Taps

I went hiking with Jill in the Marin Headlands yesterday. As we were walking towards some small abandoned bunkers that once held gun turrets during WWII, we could here music coming from across a cove or inlet where another large bunker or barracks was. It was brass band music and it sounded like some funeral durge, like the ghosts of some army band was playing for their fallen camrades. Very much like the out-of-tune horn stuff in Neutral Milk Hotel. And the way the wind was catching it and modulating it and the way the sound was bouncing off the landforms twisted it and made it sound other-worldly. Truly ghostly.

When we got closer, we realized there was some sort of band camp. A YMCA inside the park was hosting it and the brass section of the marching band was practicing in what looks like an amphitheatre, but is really the base of where a gun turret once swivelled. The picture above/left is of that turret at the top of that very exposed bunker. As we walked on we saw the drum line and the color guard. For some reason, geeky teenagers wearing Columbine trench coats hitting tightly tuned snare drums as Magic the Gathering cards fall out of their pockets just isn't as cool as a troop of spooks playing taps from beyond.

Sometimes I would very much like to have field recording equipment.