Friday 5 for May 8: Getting it back together

The following questions are from the weekly Friday 5 website.
It's been a few weeks since I last answered one of these... So here goes. Oh... this is last week's one... OK. I'm good with that. Today is May 15.

1. What instrument in an orchestra would you least like to play professionally?

Probably several: Tuba, Baritone and just about anything else that requires me to read the bass clef notes. I played trumpet in high school, so I can read all of the treble clef notes. Trumpets always got most of the good parts to play in band.

2. How long would it take you to find a rubber band wherever you are now?

Discounting the time it took me to take the photo above, it would be just a few seconds. I keep stuff like that in a plastic drawer on my otherwise messy desk.

3. In your area, what’s the name of a local band you like?

I don't know any current bands locally, but in order my top 5 from decades ago....

1. The Sweet Marie
2. Kalapana
3. Rubber Soul (Beatles cover band)
4. Shnazz
5. Peter Moon Band

4. How good was your high school band?

Honokaa School Band - 1970

I went to a small school in Honokaa Hawaii. Long before the Honokaa Jazz Band came into prominence (winning a Grammy Award in 2011), I was part of Howard Oshiro's Honokaa Marching Band. This was mainly in the 8th grade. We had a good band then of about 50 members. Our 8th grade band was the high school band since the older kids (especially the guys) preferred to play football and other sports.

After our class moved up to the 9th and 10th grade, the band just kind of fell apart as younger kids did not play as we did back then. The older kids went to play sports.  Sad. I liked band because it was a free way to get into the ball games, travel around the island, skip out of class on occasion because we had to play at some concert or something... It was fun... I played trumpet.

The band played everything from traditional marches, some classical (we butchered "The Great Gates of Kiev"), movie themes ("Exodus"), TV show themes ("Hawaii Five-O', "Peter Gunn," and "Hogans Heroes March") and a lot of Herb Alpert and the Tiijuana Brass and Chicago songs. Fun times from back in the day.

5. Of bands whose names are listed like Joan Jett and the Blackhearts or Neil Young and Crazy Horse, who’s got the best name?

Good question never occurred to think of that.... Hmmm... consulting my gigantic iTunes playlist.

Yikes! There are dozens of them... my categorized favorites:

Best Band of All Time

• Paul McCartney and Wings - Love all their music.

Best Band of the 1950s

• Bill Haley and The Comets - they kind of started it.
• Dion and The Belmonts
• Buddy Holly and The Crickets

Best Band of the 1960s - Plenty to choose from... hmmm...

• Tommy James and The Shondells
• Sam the Sham and The Pharoahs
• The Mamas and the Papas

Best R and B Groups

• Diana Ross and the Supremes
• Gladys Knight and the Pips
• Harold Melvin and the Bluenotes 
• Junior Walker and the Allstars

Best 70s Dance Band

• KC and the Sunshine Band - I played nearly all of their music when I did stints as a disco DJ. "Shake Shake Shake Your Booty"
• Runner-up - Kool and the Gang - "Celebration"

Best Band of the 1970s

• Paul McCartney and Wings

Best Band of the 1980s

• Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
• Tom Petty and The Heartbreakers

Best Band of the 1990s

• Siouxsie and the Banshees - weird first name spelling, they started in the 1980s but still made music in the 1990s.

Today's Music

• Fitz and the Tantrums
• Ivan and Alyosha
• Mumford and Sons - sounds like a law firm name. 

Best Goofy Name

• Yolanda Be Cool and Dcup - "We No Speak Americano"

I probably missed some of them... whatever....