Donald Angelica was our band director at Bergenfield High School.
He held some other offices in the school system as well.

Donald Angelica
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BHS band67 appearing at Giants football game at Yankee Stadium. 

Mr. Angelica was very active in Drum Corps activities, from long before he became a teacher
until, probably, the time he died. He was inducted into the Drum Corps International Hall of Fame.
At the DCI's big yearly competition, there is an award named after him. He passed away in 1987,
according to the writeup at DCI.

Bergenfield's journey to marching-band excellence began under his predecessor and mentor,
Dr. Bernard Baggs (also a member of the DCI Hall of Fame). The marching band legacy was carried
on and enhanced by Mr. Angelica's successors, many of them also associated with DCI. There is a
nice section about the band in the Wikipedia article on Bergenfield High School.

He sometimes said the opposite of what he meant. I have a memory of him playing a record for
us once. He put the LP on the turntable in the Band Room, dropped the needle, and said
something like this: "I want you to listen to this song, BUT NOT the song after it. I have to step out
for a few minutes, but whatever you do, DO NOT LISTEN to the second song." Well of course we
did, and of course he came back to the room shortly after it ended. There was no discussion.

I don't remember what the song was, but it was something modestly risqué. Someone on the
Bergenfield High School Facebook group pointed out that Mr. Angelica introduced us to Tom
Lehrer, so it could have been maybe "Vatican Rag" or "Be Prepared."

I could marshal more anecdotes, but you get the idea. Mr. Angelica sometimes spoke in
opposites.

Every year there was an exhibition of high school marching bands at the high school in Clifton,
New Jersey. Mr. Angelica kept emphasizing that it was an exhibition, not a competition. But I had
the feeling, and I think we all did, that we were damn well expected to win it.

Clifton Band Festival, 1967, Circle Drill

Now, the track went around the perimeter of the football field, as at many high schools. And
when the band marches off the field, playing the final number, it marches off along that track.
Having been there before, we knew that as we marched off we would be marching directly
towards a brick wall. I though it looked about thirty feet tall, and it was curved to bounce the
sound right back into the arena.

The final number in our routine that year was "More," the theme from the movie "Mondo
Cane," arranged as a march. In the first trumpet part, the song ended on the C called C-abovemiddle-
C, around the middle of the range for our trumpets and us.

We all thought the C an octave higher, called high C, and near the top of our range, would
sound much better. Especially bouncing off that big beautiful brick wall. Plus, C-above-middle-C is
no way to win an exhibition. But of course, Mr. Angelica kept telling us, "It's an exhibition, not a
competition," and "Play it as written. Don't play the high C. No matter what you do, don't play the
high C."

What do you think we did? Of course we did. There were three thrills:
      1. It really did sound awesome bouncing back at us.
      2. We knew we won the exhibition.
      3.We did exactly what we were told not to do, in tacit cahoots with the very teacher
          who told us not to do it.

Don Angelica leading BHS Band at
parade on Washington Avenue, Bergenfield, NJ, 1967
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