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The term "band geek" or "bando", "bandie" refers to the high school and college subculture, primarily in the United States, which involves the students who are involved in marching bands or concert bands.
Initially the term was used in a derogatory sense with respect to students who spend "unreasonably" excessive time on an occupation perceived unimportant or even lowly as compared with such venerable devotions such as high school football or at least cheerleading. However, as it happens with many other disregarded subcultures, including the very notion of geek itself, the bearers of the "title" accept it with pride.
Behavior
Band geeks typically play a band instrument such as trumpet, clarinet, saxophone, flute, oboe, french horn, trombone, tuba or percussion. Band geeks will hang out mainly in a band room in which band students might store instruments, get supplies, have concert band class, etc. Some bands even have homeroom in the band room to get in extra practicing before school starts. Often they will only associate with other band geeks.
A big part of some bands is band camp, in the case of a marching band. Band camp is a camp during the summer where band students go over the marching drills, and music for their show(s), and where new band members learn how to march, even though they may already know from pre-camp events and sectionals for new members and freshmen.
Within a band are different instrument sections. Each section has its own personality and stereotypes, for example:
- trumpet players have big egos
- drummers are "stupid"
- trombone players are drunks and never get gigs
- tuba players are fat and jolly
- flute players are stuck up and cold
- saxophone players are eccentric or almost crazy
etc.
Humour
Many bandos have their own jokes relating to band as well as many terms and phrases that mostly only band students will understand.
Samples from numerous series of kind "Top N Signs You are a Band Geek"
- You learned another language through music notation (Actually, similar jokes are popular among other kinds of geeks, and in other countries as well. For example, Russian computer geeks are said to learn English in a similar way.)
- Drummers start making sense to you. (A hint to Drummer jokes).
- "Band geek" is on your AOL buddy list.
- Reeds taste good. (Before playing a woodwind instrument, it is common to wet a dry reed by saliva. For a random bystander it indeed looks like tasting the reed and often calls for a silly joke: "Tastes good, eh?")
- You are not offended when called a band geek. (Actually, you take it as a compliment.)
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