Katzenjammers captain confident of Panorama hat-trick

Katzenjammers Steel Orchestra captain Maxson Ramsey is confident the band will secure a hat-trick in the national Panorama medium-band final on February 23 at the Dwight Yorke Stadium, Bacolet, Tobago.

The Black Rock outfit will come up against nine other bands in the final.

Katzenjammers, two-time defending champions, placed first in the semi-finals of the competition on February 16 at the Queen’s Park Savannah, Port of Spain. They were also first in the preliminaries.

Another Tobago medium band, Carib Dixieland, came sixth in the semis.

Katzenjammers, which scored 276 points, played the Mighty Sparrow’s (Slinger Francisco’s) Lying Excuses. It was arranged by Kersh Ramsey.

Asked how he felt about the band’s placing heading into the weekend’s competition, Maxson Ramsey said, “It is a great feeling, knowing that the finals is in Tobago and knowing that my band is running first in the final as usual.

“And we know that we are going for the hat-trick. So it is a great feeling for the band going to this final because we are going to bring it home, back to Tobago again for the third time.”

He said the arranger chose the song.

“I don’t know how he came about choosing the song but he actually tries to give a storyline. So any song he chooses, you would realise there is a storyline that goes along with the song.

“So that was his instinct when he came to me and said, ‘This is the song I want to do for the band.’ I said, ‘You are the arranger, you know your vibes, that is the song we going with.”