This One’s For You Mark and Bruce

(The headline is designed to attract the attention of two occasional readers)

I ran into two good friends from high school at the 100th anniversary celebration of KBPS, Bruce Murdock and Mark Budwill. They are both professional radio talent. I told them how much I enjoyed announcing for the Danville Band for 22 years. I mentioned I read from a script. One of them, I forget who, told me that scripts are “so 20th century.” They suggested bullet points instead of a script, for a more natural delivery. I didn’t manage to get that far, as the Danville community band just played its first concert of the new season, my first announcing job since our chat.

I have always tried to “read the house” and ad lib when I felt the audience would be receptive. At this concert, I was unusually fortunate in terms of inspiration and audience response. You wouldn’t get the comparison, because, as far as I can recall, I’ve never mentioned my announcing job in this column.

The goal of announcing for a brass band is the same as the BBC: entertain and educate. My scripts consist largely of education about the music; my ad-libs consist largely of entertainment. See next item.