Extra Action Marching Band

Infobox musical artist
Name = Extra Action Marching Band

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Img_capt = 2006 East Coast Tour
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Origin = Oakland, CA
Genre = Marching band, Punk rock
Years_active = 1998-Present
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URL = extra-action.com
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Past_members =

The Extra Action Marching Band is loosely based on the American Marching Band construct. Wielding an all brass and drums instrumentation and being lead by a flag waving colorguard, they are like a drum corps formed by performers covered in glitter.

"There's really no need to introduce the Extra Action Marching Band: The Bay Area institution has been crashing parties, invading bars, and blowing minds with its signature "high school marching band on acid" punk-meets-Sousa bombast for years now. The tuba players, flag team, and percussion section take perverse delight in twisting the staid conventions of their respective forms, and it can be downright disorienting to spot a sexy trombone player." - Hiya Swanhuyser – SF Weekly 2005

“"… performance at the… Hollywood Bowl… Not bad for a bunch of temperamental weirdos who were once paid in gift certificates to a sex toy shop" [payment for playing at the opening of Good Vibrations vibrator store for women] ” –SPIN Magazine, Feb 2006

History

Members of the San Diego based Crash Worship started Extra Action in late 90s. Since then, the band has found new roots in the Bay Area and currently boasts approximately 35 members.

Perhaps the band's most ambitious(non musical) project, a to-scale replica of a wooden seagoing vessel built around a schoolbus, was called La Contessa, and was burned to the ground in early December 2006 by Mike Stewart, a disgruntled Nevada resident who owned the land that La Contessa was being stored on. [Jones, Steven T. [http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?entry_id=2710&catid=4&volume_id=254&issue_id=279&volume_num=41&issue_num=18 A galleon destroyed by fire. A priceless missing statue. Welcome to one of the great mysteries of the San Francisco underground.] San Francisco Bay Guardian Online]

Performance highlights

Some performance highlights include : opening for David Byrne on his 2005 SoCal tour, stopping at the Hollywood Bowl, and later sloshing through 3 inches of toilet water that covered the entire floor of the sandiego club , the casbah. Then there was a tour of the south, that re-created Black Sabbath's heavy metal debut classic, with plain ole heavy eXtreme Elvis on vocals. Since these performances, Extra Action has gone on to perform at other large crowd venues such as the Download Festival (U.S. version), where they performed on stage with Modest Mouse and The Arcade Fire, as well as the Fusion Festival (Germany) and the Rock For People Festival (Czech Republic) in 2007, and festival I.D.E.A.L in France (2008),to name a few. However, the band is most at home in small to medium sized venues where they can get up close and personal with their audience (often spending more time in the audience than on stage). Sex and sensuality play a key role in this group's dynamic and stage (as well as floor) presence. Also of note is the manner in which the band uses "military-style" formations to careen through, corral, and otherwise manipulate their audiences.

Press Quotes

"Witness them perform and they don't as much walk on stage as storm it . . .Their music has been described as a fusion of Balkan brass and New Orleans funk, which references circus themes and Black Sabbath's first album." - Dazed & Confused (magazine)

"When they marched onto the stage at Shoreline Amphitheater to join Arcade Fire (after crashing the women's room) at last year's Download Festival — ragtag horn and drum corps ripping through a few numbers as the flag girls and boy bumped and grinded in blond wigs and glittery G-strings — you realized what was really missing from indie at this performance, at so many performances: sex appeal. Theater. A drunken mastery of performance and the dark arts of showmanship, along with the sense of team spirit linked to so much marching band imagery bandied about in today's pop." - [http://www.sfbayguardian.com/printable_entry.php?entry_id=548 Kimberly Chun, San Francisco Bay Guardian]

Tours

Europe 2007: NYC, Holland, Germany, Czech, Austria, Switzerland, Italy

East Coast 2006: New York, Asbury Park ,Boston, Providence

East Coast 2005: Chicago,Detroit, Toronto,some hippy festival somewhere in Conneticut,Providence, New York,

Europe 2004: Holland, Germany, Czech, Serbia, Austria

Playing Black Sabbath's first album with Extreme Elvis 2003: New Orleans ,dallas,austin, Phoenix, Las Vegas, LA, San Francisco

European Tour June/July 2007

*Amsterdam, Holland
*Hamburg, Germany
*Fusion Festival (Germany)
*Berlin, Germany
*Rostock, Germany
*Rock for People Festival (Czech Republic)
*Vienna, Austria
*Linz, Austria
*Zurich, Switzerland
*Florence, Italy
*Pisa, Italy

Recordings and DVDs

* Live on Stubnitz Recorded Live on the Motorship Stubnitz
* Extra Action in Euroland documentary of Europe tour 2004

References

Links

* [http://www.extra-action.com Offical Web Site]
* [http://www.guca.co.yu/galerija/main.php/v/2004/EAMB/ Extra Action at Guca Brass Festival]
*Glasgow Times "Brass Bells" 4/27/2007
* [http://www.extra-action.com/press/dazedandconfused.jpgDazed and Confused "Extra Action Marching Band" 1/01/2007]
* [http://web.mac.com/robbynleonard/iWeb/Site%206/Extra%20Action.html Current TV "Marching Madness"]
* [http://www.sfbg.com/entry.php?page=2&entry_id=548&catid=&volume_id=254&issue_id=308&volume_num=41&issue_num=44 SF Bay Guardian]
*Spin Magazine "Blood on the Sousaphone" 2/1/2006
*http://www.noisepop.com/2007/artist_profile.php?artist=98
*http://entertainment.signonsandiego.com/profiles/events/278355