John Herdan got all tingly over this. . .

Dear Stan,
December 19-21 my son David and I attended the Midwest Band Clinic and the Hilton Hotel in Chicago. We met everybody who is anybody in the band world.
One of the coolest people we saw was the beatbox flute player. He beat boxes while playing "Inspector Gadget" on the flute. We watched him perform and then got to talk to him afterwards.
(Editor's note: John asked me to embed the video of the beatbox flute player from You Tube. Unfortunately, the artist has blocked that. But you can go directly to You Tube and look up "beatbox flute." I did, however, find a totally unrelated clip of a beatbox parrot who isn't so fussy about his image. So here it is, totally for your amusement. Sorry John.)



On Friday as we were getting near the end of our stay and a guy walked up out of nowhere and handed me a sample book and said, "Here, take one of these. I don't want to haul them all the way back to New York." Imagine my surprise when I realized it was a copy of "The New Bennett Band Book."

New light on the Alexandria rouser
(Are you still reading this, Patty Wicken?)
Rewind back to the controversy about the Alexandria School Song and how I said it was "College Boy" and it came from the Bennett Band Book. Trust me, the very first thing I did was rip through the book looking for it. I was disappointed not to find it. However, I did send an e-mail to the arranger of the book, Larry Clark, at Carl Fischer Music.
Today I got a reply.
"College Boy" is on the list of songs to be rewritten in the next edition of the book and will be available again sometime in the next two years. We could get a complete set of parts of the original now from the Carl Fischer archives but because it would involve lots of copying the cost would be around $100. I told Larry we'd wait till he was done with the new arrangement. He did, however, offer to sent me the condensed conductor's score of the original which I should be getting in the next few days.
College Boy lives! Look for updates.

One other thing. If any other of our classmates graduated from The University of Minnesota, Morris besides Lorlee, you recently received the alumni newsletter with the list of donors for the last year. On the front cover is a picture of a group of students in a classroom. The big head in the front is my son Michael who started student teaching today. At the end of this year Michael graduates for real from UMM, my daughter Katie graduates from UW River Falls, and my twins graduate from Cathedral all within a two week period of time. There will be a graduation blow out in Alexandria this summer. Watch this space for further announcements.

John Herdan