Last Monday night, I hustled out after work to hear a couple of really fantastic British bands on tour. They were loud, the vocalist was great, there was dancing and they totally rocked. I especially liked the marching.

The roof was certainly dislodged at Heinz Hall by the electrifying (though not electrified) sounds of the Regimental Band of Her Majesty's Coldstream Guards and the Pipes, Drums and Dancers of the Royal Scots Dragoon Guards. I haven't seen musical dragoon guards since a high school Gilbert and Sullivan show, and I was long overdue.

Who doesn't love a man in uniform? I have been known to flirt with Scoutmasters, but British military bands really know how to dress. Or kilt, in the case of the Scots Guards. I just wish I hadn't spent so much time watching Revolutionary War documentaries on PBS as a kid, because my first barely controlled impulse on seeing these finely tuned soldiers march out onto the stage was to stand up and yell, "Redcoats! FIRE!"

And that would have been really bad. Because the musicians were much more heavily armed than the audience. Some had daggers. Some had swords. Some had bagpipes.

Unfortunately, the only time most Americans will willingly listen to bagpipes is when they are paying their respects to a fallen police officer. I don't know why this is; I happen to think bagpipes rock. Just because they look like some kind of ungainly stork in plaid pants and sound like cicadas, they have become the butt of jokes. Bagpipes and the people who play them -- which isn't easy, or even kind -- are worthy of great respect. Many members of the Scots Guards pipe band served on active duty in the Gulf, where I'm sure they thoroughly deafened the enemy.

I've had a thing about pipe bands since I was in middle school and developed a crush on a snare drummer. Annual Highland Games were held at a fairgrounds where I grew up, and bands and dancers used to come from all over North America to compete and wander around in hot wool kilts and sporrans, eating fried dough. I would stare at them with amusement at first, but by the end of the day I would have developed a deep and abiding respect for a nice pair of knees.

The amazing part about military bands is that they are still soldiers. The Royal Scots Dragoon Guards pipers and drummers are, for example, "fully trained and experienced tank crewmen," according to the program. The Coldstream band seems to be more ceremonial, but even they took casualties in World War II when they got hit with a bomb while playing in a barracks chapel. If the Germans didn't care for the music, they could have made their point with a beer bottle or two.

I thought both bands put on a tremendous show. You haven't lived till you've heard "Loch Lomond" done as a lounge act.

The music is much more varied than you'd imagine. The Coldstream Guards, for example, have strings. You pull them and they shout something like, "Lance Corporal Nigel Knobley-Titmarsh, first cello, sah!"

They also have an 18th Century Band, which wears period dress and plays strange old horns, some ancestor of a bassoon and a large squiggly black thing that looks like part of a car exhaust system. You can't help but look at them and think, no wonder you lost the colonies.

Still, when the Coldstream band marched in its formations on the rather intimate Heinz Hall stage, the precision was impressive. They were doing that marching band thing where, when lines come to the end of the space, they double back between themselves, which is truly an act of bravery for the slide trombones and everyone near them.

How they can even see to walk with those giant, furry black bearskin hats on is a mystery. Every time they marched toward the back of the stage, I pictured that scene in "Animal House" where the marching band compacts itself against a wall.

You can't get out of a kilt-intensive concert like this without "Amazing Grace" and, of course, "Scotland the Brave," which are wonderful and stirring, but the most unexpected moment has to have been the combined bands' rendition of "When the Saints Go Marching In," featuring a Dixieland-style clarinet and, alarmingly, full-force bagpipes.

As the program says, "one day they could be sitting round the table practicing, the next they are in the fields and woods, or on the firing ranges of Germany."

I bet I know what the Germans are aiming for.