be ok as we hadn’t run the show since Sunday evening and we were going to run the show from cold pretty much. Fingers crossed!!!
9.10am and performance over, it was fine :-). Was a good run through and chance for us to perform without our usual ensemble warm up. The school children really enjoyed it and were even more pleased when they found out that their first two music lessons of the morning would be a workshop with the Senators.
The workshops were run in the canteen area of the school, and the children split into small sections of 5-6 and the Paul Brakewell took the trumpet class, Rob Fry together with Helen Jeffries took the Mellophone class, Adam Noyce took the baritone class. Most of the battery Percussion section took charge of the young drummers from the school, the classes lasted for 50 minutes and after a short rest they resumed in the theatre area of the school – this is was a fantastic opportunity for the members of the Corps to give something back and the best news of all was that the Junior section of the organisation gained 13 new members on Thursday evening which was really pleasing for all concerned!
After we had packed the truck, we decided to go into Eastleigh town and get some lunch and all those who had forgotten it was Mother’s day on Sunday got cards and gifts. We went to a little café called Fiesta, the food was great and it was really good to spend some time with my friends, fellow members and my brothers and sisters out of rehearsal time for a change.
Whilst this was going on Nigel Brown had gone to Heathrow to pick up our American colleague Ben Collins, Ben is a great guy who is a 4 year veteran of the Cavaliers Drum & Bugle Corps from Rosemont Illinois. He marched on Quads for the Cavaliers but is a Student Teacher and Music Education Student in the USA and his knowledge of all musical instruments is vast. He came to the Senators last year whilst studying in the UK and has kept in touch with John Mc ever since. He co-wrote the Percussion scores with John last year and for the Indoor Show and he was over to help us for the weekend and to catch up with John and Staff about the 2006 Corps show which is cool
We headed back to the centre and then got into the mini buses, specially hired out for the weekend and went to our rehearsal site. We couldn’t use the Nightingale Centre as it is used for a play group during the week, so the Staff had found a place called ‘The Hub’ which is the Bishopstoke Youth Club. It was a cool place, a little on the small side, but nothing our floor crew couldn’t handle! Oh I also forgot to mention that by this time, Ben Collins, our American Senator from the Cavaliers Drum and Bugle Corps had been picked up from the airport and was ready to kick us into shape! It was good to see him again.
We all started warming up which was pretty carnage as the room was small and you can imagine the sound of 12 drummers and 10 pit all going on at the same time!! Ben was already getting on it and watching each section individually and helping us in anyway he can. He’s got so much knowledge about percussion and just music in general it’s crazy. I really look up to him and I’m so thankful to him to come all this way from Chicago. We had about two hour’s rehearsal and packed up for the day. Everyone had decided to meet up in an hour to go to the curry house as a bonding session to start the weekend off. It was also John Mc’s birthday as well as Christian Bradbury’s (21 again)!!! Happy Birthday boys! – Double Celebration time
Friday 24 March 2006
2.45am – what the heck is that beeping sound? it’s my alarm!!! We had to meet at the centre for 3.30am to make it to Holland as early as possible, it was raining and everyone was like zombies whilst packing the mini buses and getting ready to go. Front Ensemble on one mini bus and the Battery and Staff were on the other. I know which one I’d prefer to go on especially after Christian Daly had a curry the night before!! Eugh!!
We set off on time and everyone was kind of sleepy and were drifting off one by one. We had the radio on and Abba was tearing it up on Wave FM! Hmmmm, there’s nothing like a Cream Egg at 4.17am in the morning!! By 4.30am everyone was asleep. The journey went really quickly and we arrived at Folkestone at 6.00am to get on to the Euro Tunnel to Calais.
Shannon and Xena, two members from the pit, had never travelled abroad before. Xena was getting a little scared on the Euro Tunnel, I told her not to worry, “it’s almost like a lift but sideways” I reassured her, she then told me she’s also scared of lifts!! Taxi!!!
We arrived in Calais about 8.00am and had about three hours worth of travelling to get to Eindhoven, Holland. We stopped at a few service stations on the way, the first one was the exact same one we stopped at the last time we went to Holland, we called it ‘The Claw’ services in tribute of Chris Law, Baritone player, as there was one of those grabbing machines in there called ‘Mr Claw’!
11.12am We have arrived in Eindhoven safe and well, the first port of call was to go check out the Eindhoven Sports Centre where the CGN finals will be held the next day. It was good to see it before tomorrow so we knew what to expect. It was pretty much just how I had imagined it, We had a rehearsal organised at a car park round the corner and set up there. It was raining and everyone was pretty tired and the moral was getting low but we needed to rehearse to sort out the missing keyboard/trap parts that Claire played (Claire McConville had to pull out of the trip at the last minute over a problem with her new passport arriving – she was with us in spirit though).
We spent an hour in sections and then ensembled the show with the Battery section which was cool, we all now felt prepared for the show tomorrow. Now it was back to the hotel to get some food, have a bath and just chill out at the bar for the night. The hotel was really great, probably one of the nicest I have ever stayed in. Everyone was having trouble trying to switch the taps from the bath to the shower!! People were phoning up and knocking on peoples doors to figure it out…Its amazing, we can win 7 DCUK championships but we cant even work a simple shower!!!
We all met up at the bar and chilled out, the prices were pretty high, so sorry guys, no 74 beers this time!! As we were all pretty tired everyone headed off to bed early to refresh themselves ready for the big day tomorrow.
