The Primordial Marching Band Expertease

Ladies and gentlemen, our audience tonight is composed mostly of musicians. And Clare Sera, that's your... Expertise! Spell-drawn? Naturally. And since you specialize in marching band, I thought we could probe your area... Pardon me? ...of expertise. You're listening to Expertise, spelled wrong, the podcast where the world's most expert experts discuss their areas of expertise expertly. Expert comedy writer Clare Sera and expert comedy writer Danno Sullivan bring their expertise to other unrelated expertises. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm your host, Danno Sullivan.

Welcome to the Expertise, a knowledge podcast where all knowledge is based on fact and all our facts are true. My special guest today is Clare Sera, who is an expert in marching band. Clare, thanks for phoning in today. I never phone it in, Danno. When you are in a marching band, you've got to be there heart, soul, and most of all, lips. When I said phoning it in, I meant Sousa phoning it in. That is a big horn you've got wrapped around your shoulders, Clare. I don't mean to horn in on your podcast, but we are so thrilled to have this platform today. Marching bands are always in danger of being a thing of the past.

People think of marching bands as old-fashioned, something out of The Music Man or... It is true that marching bands have been around as long as there have been bands and marching. Which came first, Clare, the marching or the bands? The bands came first. That surprises me because I think of an early man able to easily stand up in rows and move about on feet in a vertical forward fashion. Well, sure, but you're not thinking of early woman. Early woman was tooting her horn long before she could figure out how to walk. That really took women a long time. It was a lot of coordination that was necessary.

I feel like that explains a lot of the stereotypical male-female roles. Well, you've got males that are able to stand up and move. Yes. And women who can only lie prone in a cave and play music. Have you seen the diorama at Houston Airport? I mean, it depicts it perfectly. Even down to the music, right? They jokingly call it the gruntophone because this was, of course, pre-language. What was the value from a sociological standpoint in the evolution of humankind? It really seems like having an entire half of the species unable to move and only to make music.

Are the arts that valuable or is there more to it than that? Isn't that a great question, Dano? And it's been a question since the dawn of time. The arts are more valuable than the ability to walk, the ability to get from here to there. Because why would you want to get from here over to there if there's no music there? If the music is here where you're already lying down, there's no need to get there. And when I say the music, I'm talking about not just the music of life and living and interconnectedness, the relationships between these beautiful human beings, the women especially and their children.

Very beautiful women. Such beautiful. In the proto-human times, right? Yes. I mean, very hairy but beautiful. What's more beautiful than hair? I mean, as our sponsor, Pantene, would say, nothing more beautiful than a hairy lady. And for our hairier listeners, we do have some coupons available from Pantene. Pantene's body hair shampoo. Well, it's the hair on the body. It's not the body itself. Right, right. Just to be clear, I don't want anyone cashing in our Pantene coupons under some sort of misapprehension. Any and all bodily hair, yes. Bodily hair, that's the key thing.

I'm just saying, if you're a modern hairless human, that this Pantene product really is not meant for you. What you want is soap. That's exactly right. Soap is much better on skin than it is on hair. So, Pantene body shampoo was perfect for these proto-humans that we're discussing. Yeah. Was Pantene available at the time? Not in its lauryl sulfate form. We know a surprising lot about lauryl sulfate. When she was discovered by Dr. and Dr. Leakey in the 1970s, we know she's three feet tall. Yes. Her body was covered with hair and glorious, glorious. Now, the hair has not lasted down through the fossilized record.

But as a marching band expert, how do we know that her body was covered with this wonderful, healthy, shining, glimmering hair? Well, we know that from the packets of Pantene that were found alongside her. Got it. I mean, why else would she have needed to use Pantene if she didn't have glorious, long body locks? Now, did she have a head of hair, too? Did she have other Pantene products? They did not have hair on their head in the early days. It wasn't necessary. Right, right. Especially for the women, or only for the women, because… They carried their babies there.

They were head carriers. Head carriers. As a group, we call them the head carriers. Because, of course, they couldn't walk. They rolled. Yeah, and where are they going to carry their babies when they can't walk? So, why not put one precariously atop your shiny pate? Which is also how music became borned. So, those falling babies must have been the very first drum sounds that any human-like creature ever heard. That's right. Imagine the magic of hearing those sounds and then putting the pieces together to keep dropping the babies in a rhythmic pulse. You know, that's where the word percussive comes from. There was a lot of cussing.

Yeah, probably a lot of concussions, at the very least. Concussions, cussing, and from that became the percussive sound of safely dropped babies on their… Head was one sound, on their butt was another sound, on their side. You know, you could get a straight-up knock sound, a baby on a rock. You could get a soft, squishy… If they dropped them into, like, a mud bog. I think even today, Claire, a millennia later, that a modern audience in a stadium when that marching band comes out and they… The band knows, you know, they're trained, even as young students.

They know about the safely dropping baby. But I think a modern audience can… There's an instinctual understanding of that sound that harkens back to our own primordial past that we all share. It is primal. Did I mean primal? I said primordial. Oh, well, you're thinking about the primordial sound, which is goopier, glugging, sort of, deep, which is where we get the trombone from. See, I just love having an expert like this who can really connect the present to the past. And when I say past, wow, do I mean the past. But let's move into the present, Claire.

Sure, sure. Did you bring me any presents? Yes, I brought you this. Oh, isn't this nice? Yeah. For our listeners at home, Claire has handed me a very large, attractively wrapped package about the size of a kettledrum. I don't know. It is traditional for the guest to bring a gift to the host. Let's just open it up. I'm so excited. I'm so excited. Oh, Claire, I am spanking my Zarathustra right here, right now. Thank you. It's very satisfying to see sort of the primal response that even you have in being faced. I was going to call it childlike delight, but you're right.

This is probably what the hairy cavewoman of yesteryear would have felt opening up a gift box of kettledrums. Yeah, yeah. So, and of course, the kettle, it's a woman's job to keep the kettle on, you know, for when the man comes home from the hunt. To our modern ear, Claire, that does sound really old-fashioned, really sexist, if I may. Do you encounter any backlash when you explain these really, frankly, sexist origins of so many of the marching band elements? I mean, every now and then, I get a little backlash. But I turn that into whip lash, and I turn that into whip smart, turn around, put it down, push it up, come on, let's march.

And pretty soon... Brrra-ta-ta, brrra-ta-ta, drop those babies safely. I mean, there's just nothing more thrilling. Yeah, I hear it. We've taken a long look into the past, but let's take a long look into the future. Oh, yeah. I see us marching musically into a future where men can't move. Oh. And women are the ones that are running out front, tooting, blowing, percussing. You know, I think my brother-in-law may have evolved to that point of not being able to move already. Really? Now, that's exciting. He got himself a Lazy Boy recliner about 15 years ago. Right, right, right.

And honestly, I haven't seen him move since. It's happening. It's happening. I never really thought of that as evolution. I thought it was just a way to collect unemployment checks. No, it's the determined future. It's just where we're headed, and I'm excited to celebrate it. I'm excited to sing along with this movement, Dano. I absolutely agree. And your latest incarnation of the marching band really brings those two realms, the past, the way past, and the way future together. It is stirring up a little bit of controversy at the local junior high where you're leading the band.

You have created a marching band of all women who can only lie still in the middle of the field at a football halftime game. Right. The music, I have to say, is beautiful, but the spectacle just feels like a disgrace clear. Parents are questioning the investment in uniforms, the investment in instruments, the time spent in so-called training, when the end result is girls lying on a field of grass. Dano, I am so glad you've given me a platform to say this right now, because the problem with these small-minded, short-thinking people is that I am bringing us to the past to take us to the future.

If they would stay till the end of the game, what happens is they switch places with the boys. Oh, what are the boys doing? Well, the boys lie on the grass and the women march and play. So, it is equal opportunity. So, the boys come and lie on the grass and play their music? Yes, yes, yes. Which is, again, where I see us going. So, you've really focused on the band and less on the marching. You know, and I think every band leader has to make a choice like that. All I'm saying is it feels very- You can't serve two masters, Dano. You cannot serve two masters. One is going to suffer.

All I'm saying, it feels very dangerous to me to have all those young teens lying on the field when the football team comes out. It's a learning curve for me, because obviously there were not football teams thundering into the caves of yore. We have had some facial situations. Point taken. And I guess in the good old days, those facials would have been covered up with body hair. So, you know, who are we to blame but evolution itself, perhaps? Well, folks, it has been a rare and unusual treat to talk with perhaps a crazy woman, Claire Sarah, on the topic of her expertise, marching bands.

I'm going to ask Claire to sing us out with one of her famous baby-dropping marches. And thank you, listeners. The Expertise Spelled Wrong podcast is free and, like the Amish, all are welcome. Be sure to sign up for our email announcements at funnypodcast.com and follow us in your favourite podcast app, like the expert podcast listener we know you are.