Pep Bands vs. Canned Music at Football Games

['gro]

Picture your stereotypical band geek.... now picture a band geek at a school full of dorks.

RPI Pep Band

I had to look this up. They have a pretty extensive web site. They were fun to watch during football games when you werent on the field.

[Pat Coleman]

You might want to see if they can do something about the URL of that page:

http://pepband.union.rpi.edu/index.html

[ADL70]

Google TBDBITL and see what you get...ok it's self proclaimed.  But the band is unique in being patterned after a British brass band.  That's all brass and percussion.  And it's all band, no flag squads, etc.  Only one drum major.

['gro]

You might want to see if they can do something about the URL of that page:

http://pepband.union.rpi.edu/index.html

yeah, all clubs are run through the student union. the word should be banned from campus.

[AUPepBand]

You might want to see if they can do something about the URL of that page:

http://pepband.union.rpi.edu/index.html

yeah, all clubs are run through the student union. the word should be banned from campus.

Gee, and I thought that link indicated that perhaps there was a merger study underway......Union Rensselaer Polytechnic College (URPC)??
URPC Pep Band....the Sound of the Dutch Engineers!

[Josh Bowerman]

We found the 50-60s era blazers and wore 'em at the games, too.  It was great fun.   

Wait a minute, Ron.  Weren't you in college in the 50s or 60s?    8)

[AUPepBand]

Picture your stereotypical band geek.... now picture a band geek at a school full of dorks.

RPI Pep Band

I had to look this up. They have a pretty extensive web site. They were fun to watch during football games when you werent on the field.

Looks like the RPI Pep Band is legit. Heard good things about their play at the ECACs Fisher game. Actually, someone from Fisher posted that the RPI pep band was the best they'd seen/heard, which, considering the fact that AU's Pep Band was at Growney only a week earlier, well, I guess the RPI band is better than ours. (Perhaps Fisher fans were still hurting from their 13-7 defeat at the hands of the Saxons....and seeing their QB powerbombed by Brenton Brady).

AU Pep Band is not known for its orchestral qualities. We do take pride, however, in our knack for keeping in sync with the action on the field. We've been told that our lame attempt at the "Hawaii Five-O" theme song (Coach Murray's favorite) sounded more like Hawaii Three-O.

But the music from our band is far better than the canned....

[gordonmann]

I haven't seen too many pep bands at football games, but the most entertaining was either Williams' or Amherst's during the late 90s which was comprised of no more than 5 people including a triangle player.

[Knightstalker]

There was always NJCU's reluctent pep band.  Every year they were coerced into playing at homecoming, barring monsoon.  The grades of the symphony of winds and percussion were held hostage by Mr. C.  He did the same thing to us for graduation.  Many of us had to give up good paying gigs for these events.  We were given the stock pep band music folders with all the fight songs and Sousa marches, we would play some but then would somehow wander off into a blues or jazz jam, or sometimes improvisation on fight songs, nothing like turning On Wisconsin or the Notre Dame fight song into swing numbers.

[AUPepBand]

While in NYC, AUPepBand attended a Brown football game at Columbia. Both Ivy League schools had pep bands, so it was an opportunity to observe what others do. The Columbia "band" was literally a joke, as I remember.  Less than a dozen absurdly dressed comedians.

The Brown band, however, was something else. My father-in-law had attended Brown. He used to boast that he'd dropped out of one of the nation's finest institutions of higher learning! When Brown scored a TD, the band played through its fight song, then turned around and sang it with the fans, then played it again, then followed with some antics where a few members did pushups while the band counted them out to the total points scored. The celebration continued through the kickoff and three or four plays into the next series of plays!

I later learned that my trombone player was good friends with the Brown band director and had attended his band camp. Which reminds me of this one time at band camp....

[Knightstalker]

We don't want to know where your flute has been.  But this one time in a third floor practice room...

[frank uible]

A few years ago at the DIII Final Four in Salem I encountered John Carroll's pep band. It had a large number of instruments (I estimate about 30-35) and was extremely proficient (in today's argot "hot"). Additionally its theme song seemed to be "Because", made popular many years ago by Clevelander Frankie Yankovic as a polka - and that struck a responsive chord in me.

[AUPepBand]

We don't want to know where your flute has been.  But this one time in a third floor practice room...

Can't imagine there are too many "band camp" stories out there....most posters were probably in the locker room during the halftime show.

AUPepBand may get a boost this fall with a couple of drummers who performed a drum duet during the "Alfies" program (I supervise both of them as student library assistants--we never let them drum in the library) and who were planning to start a new campus club called "Percussive." AUPepBand, I believe, has persuaded said drummers to function as a part of AUPepBand and, perhaps, perform halftime beatings.

[matblake]

A few years ago at the DIII Final Four in Salem I encountered John Carroll's pep band. It had a large number of instruments (I estimate about 30-35) and was extremely proficient (in today's argot "hot"). Additionally its theme song seemed to be "Because", made popular many years ago by Clevelander Frankie Yankovic as a polka - and that struck a responsive chord in me.

Contrary to popular belief, "Polka King" Frankie Yankovic is not "Weird" Al Yankovic's father.  Info is about 3/4 of the way down the page. http://www.weirdal.com/faq.htm

[frank uible]

We current or once-upon-a-time Clevelanders are not confused about the Yankovics nor, I suspect, were or are members of the pep band at John Carroll, located in University Heights, Ohio, a suburb of Cleveland.