Today, millions of us will gather around our TV sets to watch a uniquely American pastime that involves a relatively small, highly select group of college students–young people who are blessed with exceptional strength, stamina and coordination.
These students will be dressed in colorful uniforms.
Hundreds of thousands of dollars will have been spent on their equipment and training.
They will have practiced hundreds of hours together, mastering intricate formations and strategies, under the eyes of a tough, demanding staff.
Each will be risking physical injury that could jeopardize future professional careers, and many, in fact, will be ”playing hurt.”
We are, of course, referring to Marching Bands.
And what better occasion than New Year`s Day to salute this strange and wonderful cultural creation?
After all, today`s bowl games–not to mention all the pre-game parades and extravaganzas–offer a great opportunity to observe some of the best in the business.
Please do not misunderstand. It is not our intent to ignore or de-emphasize football. There`s much to be said for this primitive, violent game, and, it goes without saying, you`ve got to have something to fill the time before and after the halftime festivities.
But really, when you think about it, what could be more thrilling than to observe 250 young men and women wearing plumed hats, white spats, satin capes and the most unbelievably outlandish, rococo costumes you could imagine and who are carrying around an absolutely bewildering array of musical instruments and flags and banners and batons and who come high-stepping onto a football field so fast their legs blur and then are somehow able to march around so that they spell out the name or at least the initials of their alma mater while simultaneously playing the school song and who during each home game of the season perform an entirely new, enormously complicated program in which they may form the outline of a Mississippi River paddleboat and move about the field while playing ”Waiting for the Robert E. Lee” or, if they`re more up to date, perhaps make the silhouette of a space capsule and play the theme from ”Star Wars”?
Utterly amazing, wouldn`t you say?
Yes, and yet we take these things for granted while raving about linebackers, ”long bombs” and bone-crushing tackles.
In recognition of all the unsung effort and ability that go into playing music while moving about, we hope you will pause briefly in what will undoubtedly be a very full day and consider the following collection of insights, behind-the-scenes mystique, technical data and historical footnotes about the Incredible World of Marching Bands.
So–oompah, oompah–strike up the band and let`s step off.
— The basics–right out of the encyclopedia: ”Bands differ from orchestras in that orchestras consist chiefly of instruments with strings. People usually call a band which plays while seated a concert band. A band whose players march while they play is called a . . . .” Be our guest. Complete the sentence. Start 1987 by getting something right.
— There are two fundamental philosophies in college marching bands–the Serious and the Wise-Guy. The Serious Band approach, which is the rule, is epitomized by the schools of the Big Ten. ”The Big Ten has always been considered a leader in college marching bands,” says John P. Paynter, director of bands at Northwestern University and the unofficial dean of the grand old football conference`s marching bands. ”It`s generally identified with a particular style–the high knee lift and the short step, called the 8- to-5. This means there are eight strides for each 5-yard increment marked off on the football field. This style is now giving way to a `glide` or `stride`
step, which is 6-to-5, without a knee lift. The tempos have come down accordingly.”
— We`re not kidding about the strength-stamina-coordination stuff. The mere act of lugging around a 40-pound tuba is astonishing enough, but, remember, you`ve got to be able to play the thing, too. In addition to knowing how to read music, you`ve got to have enough stamina to blow into a horn or pound a drum for 8 to 10 to 15 solid, uninterrupted minutes and coordinated enough to be marching at the same time–and not just in a straight line. You`re making sharp turns and cuts and dips and trying to remember where you`re supposed to go next.
— From sax to sacks. Dan Hampton, a stellar defensive lineman for the Chicago Bears, gave up what could have been a rewarding career in music when the football coach at his high school in a little town in Arkansas happened to see him playing the saxophone in the school band. Hampton at the time was a 6-5, 230-pound junior, and you can understand why the coach ordered him to forsake the horn for the gridiron.
— Marching bands are to music what demolition derbies are to a Sunday drive to grandma`s house. But aren`t demolition derbies far more exciting?
”Most band directors will tell you they can`t stand marching bands,” says Carl Strommen, a band director at a high school in New York. ”If they`re honest, most will tell you they`d prefer to do real music, but at most schools you`ve got to do it. It`s part of the gig. To walk and play a musical instrument at the same time is perverse in itself, but to be forced to dress up in a funny, circus-type outfit to boot just makes it worse.”
— I-L-L-I-N-O-I-S. Albert Austin Harding, who became band director at the University of Illinois in 1905, is believed to have been the first to have marching bands form letters and words on the football field while playing.
— The Wise Guy Band is exemplified by the snobbish, elite universities of the Ivy League and other schools with similar pretentions. Of the West Coast deviates, Stanford is the most notorious, its band having recently been . . . banned. More about this later.
These bands generally disdain uniforms and are slovenly, unconventional, disrespectful and, if you`re somewhat warped, immensely entertaining. ”This approach,” Paynter says, ”is probably the result of these schools` having too few good musicians interested in being in a marching band, so they decide to opt for a kind of vaudeville show. I don`t know what their motives are, but I call it low-class entertainment.” In his position as president of the prestigious Mid-West International Band and Orchestra Clinic and of the World Association of Symphonic Bands and Ensembles, Paynter has written letters of protest to the presidents and band directors of the schools that field such iconoclastic ensembles. But alas, these institutions do not appear ready for reform.
— The Dark Side of Marching Bands: Martial music may lead to war!
History tells us that Frederick the Great of Prussia, not Professor Harold Hill, is the father of the modern marching band. In 1763, according to World Book encyclopedia, Frederick ordered a military band to be established and named the instruments to be used. Later, France, Italy, England and other countries of Europe sponsored military bands, and now military commanders can`t get by without them.
It`s obvious why. These fellows are really little boys at heart who love to get dressed up in uniforms with all sorts of shiny buttons and straps and braid and to put on parades. They love to climb up on a podium and have hundreds of troops march by and salute them. But troops don`t march in unison all that well without a drum beat, which means you need a full military band. The problem is that once you`ve got these overgrown kids getting pumped up by the sound of the band music and the sight of these troops marching in front of them, it`s impossible for them not to feel extremely surly and powerful and invincible, which often leads to trouble.
— So far, we`re still ahead of the Japanese in this industry. ”There`s nothing like our college marching bands at all in the rest of the world,”
says Northwestern`s Paynter. ”Even the idea of school bands originated with America, and today the only (other) countries with high school bands are Japan, Norway and Canada. There are youth bands in other countries in Europe and some in Asia, but we have led the world in the idea of school bands.”
— The Marching Band from Hell: ”I played the clarinet in a high-school marching band in a small Wisconsin town. To begin with, playing the clarinet in a marching band is an exercise in futility . . . .”
The speaker, whom we shall call Charles, has asked that we do not use his full name. He no longer plays in a marching band and is trying to build a new life. ”Clarinets are futile,” Charles complains, ”because the name of the game in marching bands is loud, which means brass and drums. Woodwind instruments simply get drowned out. But what was just as discouraging was that our school had terrible football teams, and we always seemed to play in terrible, subarctic weather. Gales and blizzards were commonplace. We would cut the fingers off our gloves so we could cover the little air holes in our clarinets, but we were lucky. Only our fingers froze. The trombone and trumpet players were in much greater danger. Their lips might freeze to their instruments, and if they did, they couldn`t get them off until spring. They would carry their mouthpieces in their armpits before they played, to keep them warm . . . .” Ugh, how disgusting.
— More lore: In the early days of this country, almost every town and village would organize a local band, which would play in holiday parades and on summer evenings at the band shell in the local park. Its members would come from every walk of life, and sometimes businesses would advertise for employees who could also play a musical instrument, thus originating the term ”to double in brass.”
— The Dark Side of Marching Bands, Part II: ”You can get banged up out there pretty bad if you`re not careful,” says Northwestern`s Paynter. ”Horn players, of course, can injure their lips. Probably our best trumpet player has a chip out of his front tooth because he turned left when he should have turned right. You sometimes have to turn on a dime and if you go the wrong way you may have a 250-pound tuba player bearing down on you. We warn our players continually about injuries, and we do a lot of rehearsing without instruments.”
— Where do we find such flutists? Most college bands and even many high- school bands have training camps before school starts, just like pre-season football camps. And, friends, we are talking super-rigorous, 14-hour days in the broiling sun. ”Band camp was like boot camp!” exclaims Jenny Helmerich, who as the former Jenny Lee was the drum major of the award-winning Clinton
(N.C.) High School Band. It was so tough, she says, that some weaklings gave up and joined the Marines.
— Marching Band from Hell, Part II: ” . . . And the wind would tear the sheets of music away from the clips on our instruments,” Charles continues,
”so we had a guy whose job was to follow the band and pick up our music. Our stadium only had about 20 or 30 rows, which meant that it wasn`t high enough for the spectators to see our formations. The public address announcer would have to take pains to describe what we were forming; otherwise, we looked like a bunch of people in weird suits milling around on the field . . . .”
— Memorable moments in marching history: The Stanford band was benched for two games this past season after a performance at which it formed a four- letter word, dropped its trousers and six of its members urinated on the field. Hey, it`s part of a proud tradition. A year earlier, as recounted in a book called ”The Football Hall of Shame,” the Stanford band presented a halftime show entitled ”A Tribute to Presidential Diseases.”
”First the band paid homage to the removal of a cyst on President Reagan`s nose,” the book reports. ”Part of the band marched on the field and formed a giant nose with a bump on it. Then, to the tune of `A Crazy Little Thing Called Love,` another group of band members formed huge pincers that squeezed the nose until the cyst popped out.” For its next routine, the band dealt with the surgery on Reagan`s colon; a lack of space, however, prevents us from describing it in any detail.
— Seventy-six trombones? It`s more like 76 million. ”There are 28,000 high school marching bands in this country, and when you figure 100 to 150 kids in each of those bands and then you add the hundreds of colleges with marching bands–well, the total is very impressive,” says Jay Wanamaker, one of the band world`s top drummers and composers and now a drummer for Yamaha, which makes musical instruments as well as motorcycles.
— Let`s talk bottom line. Wanamaker says a typical outlay for the instruments for a typical band is $500,000. A good snare drum, he says, will cost $500; a bass drum from $400 to $700; quads (an attached set of four drums), $1,000. Trumpets, from $400 to $2,000; tubas, $1,700 to $4,500;
saxophones, $750 to $2,000; French horns, $1,000 to $5,700; clarinets, $350 to $1,100. Uniforms generally cost from $250 to $350 each. Multiply that by 250 to 300, and you`re in the neighborhood of $75,000.
— Big is big. Northwestern`s Paynter, who hung up his marching shoes 10 years ago, says his biggest band had 160 members. ”Now we have 260, which is about average,” he says. ”All bands have increased in size. Some have more than 300. They seem to fill up a football field.” Paynter says that while he has heard reports that some schools have employed ringers–people who carry instruments without playing them–just to fill out the ranks, he has no direct knowledge of this alleged practice.
— Trends: What`s hot now is something called the Corps Style, which is becoming more popular than the Geometric Style, whose formations have been dominant for some years. The Picture Style, it seems, has been outdated for some time. The corps style is influenced by the precision marching and the sound of the drum and bugle corps of military persuasion. ”The elements of the corps style that have most affected college bands,” Paynter says, ”is the drum line that`s separate from the rest of the band, large flag units or color guards and using your personnel in single file and spreading formations way out. These are abstract formations–designs that aren`t meant to be seen as a tree or a flower or a specific object–and some of them are quite attractive.” Says Arthur C. Bartner, an alumnus of the University of Michigan band and for the past 17 years the director of bands at the University of Southern Californa: ”The corps style tends to take a single routine, concentrate on it, polish it and repeat it week after week.” USC remains an eclectic throwback. ”We`re a big old show band,” Bartner says. ”We play to a Hollywood crowd who isn`t interested in esoteric, in-group things; they want to hear the latest pop tunes, show tunes, movie tunes.”
— Practice makes perfect. USC`s Bartner writes the script for each home game performance a couple of weeks ahead of time. It takes up to a week to devise the formations and draw the charts, although now it`s possible to do it faster with a computer or to buy ready-made computer programs. On Monday, he goes over the show with his seven graduate teaching assistants, the section leaders for each instrument and the squad leaders–one for every four instruments. On Tuesday, he passes out the charts–a book of 25 to 30 pages
— showing how each person is to get from point A to point B to point C and so forth, where everyone is supposed to go. Wednesday, to the practice field, where ”it`s like putting together a big puzzle, and you`re happy to get through the first number in two hours.” Thursday and Friday, ”You review and perfect, polish and add things.” Saturday, it`s show time. Or, in this case, Thursday.
— ”And now back to our studio in New York.” Bartner and Paynter and all the other marching band people are frustrated with what they consider the worst trend of all: The way the TV networks now avoid showing the bands`
halftime shows in favor of presenting their own–replays and scores and old game films and interviews. It didn`t used to be that way. ”We`ve complained and written letters, and we hope more people will get on the bandwagon, but so far, nothing has changed,” Bartner says.
A PARADE OF TV DELIGHTS
Polish the 76 trombones, join the parade, and strike up the band. Today is the day for college football bowl games, and that means parades and halftime extravaganzas–and bands. Whether you tend toward the big brass bands, the smaller drum-and-bugle corps or military-type units, here are several events that are sure to offer something for everyone:
”Mummers Parade,” 7 a.m., live from Philadelphia on the Lifetime cable channel. Twenty-seven string bands, playing banjos, glockenspiels and assorted stringed instruments, perform in this 12-hour event. Also adding to the confusion of this Mardi Gras-like gala are some 40 brass bands.
”Cotton Bowl Parade,” 9 a.m. on CBS-Ch. 2, live from Dallas. Eighteen bands from around the country, including the Southwest Iowa Honor Marching Band, 225 youngsters representing small communities in the southwest Iowa area; Jefferson Senior High School Band, Alexandria, Minn.; 4th Marine Aircraft Wing Band.
”98th Annual Tournament of Roses Parade,” 10 a.m. on NBC-Ch. 5, WGN-Ch. 9, WFLD-Ch. 32 and WSNS-Ch. 44. CBS-Ch. 2 begins its coverage at 10:30 a.m. The 22 marching bands will include the Holland (Mich.) High School Marching Band, whose members all wear wooden shoes; Sarasota (Fla.) Riverview High School ”kiltie and bagpipe” band; the U.S. Marine Corps Band.
Most bowl game halftimes will include intermittent coverage of bands from the competing schools, along with first-half reviews and other game reports. Here are some promising halftimes:
Cotton Bowl, 12:30 p.m. on CBS-Ch. 2: Texas A&M vs. Ohio State University. Probably the biggest and loudest halftime will be the ”Cotton Bowl Extravaganza.” The Texas Aggies` military precision band and Ohio State`s brass band will each have a halftime opening segment. Following presentation of the Cotton Bowl Queen, a mass band performance, including the 4th Marine Aircraft Wing Band, will fill the stadium with music.
Sugar Bowl, 2:30 p.m. on ABC-Ch. 7: Louisiana State University vs. University of Nebraska.
Rose Bowl, 4 p.m. on NBC-Ch. 5: University of Michigan vs. Arizona State University.
Orange Bowl, 7 p.m. on NBC-Ch. 5: University of Oklahoma vs. University of Arkansas.
Fiesta Bowl, 7 p.m. Friday on NBC-Ch. 5: University of Pennsylvania State vs. University of Miami.
