TKA 2009 Aquasonic

TKA 2009 Aquasonic. This post will delve into the King’s Academy (TKA) Marching Lion’s 2009 show entitled, “Aquasonic”.

At this point the TKA band had been 2nd in the state in 2005 and 2008. We’d also been 3rd in 2004 and 4th in 2007. Add to this a best percussion award in 2007 and a best music award in 2008.

At this point, what could go wrong? Right?

Picking a show

2009 was the 20th show that I had picked out and written. It wasn’t easy to keep coming up with good show ideas. I didn’t like repeating old shows and I absolutely HATED doing a show that I’d seen anyone else do.

That limits your choices. So, when someone from the staff brought music to me, I was open to using it for our show.

The music was called Hydrodynamics. It had a different opening sequence than I was used to, but I liked it.

But, I didn’t understand how to write a show called, “Hydrodynamics”. When I listened to the show I kept hearing some sort of superhero popping out on the field.

Here is the audio sample of the show. You can judge for yourself. When you hit the 40 second mark. Does it sound like “Hercules!”, or “Superman”, or…

A strange idea

Every time I listened to the music, I’d hear a super hero emerging at the 40 second mark. I had a whole page on my legal pad dedicated to the superhero idea.

There was one sure way to drive this from my mind… Pitch the idea to the staff. They’d tell me how crazy the idea was and we’d come up with a different concept.

I pitched the superhero idea with a silly grin on my face. (Was I even serious?)

A few staff members laughed, but no one said, “NO!”. (There would be many times in the fall that I wished they had.)

Digging deeper

We decided to explore the idea further. The original music was subtitled, “Water, steam and ice”. I needed a superhero that was associated with water. And that is how Aquaman was chosen.

(At this point you’re laughing, right?)

I pushed the idea of an origin story. The first 40 seconds of the show would be someone doing an experiment and then becoming “Aquaman”.

Will (our percussion instructor) was my willing accomplice. He came up with the lab table and smoke. Will was always good at pushing any crazy ideas I had.

The colorguard would be the bad guys. This was the only part of the show that worked well. Sarah and Ashley (colorguard instructors) did a fantastic job with the guard. The colorguard outfits looked great and they performed the role of the ‘evil’ characters with zeal.

First big problem

If you’re going to do a superhero show, you need someone to be the superhero. We found a young man to play Aquaman. He was a great kid, but he was no Jason Mamoa.

He wasn’t a big guy. We’d need some other way to make him look ‘super’.

We outfitted him in a orange shirt and gave him a trident staff. But we needed more than that.

One of our parents taught this young man to do various acrobatic moves. That helped a bit, but he never really looked great on the field. A football field a big place and it can make even a big person look small.

Settling in

We had our elements for the show so we settled in to the season. The students did great work. They sounded and looked great.

As I’ve already mentioned, the colorguard embraced their role as bad guys. We had renamed the show, “Aquasonic” in order to be a better fit for the Aquaman idea.

But, the show never really worked and I knew it.

Aquaboy/Shawsonic

TKA had a math teacher who was a ton of fun. I don’t know how this came about, but we decided to let him have some fun with us at a home football game.

We did our usual performance and he joined us.

He came running onto the field while wearing a blonde wig and hopping around on a hobby horse (sea horse??). He followed our Aquaman around the field ‘helping’ him to defeat the evil colorguard.

I would normally never let something like that happen, but the show wasn’t working. It was a good idea to do a tongue in cheek performance for our home audience.

States

We finished the year in 9th place at states. No finals for us.

I blame myself for pushing a show idea that just didn’t work. The musicians and performers deserved a better show.

Maybe the 2009 show should have been called “Hubris”. It taught me some lessons that I’d take with me into 2010.