User Reviews

The Sheriff has to resort to trickery to get the mayor to ok the voucher that sends the Mayberry Band to a state competition. Unfortunately, the band is horrible. They may have instruments but their ability to play has gone south. It is only through deception that the Band gets the ok from the mayor. That ok comes with the mayor being made to believe that the marching band he sees is a much improved Mayberry Band. He buys the deception and wishes them well at the competition. As they drive off they make the mistake of playing and the mayor realizes he's been duped. The mayor is played to perfection by seasoned character actor Parley Baer.

Now they have a town band, comprised of about a dozen men, with Andy playing an instrument AND conducting. They are getting ready for their annual trip to Raleigh for a state-wide competition. (I phrase it like this because we never heard of or from this band on any other episode.) Barney has decided he wants to join the band. He sent away to Cymbal City in Chicago for a pair of "Andre Kostelanetz Marchers" (named after a very famous conductor whose band produced many albums over several decades). Of course, he had to surprise Andy with his new "instrument" by banging them loudly right behind his head.

As Andy headed for a meeting in the mayor's office, he spotted Freddy Fleet and his Band with a Beat. (In their earlier appearance, the same sort of traveling band with a long station wagon was headed by Bobby Fleet.) After exchanging pleasantries, including meeting a new "horn" –that's trumpet player to you and me, a man named Phil who had a goatee and used all the lingo of musicians of the era, Andy went to the meeting and was stunned to hear that the mayor did not want to approve funding the band's trip tomorrow because they are "the worst band in the entire state." Andy gets the mayor to give them a chance, but rehearsal is chaotic and when the mayor sits in, the sound surely reminds old Brooklyn fans of the famous Dodger Sym-phoney Band, as they play their own sounds all separately and you can barely recognize the Stars and Stripes Forever. The mayor repeats that he won't pay for this band's trip because they are so horrible.

Andy, unable to improve the band enough, wants to preserve funding for the trip because it is an expected annual outing for the boys. So he has to con the mayor and I won't reveal how in case someone reading this wants to watch and doesn't remember/or know what happened.

Barney shakes up everyone with his loud cymbal playing and the ingenious way Andy tricks the mayor make for one of the funniest episodes in the series. So what if the mayor's actions make no political sense—alienating the voters without saving the taxpayers more than a little money. I think it's too bad they didn't have more episodes where Andy outwitted the mayor.

Very disappointed that Andy, who is always trying to teach his son Opie to be a person of honesty and integrity, would stoop to such dishonest tactics to trick the mayor into believing the Mayberry Band was good enough to enter the state band competition, even to the point of detaining a real band group passing through Mayberry by unethical means in order to get them to march through town playing with the pathetic group of Mayberry Band players. Andy's unethical ploy worked to fool the mayor, and he agreed to send them to the state competition, only to embarrass Mayberry, I'm sure.