In my parade post I mentioned a certain love I have for marching bands. This isn't something I'm hugely into, just something I've always had a certain affection for. I don't play anything, so of course I wasn't ever in a band.
I won't say I've scoured the internet looking for marching bands, but off and on since that post, I've done some amount of searching. I started with the obvious first choice, YouTube, but there were honestly too many videos. I tried to narrow my search by searching schools, but I didn't really know which schools had the really good bands. I finally just googled different search options.
One school that seemed to keep showing up, often in comments at YouTube about other school band videos, is Mississippi's Jackson State University. I then began searching them in particular, looking for good videos of their band, The Sonic Boom of the South. The name alone clued me in, and for the most part, I've enjoyed listening to and watching them perform.
Listening to them brings me to the next hassle of the search. Marching bands often don't perform in the best possible venue for recording live music. Too many videos were ruined by poor recording quality, while many were ruined by outside noise, such as fans.
If you want to view more JSU or just more bands in general try Marching Sport. Music will start playing immediately, and to stop it, click at the top in the glare off the horn. They have lots of videos of bands as well as drum lines. Many of the ones I viewed sounded pretty good, but again, considering the venue and the assumed recording devices, we can't complain too much.
So, without further ado, The Sonic Boom of the South.
