27th May 2001 - All England Masters

Adjudicators: James Scott, Geoffrey Whitham, Roy Newsome
Test Piece: Pageantry, Herbert Howells
Venue: Corn Exchange, Cambridge

This year was the first that the band had been invited to compete at the All England Masters Contest, an invitation that came about due to the bands excellent results in Switzerland and at Pontins during 2000. We hoped to do well, but realised that the competition would be very difficult as there were many top bands taking part.

The run-up to the contest was quite intense, following on as it did very closely from the Grand Shield. The last week consisted of rehearsals every night apart from Tuesday, when we took part in a local free concert. Thursday night saw us practising in a local school. John Gillam turned up straight from the airport in a chauffeur-driven car, took a bass sectional for half an hour and then was whisked away somewhere else…

On the Saturday we met up at 3pm in the afternoon to load the bus and we set off once we were all ready. About 200 yards down the road, somebody mentioned that we hadn’t put the music stands on, so we had to turn the bus around in a side street, and went back for them.

We arrived at the Travelodge where we were staying at about 6.30, after running into the other Rothwell band at the service station halfway down. Dai was already there, sat out in the car park in his deck chair. After a short practice in a local school, the band took over a local pub for the evening and then returned to the Travelodge for some sleep.

Breakfast was at 7.45 in the Little Chef on the same site. We found a sign stuck inside the Travelodge door telling us to go to the fire exit of the Little Chef as there was only one member of staff on and she would “do her best”. Chris Larder had to give his girlfriend a piggy back across the car park, as she had mislaid her shoes in the hotel the previous night. Most of the band were (surprisingly) up and awake and eating their breakfast.

Paul Argyle was complaining about Moose’s snoring (something that was a recurring theme in Switzerland) and Moose retaliated with “You might not have a second euph player soon if you carry on like that”, then added “oops, I’m playing baritone today!”

We then checked out of the hotel and took the bus to the practice room at a local scout hut. We were following Desert Head who “knew the area”. Unfortunately, what he didn’t know was the width of the bus and he took us down a side street with a 6 foot 6 inch width restriction. We ended up reversing all the way back up the street and back out onto a main road.

We finally got to the school and turned the bus around in the playground, narrowly missing several netball hoops. We then had a very quick rehearsal in a scout hut, which went well. Back onto the bus, and Dave Roberts was counting down the minutes for when we should be at the Corn Exchange whilst Andy Riley had a very relaxed conversation with the driver about what was happening for the rest of the day.

Eventually we set off and when we got to the Corn Exchange, unloaded the bus. We then had to go up lots of stairs to the room where we got changed, and then we waited until it was time to go down to the hall to play. We took the gear across to the hall, signed on and then went on stage to play. It went well, there were one or two slips but not too many. It wasn’t as good a performance as we had put on at the Grand Shield, but it was good. I had an interesting moment when I nearly tripped over my briefcase whilst crossing the stage to get to a different instrument – I’m sure it would have been amusing if I had have fallen over…

After playing we returned to changing room and got changed back out of our stage uniforms. We then went out to find the bus and ended up walking about two miles across Cambridge carrying everything until we finally found the bus. It’s a good job the piece was a simple one for percussion, or we would have had no chance of carrying everything in one trip…

After loading the bus the band then retired to a pub, and watched people attempting to punt on the river (and sometimes nearly falling in). We then tried to find a pub that was serving food, which was quite difficult and there was another two mile walk around Cambridge to find one that could accommodate us all. We then returned to the hall, and heard the last two bands. 20th was Flowers, who we thought weren’t very good, and then last band on was YBS who were fantastic as usual.

Before the results, a trombone choir from Texas “entertained” us. They first of all played a scale, and then the conductor walked off. We thought that was it, and there were lots of people in the audience laughing. They then played for about half an hour, but most of the audience was bored with it and wanted to hear the contest results. The results weren’t even ready when the trombones finished, and so the compere ended up interviewing the conductor of the choir.

The final results of the contest were:

1. Brighouse & Rastrick
2. Yorkshire Building Society
3. Carlton Main Frickley Colliery
4. Fodens Courtois
5. Flowers
6. DUT Yorkshire Imperial Rothwell

7. Ever Ready
8. The Ransome Band
9. Williams Fairey
10. Besses o’ th’ Barn
11. Rothwell Temperance
12. Bodmin Town
13. Leyland
14. First City Brass
15. Sellers International
16. Todmorden Old
17. JAG Mount Charles Band
18. Travelsphere Holidays
19. Aveley & Newham
20. SWT Woodfalls
21. Rolls Royce (Coventry)

Not too bad a result in our first attempt at this contest, though we had hoped to do better.

We had a post mortem outside and watched Brighouse celebrating their win, before heading back to the coach and travelling home.

So far, not a good year so far for contest results by our own standards, but the band had a great weekend together and will hopefully be back next year for another go.

Tim Sawyer
Percussion
28th May 2001