My Early Days

Here is a pic of the first group of guys I did real jobs with in our BQ. It was interesting in that everyone in that group was a Specialist (E-4), except Kit, who was a Corporal (still E-4) by this point. This gig was at a Fancy Schmancy Christmas dinner in Graf, if I remember correctly. Must have been December of 1998. This group was Moose, Tom, Me, Chris, and Kit. That group was a lot of fun. I remember once Tom brought a 5 Liter keg of German beer to an evening rehearsal. Bad idea. (I'm trying to keep this blog from becoming a "one time, when we were drinking" collection of stories, but hey, what are you going to do?)

This pic is Moose and I at our first marching show in Hamburg. If I remember correctly, this was both of our very first job with blues, and we had to borrow them to get them in time for the gig. Hence, the service stripes with only a rainbow ribbon. For those of you who like beer stories, this marching job was interesting in that every day we were there the facility provided the band with something like ten cases of beer each day. The band never drank much (it was discouraged before the gig, and we usually left right afterwards). So, Moose and I collected as much of this beer as we could carry on the bus. Something like 12 six-packs of bottles each. Germany is cool!