OK, look I know some of the stuff from the 80 was ridiculously cheese riddled, but I think Becher did the best job when it came to balancing music selection. For more on that see the song "into the stone". Musicality-wise, Gary Lewis was THE MAN! That SOB Kevin Sedatole was the ruination of the MMB and I wrote and told him as much. The complaint was that The Victors had been made too slow during pregame by Cavender, and that it kind of dragged which is the opposite of what you want to get the croud going. Sedatole's solution was to lose the Lock Step,(high step) and up the tempo. The real solution to the problem was to take the Lock Step to half speed, double the speed of The Victors, and do what the band calls the imperial death march during pregame. For more on that, see the 8 bars or so that is done now during the "dog fight" section of the Victors during pregame.
Number fluctuations: It used to be that the lock step and entries scared away fat band members. That is why the numbers skyrocketed when pregame changed. Not coincedentally, it is also why entries look so much crappier these days. None of the big fat fattys can get their legs up that high, for that long.
There were better solutions, but they were not implemented.
As a band guy I have to tell ya, this makes me so happy that I even registered a new account here just to be able to join in on this particular conversation. I think of the movie Pearl Harbor (done by Michael Bay) and the line where FDR is in the White House, gets out of his wheelchair, and says "do not tell me it cannot be done."
As for the selection of music... umm maybe you haven't noticed, but the MMB hasn't done anything but hard rock and pop halftime shows for like the last 3 years. I personally don't like that, but it is a fact.
I've always said the band should be in the northeast corner of the stadium pointing at the home team side of the field. That way the student section can hear it, the team can hear it, and the natural curve of the stadium acts like an amplifier on its own.
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OK, look I know some of the stuff from the 80 was ridiculously cheese riddled, but I think Becher did the best job when it came to balancing music selection. For more on that see the song "into the stone". Musicality-wise, Gary Lewis was THE MAN! That SOB Kevin Sedatole was the ruination of the MMB and I wrote and told him as much. The complaint was that The Victors had been made too slow during pregame by Cavender, and that it kind of dragged which is the opposite of what you want to get the croud going. Sedatole's solution was to lose the Lock Step,(high step) and up the tempo. The real solution to the problem was to take the Lock Step to half speed, double the speed of The Victors, and do what the band calls the imperial death march during pregame. For more on that, see the 8 bars or so that is done now during the "dog fight" section of the Victors during pregame.
Number fluctuations: It used to be that the lock step and entries scared away fat band members. That is why the numbers skyrocketed when pregame changed. Not coincedentally, it is also why entries look so much crappier these days. None of the big fat fattys can get their legs up that high, for that long.
There were better solutions, but they were not implemented.
As a band guy I have to tell ya, this makes me so happy that I even registered a new account here just to be able to join in on this particular conversation. I think of the movie Pearl Harbor (done by Michael Bay) and the line where FDR is in the White House, gets out of his wheelchair, and says "do not tell me it cannot be done."
As for the selection of music... umm maybe you haven't noticed, but the MMB hasn't done anything but hard rock and pop halftime shows for like the last 3 years. I personally don't like that, but it is a fact.
I've always said the band should be in the northeast corner of the stadium pointing at the home team side of the field. That way the student section can hear it, the team can hear it, and the natural curve of the stadium acts like an amplifier on its own.