The ramones!

[Keith A]

Does anyone know what high school that was. The town that I lived in till I was
about 13,has a High school foot ball team was called the Highlanders, witch I noticed was on the wall above the bleachers. Just wondering if it is the same town.

[pipe23]

That clip is from the Tattoo November 2006 at West Milford High School in New Jersey. The pipers are members of Mag7, of which I'm a member, playing with The Shots. We are back there Nov 21 this year.

[Keith A]

Yes thats the town I spent most of my childhood in. It was a great place to
grow up. When you went out the backdoor of my home it was just miles
of woods and mountains.

[BagpiperDon]

I've fairly recently gotten into punk -- chiefly in the form of DKMs, Real Mckenzies, Flogging Molly, etc ... which largely caught my attention from a biased musical perspective, go figure right I'm not all that familiar with The Ramones, however I've heard before that they did do something back in the day with pipes -- an album or something -- can anyone shed some light on this? Could be bunk, could be some faulty RAM in my noggin...

Glad to hear the particulars on the linked group -- I was going to joke that maybe this was the school principal's rock-w/-pipes band outside of the school ;)
With my own occasional opportunities to do Celtic-rock work, more specifically interest in doing a Celtic-punk studio project with a buddy of mine, vids like this are valuable to me toward better working out how to combine GHBs w/ popular.

[Arizona Scot]

Very cool.

[pipe23]

BagpiperDon:
I don't recall any Ramones tunes with bagpipes, though there are some punk-looking bagpipers at the Johnny Ramone Birthday Bash Tribute. We're trying to get that gig, one of our members is the brother of Richie Ramone, but Richie has moved on and is not that involved anymore. We try to play tunes that people actually know rather than traditional or modern bagpipe tunes. So Louie Louie, We Will Rock You, Iko Iko, Dancing with Myself, etc fit the bill. I personally would rather do real pipes tunes, of which there are thousands of great ones, but I am amazed at the crowd reaction we get doing the material that we do. We do parades and suddenly people are dancing and singing along with the tunes, so we give the people what they want. We've even done Build Me Up Buttercup and the Final Countdown for
our local 4th of July parade, thankfully only once, and hopefully will have a Guns and Roses tune up by November.
One of the things that has helped us is getting Shepherd Orchestral chanters, pitched in Concert Bb, which makes playing with other instruments, guitars, bass, brass, etc. much easier. Smallpipes or electonic pipes also help, anything to get away from the "normal" GHB pitch will save the bass player from breaking strings and the guitarists complaining about the strain on their hands from tuning up to standard GHB pitch.

[BagpiperDon]

Ooh -- very valueable information, thanks -- and I'd heard about another chanter lately, I think in A440, that was working well.... curious about this Bb.

Years ago w/ a cover band I'd worked out the melody line to Blondie's "Rapture". I've been playing Imperial March since Episode III came out (I was trying to write a waltz in minor at the time). A week or two ago I worked out Iron Man... sort of. I play the 7/8 solo part from Tom Sawyer. There's a tune I've worked out and plan to record/relea$e as a Celtic-rock/punk piece -- and to not get my idea ripped off that's all I'm saying about that one for now -- hopefully I can put that together in the next year's time. Yeah, there's different ones -- your band's rocked muchly, enjoyed seeing/hearing it.

[pipe23]

Yeah, I've messed around with Tom Sawyer, and lots of Led Zeppelin riffs as well, somewhere even found an mp3 of Stairway to Heaven for borderpipes.
We've played around with Elvis, Michael Jackson, or Beatles medleys, in fact the tune that got us started on our slide to the depths of bagpiping depravity was Yellow Submarine, though my other band had started it all with The Lion Sleeps Tonight. Sometimes it seem we sit around at practice seeing if "this works on pipes"
For myself, I still learn go through my collection of music books, sheet music, downloaded tunes and vids to learn "normal" pipe tunes, the playing of which is more satisfying to me, but as I've learned, the general population reacts to what it knows, it bums me out that people would rather hear Long Way To the Top or Shipping Up to Boston rather than the thousands of tunes written specifically for the pipes. I know about 500 tunes (I made a list) but the three bands I'm in tend to play only about 50 different tunes and the general public seems to know only two, AG and STB (the Old Spice tune). But
as long as we are bringing the pipes out on occasions other than parades, weddings and funerals, and getting a good reaction, it's good. We are now playing bar gigs nearly every weekend, and have gotten some amazing gigs out of this, the one that sticks in my mind is playing the 3rd Marine Division annual reunion, we were worried that these vets of Korea and WW2 (yes a few still around) would not like the rock and roll pipes, but by the second tune they were up and dancing, and even invited us to play the next year in San Diego. Good luck on your albums, I have something in the works myself, and keep piping.