Performers are available in Summer Music Games

The annual Summer Music Games will likely bring $10,000 to $25,000 to the Fairfield High School Marching Band program.

Organizer Bruce Brown said about 5,000 spectators will be entertained and future musicians will be inspired.

The event includes more than 500 performers from seven drum and bugle corps and will take center stage June 22.

As part of the Drum Corps International Summer Tour, participants from across the country compete in 115 events from June through August, traveling by tour buses, sleeping in school gymnasiums, and practicing precise drills as many as 10 hours a day in addition to evening competitions.

More than 130 local volunteers will be on hand when the gates open at 5:30 p.m. ahead of the 7 p.m. competition, which will mark the 12th time the games have been conducted in Fairfield.

While the band earns a profit, it must pay $22,500 to bring the games to Fairfield, Brown said.

“We don’t have the modern stadium that they compete at in a lot of other places,” Brown said.

“But they come back to Fairfield year after year because they tell us the crowd enthusiasm here, and everything we try to do for them while they’re in town, is second to none.”

Seven corps will compete: Bluecoats from Canton, Ohio; Blue Stars from Lacrosse, Wis.; Madison Scouts from Madison, Wis.; Troopers from Casper, Wyo.; Crossmen from San Antonio; Pioneer from Milwaukee, Wis.; and Cincinnati Tradition, a group of senior performers from Cincinnati that retired from corps at age 21, but wished to continue performing.

Brown called the show “one of the biggest events in Fairfield,” bringing people in to stay in hotels, purchase gasoline, eat at restaurants and stop at local business establishments.

The Butler County Visitors Bureau uses the National Association of Sports Commissions economic impact formula to calculate estimated economic impact for events in Butler County.

This event, Executive Director Mark Hecquet said, could generate close to $102,000 for the county.

“Anytime you attract out-of-town guests into a community, it is a positive economic stimulator,” he said.

google tribute to American "guitar hero" Lester William Polsfuss

A guitar-themed interactive Google Doodle on Thursday paid tribute to American inventor and "guitar hero" Lester William Polsfuss (Les Paul).

Visitors to Google's homepage were greeted with a set of guitar strings of varying lengths that spelled "Google" to mark what would have been Paul's 96th birthday.

Hovering the mouse or pointing device over the strings would produce a specific note. You can also bang out chords and tunes by clicking on the "keyboard" icon on the lower right.

Clicking on the doodle will take the visitor to a set of Google search results for "Les Paul."

Paul is credited for popularizing innovations such as delay effects, phasing effects and multi-track recording.

He also collaborated on the design of the iconic "Gibson Les Paul" electric guitar.

The Les Paul Online website (www.lespaulonline.com) said he had a "staggeringly huge influence over the way American popular music sounds today, that many tend to overlook his significant impact upon the jazz world."

"Though he couldn't read music, Paul had a magnificent ear and innate sense of structure, conceiving complete arrangements entirely in his head before he set them down track by track on disc or tape. Even on his many pop hits for Capitol in the late '40s and early '50s, one can always hear a jazz sensibility at work in the rapid lead solo lines and bluesy bent notes —and no one could close a record as suavely as Les," it added.

Among the jazzers who acknowledge his influence are George Benson, Al DiMeola, Stanley Jordan (whose neck-tapping sound is very reminiscent of Paul's records), Pat Martino and Bucky Pizzarelli, the site said.