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East Belfast Protestant Boys report

Updated 09 February 2010 05:19:48 PM by Simon.

On Saturday 16th May the band travelled to the Newtownards Road to support East Belfast Protestant Boys for their annual parade.

As with previous years, this parade clashed with the North West 200 which meant that quite a few bands were affected numbers wise with members missing.

This affected our own band with a large number of our members away and we probably could've paraded with a band in Portrush with the amount of our members who were there!

Even with the number of members away, our turnout wasn't as small as it has been in previous years with 8 in the colour party, 2 drum majors, 10 drummers, 2 bass drummers and 17 flutes.

The hosts also decided to move the start time of the parade to 6.30PM and although it was strange doing the parade a few hours earlier, large crowds had gathered on the route and on the Newtownards Road as usual.

By the time we were ready to move off there wasn't much of a queue of bands which meant we got straight out onto the route just before 8PM without having to wait for too long. We didn't have the greatest of starts with one of our side drum heads bursting in the second tune. We asked around to see of there were any spares, however no other bands had finished the route which meant we had to make do. Luckily enough the head was only torn down the middle and not completely burst which meant the drummer could drum on the side of the head.

One of the improvements of the parade over previous years were the lack of stoppages. Once we got going I think we were only held up twice on the whole route. This was also backed up by a friend who was up to spectate who also mentioned that the flow of bands was much better than in previous years.

For the first half of the parade I felt the performance of the band could've been better with a few mistakes in the drum corps and the power from the band wasn't as strong as it has been. The judges from the host band are normally situated around the first half of the route and some of the tunes we played past them included Runnaway, Courtney and Airforce Blue. Sylvia's Mother also got another airing on Templemore Avenue and it is coming on week by week.

Once we reached the bottom of the Newtownards Road however, the overall performance of the band lifted and I thought we played much better for the last leg of the parade. Whether this was because of the bigger crowds on the streets or because it took us longer to get going I'm not sure, however it all seemed to come together better than in the first half. The volume of the flutes lifted and the bass drum was sounding a lot better (which is normally a sign that one of the heads is ready to go!)

The colour party was also looking and marching well. Three new members joined this year and they are all starting to settle in well.

We were stopped outside the Great Eastern bar on the Newtownards Road and played Rathfriland Town and Londonderry on the Foyle which I thought were our two best tunes of the night with the power from the drums, bass drum and flutes at their best. We also got a lend of one of Cloghers side drums to replace our own which had burst at the start of the parade (thanks to the Clogher member who followed us to the finish point with our own drum).

A large crowd was also standing at the finish point were we finished on Davy Sprocket (AKA the Wallace & Grommit theme tune). I've always thought this is a good tune to finish on when marching to a finishing point as the length of the tune is just right. Overall we were happy enough with our performance although we all agreed on the way home that the band has sounded better this season.

This weekend we have two local parades with the Corbet in Banbridge on Friday night and Charles Watson Memorial on Saturday night in Clough.