194. Slip slidin' away.

194. "25 or 6 to 4" by Chicago.

Now here's a song with lyrics…I think. I know that there are actual words that go with the music, but I really have no idea what most of them are or what they mean. Why, then, in the wide, wide world of sports is this song on my list? Because this is the pep band song that goes back to my earliest childhood memories of going to basketball games with Chris and his family. I would sit with the Hatches and the Nielsens near the scorekeeper, and we would get excited when the pep band would play this song when the game got close. "25 or 6 to 4" was one of those songs that hit the charts in 1970, but I don't ever remember hearing it on the radio growing up. Still, all through elementary school and Jr. High, I loved hearing the pep band play that song, and all throughout the 70s I thought of it as an inspirational sports song. The kind that gives me goosebumps.

It was also a favorite pep band song during my high school years, and it never occurred to me that it was kind of an old rock song to be playing it in the 80s. Mr. Banyas said at the beginning of the pep band season during our sophomore year (or was it our junior year?) that he wanted to take "25 or 6 to 4" out of our playlist because it was so old and he thought the audience would like to hear newer songs. He nearly had an instant riot on his hands. We let him know in no uncertain terms that "25 or 6 to 4" was going to stay on the playlist that year, and it would remain there until we graduated. He acquiesced, and we played it at every game from then on.

I remember that we always played this song with gusto, and it had really fun trumpet part to play, with some fast playing show-off parts followed by some nifty high notes. But I know, and everyone else knows, that the best part of the song was the trombone part with the sliding notes. The trombone is the only instrument that can do sliding notes, and this song made the most of that fact. There were falling sliding notes and rising sliding notes, and I'm pretty sure that Scapell figured out a way to slip in some sliding notes that weren't originally there. And with that kind of brass-filled fun going on in the back row, who needs lyrics?