Strike Up The Band

Yes, there's the game and a chance to see the team emerge victorious and take another step towards the long, neverending quest to play in Pasadena in January. But if it's just the game, there's high-definition television, larger screens, DVRs, Slingboxes, and a whole range of technological wizardry that makes it easier to enjoy the game better than ever from home.

So it has to be something more than just the game itself. For many, it's the atmosphere; that singularity of spirit that ties alumni and fans together across decades; for older fans it's the extension of a decades-long tradition, for newer fans it's the start of a routine that future unknown generations will find themselves committed to.

One of the key embodiments of Golden Bear spirit is the University of California Marching Band. While most people are familiar with them from the performances during football games, they can also be seen at the Friday noontime rally at Sproul, just about every place you look during Big Game Week, and members of the marching band can be seen playing with the Straw Hat Band and at a variety of sporting and non-sporting events.

With 232 members, the band has 10 different classifications of instrument, and based on 2007 numbers has a roughly 55%/45% breakdown of females to males, and has 60% of its members being underclassmen.

Recently, six members of the University of California marching band, sat down to talk about the band, how its routines come together, how they came to be part of the band and what their fondest memories were.

History

According to the Cal Band's website, the band was originally started as the University Cadet Band in 1891. After the ROTC absorbed the Cadets, the band members asked the ASUC to sponsor a student-run band that had it's first performance in 1923.

In 1950, the band re-invented itself following the 1950 Rose Bowl, where they patterned themselves after several Big Ten bands. Also in 1960, the Straw Hat Band was founded. In subsequent years, several traditions were added that are now staples of, the Band's routine.

In the 1960s, the “bomb” - a flash powder device that was detonated prior to band's arrival on the field – was added as was the flying wedge and the script Cal.

During the early 70s, the late Bob Briggs became band director. Briggs had marched in the band from 1947 to 1950, and ended up directing the band from 1971 to 1995. He had the honor of marching in four Rose Bowls, three as a student (1949, 1950 and 1951), and one as an invited alumnus (1959).

Current band director Robert Calonico, who was a student director in 1975, replaced Briggs in 1995, and directs and arranges for the Cal Marching Band as well as conducts for the University Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band.

Although it's been more than three decades since Calonico's been a student, he's not afraid to have a little fun.

One of the more popular aspects of the halftime show is when band members toss their instruments aside and strut their dance moves in front of the student section. Band members have to audition for the chance to be in dance portion of the show.

This year, the band had a dance-off during halftime of the Colorado State game and this year they decided to include the band director.

Getting him to come down off the band director's ladder and join the festivities was easy.

“He's fun loving,” said Tara Castro, the band's public relations director, and also a clarinet player. 'If you watch him closely, you'll see him up there dancing on the ladder during our routines. He'll grove out. But he's also forceful when he needs to be.”

The California Marching Band prides itself on being a student-run organization and band members are happy that he's entrusts them to do training.

“He respects that we're a student-led organization and our right to make decisions,” said Castro. “He wants us to take ownership of our tasks but he also let's us be college students.

Charting the show

With seven home games this season, the band's been busier than normal. Between listening to tapes of ideas for halftime shows, organizing the music for each part, charting the marching patterns, and then organizing rehearsals, there's a whole lot more to being the band than simply showing up and playing.

The band currently has 232 members, and has an impressive array of committees that have to do with everything from recruiting and publicity to uniforms and music.

Prior to the season, band members listen to a series of cut tapes of proposed band shows. The band's always been open to a wide variety of shows, with this year's themes including arena rock, 90s boy bands, a Disney show, and Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. And where in the past, the band has usually repeated its last show of the game for the bowl game, this year, they've got a secret show that they're currently keeping under wraps.

“We have a stunt committee that charts the pre-game,” said clarinet player Sarah Coonley. “They begin doing that over the summer. Once we start fall training, we have to learn each half. We hand out the charts two weeks before the game, another group proofreads it, the stunt committee assigns it. We have to be careful about how people get assigned. Sometimes they've been known to put people next to each other who've just broken up.

“We have a follow-up consisting of four sessions, and then we get our poop sheets on Monday night,” Coonley added. “We mark our spots on the sheets on Tuesday, then we do march rehearsal on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays and Saturday mornings.”

Ideally the band would have at least two weeks between shows, but twice this year they have home games on back-to-back weeks which increases the challenge. For the Arizona State game, matters were made difficult because on top of just having one week to prepare, the 12:30 p.m. start meant that the band would have a call time at 6 a.m. on Saturday. With the team needing the field before the game to prepare, the band has to conduct their pre-game walk-through several hours in advance of the game.

“Sometimes charting the show out is easy,” said Castro. “For the Frankie Valli show, the marching is hard, so we've got teaching assistants helping guide people to spots. Saturday's the most important where we can actually finally prepare and we can see who's learned it and who's practiced it.”

As is the case with any organization, depth is critical for the marching band, and it's always important to have a few alternates on hand.

“The stunt committee always charts who will be where for the pregame,” said Coonley. “But we always have alternates available, sometimes people get sick or there are deaths in the family. We always have a lot of recruits at the beginning of the year, but a lot drop off. Some times people will have midterms coming up, but one time I had three mid-terms before UCLA and I thought 'no way, I'm not missing this.'”

Going into any show, there's a degree of competition going on as band members have to play their way into the program.

“You have to earn your spot on the show,” said clarinet player Malia McPherson. “You get tested on the music, you can't be late, you have to have the proper attire. The chart includes 95% of the band members in the show, 5% are alternates.”

Two keys for any band member to get through the season are pacing and priorities.

“During the fall you want to try to take light units,” said trombonist Phil Parent. “During Big Game week we will have a few Big Game-related performances almost daily. During that week, you shouldn't be sleeping. You should either be at a lecture, learning the show or doing your homework.”

Joining the band

While most people are familiar with the recruiting process for football and basketball players – which involves camps, clubs, videotapes and letters – the process for recruiting band members is considerably different.

Some people knew fairly early on that they wanted to be in the band, while others who maybe hadn't been considering it initially, had their Eureka moment after being on campus. Regardless of how they came to the band, they're all happy to have stuck with it.

“I definitely came to Cal to be in the band,” said Parent, who in what little spare time he has, likes to keep tabs on football recruiting. “In the band I found that I had 200 instant friends. Even if I don't have the chance to talk to all of them. I've never had a class alone where there wasn't at least one other band member there.”

Coonley was active with the band in high school and was well aware about the time commitment which is why she initially thought she'd decline.

“I was a drum major in high school and it was so much work in high school that I thought at first 'no'” said Coonley. “But I fell it love with it which is a big part of why we think and work and play together and spend time on band things.”

Castro originally was thinking about going to school elsewhere.

“My first thought wasn't to come to Cal, it was to go to Chico because my parents went there,” said Castro. “I never considered Cal, but my Mom took me here to take a look. I heard the band and I loved it. Also, Cal was great in academics. And once you've joined the band, nobody regrets it.”

While the Cal student body has a lot of people who arrive at Berkeley thinking they've put their musical pasts behind them, sometimes a basic CalSO (California Student Orientation) performance is all it takes to pull them back in.

“I didn't have a marching band at my high school,” said alto sax player Gordon Chien. “Once I saw them at CalSO, I knew I had to join. I saw the show and loved it, and the Cal band is the reason I'm here at Cal and not at Michigan.”

“I saw the band play at CalSO and they were all really friendly,” said bass player Ananth Kasturiraman. “So I signed the interest form but I didn't really know the commitment until I went through the fall training program. But you got really good seats to the football game so I gave it a chance and I'm glad that I did.

Budget

With the state as well as the university going through budget woes, various groups and departments have had to face budget cuts, including the marching band. Even though the marching band does engage in various fundraising events, from its big annual banquet to the sale of CDs, along with playing different events, there's still not enough money for them to do everything they'd like.

Consequently, this season, they will miss the road games at Washington State and Arizona.

In a recent Daily Californian story, Cal band director Robert Calonico discussed the effects of the band's 7 percent budget cut.

“(It's) the first time in my tenure that the budget fell short of the funds available,” Calonico told the Daily Cal. “(The band) has increased in size, but funding has steadily declined in recent years."

Even though the Bears have just five road games this season, funding cuts drastically affect travel.

“Every year we take the full band to Los Angeles on five buses,” said Castro. “For the other away games we usually take the bus or fly 30 or 40 people – the Straw Hat Band. This year you have to be a junior or senior and have had a high level of performance. With this year's budget, everybody took a cut. We get endowment money but that's targeted on instruments and uniforms. In the past we've had band members pay for up to 2/3 of their airfare, food and travel but it's not right to make them do that. This year we're going to have miss Washington State and Arizona.”

Internet message board comments that band members lacked dedication to make the trips frustrated them. While it's one thing to question whether or not somebody does something well, it's another to question someone's dedication.

“It used to be we could get in a car and drive ourselves up but we can't do that now with liability issues,” said Coonley. “We do have the heart. And that weekend, there was not one band member who was watching that (Washington State) game alone. We were all somewhere, in groups, watching the game together.”

“It's not the first time we missed a game,” said Parent. “Somebody said the band hadn't missed a game in 33 years and that's not true.”

Straw Hat Band

Aside from the University of California Marching Band, there's the Straw Hat band which is a subset of the marching band. Participation in the Straw Hat Band is voluntary, but an incentive system is developed for people to be able to go to away events and post-season tournaments.

“Everybody marches but with the Straw Hat Band it's whoever wants to go,” said Parent. “Sometimes you'll see other band members at other events with the Straw Hat Band, and sometimes you won't see other people until the next fall.”

While most people are familiar with the Straw Hat Band from their work during basketball games, they usually play two to three events a week, and throw in the CalSO where they may find themselves playing a dozen or so times, as well as other scattered events and their event total during the course of the year numbers close to 200.

And for some of those events, a string quartet would simply be too passé.

“We play at weddings and anniversaries,” said Parent. “You've got some members who want to play at everything, and they'll go to as many Straw Hat Band (SHB) events as possible. For a lot of us, SHB is also a core social event, you can end up playing next to someone for years. The Pac-10 tourney is great, because they put us up in a hotel and we get a per diem. It's not hard to get people to go to that.”

Trips and other bands

With one exception, the fraternity between the California Marching Band and other bands is excellent. Even though the teams may be at odds against each other on the playing field or on court, the bands extend courtesies to each other, particularly to a band that's coming from out of town.

“Maryland was a lot hotter than we expected,” said Castro. “Their band brought us Gatorade and checked up on us a lot.”

Cal's band has always gotten along very well with the University of Washington marching band, often asking them to join them on the Memorial Stadiium field to play The Star Spangled Banner before games.

“At Washington, it was pouring and they brought us smocks and hot chocolate,” said Chien. “It's just a different culture.”

As much as Stanford's rag-tag marching band might prove to be an eyesore and a nuisance for Cal fans, they get along with the Cal band, and following a basketball game, either at Haas Pavilion or Maples Pavilion, you can often see both pep bands playing alongside each other outside afterwards.

“Some bands are hardcore,” said McPherson, who's earned the admiration of her bandmates for her academic prowess. “Stanford's a happy medium. Their goal is to just go out there, be crazy and have a lot of fun.”

“They don't sound good at all,” said Parent. “They're more about going out there and having a good time.”

However, that's between bands. As far as the Big Game goes, there's always something out of the ordinary happening.

“The Big Game's always interesting,” said Kasturiraman, who noted that last year at Arizona State, a few spectators pelted the band with batteries. “Last year (at Stanford) we had somebody's hat fall off, and a fan ran onto the field, picked up ran back into the stands and lit it on fire.”

With as many varied personalities as the Cal band has, there are a lot of different perspectives on a range of events. But when it comes to the worst trip and worst experience, there is a consensus.

“USC is the worst,” said McPherson. “They'd throw things at us, students would be running around on the field so we couldn't do our show, and one time our bus tried to drop us off in the middle of a tailgate and they wouldn't let us get off the bus.”

“We get along with everyone except for the USC band,” said Chien. “Their band director won't even let us approach them. One time we tried to bring them hot dogs and they turned us away.”

“We had worked it out so that we would do our halftime show and we scrunched it so they could do theirs,” said Coonley. “We had planned it so they were supposed to come in from one way, we were going to go leave another way, but they purposely went on the wrong side of the field to mess us up.”

But while some trips turn out to be more adventuresome than others, some of them end better due to the simplest of gestures.

“There was one little boy who saw us marching out after the UCLA game last year,” said Castro. “It was a tough loss and he said to us, 'Well at least you guys are smarter.'

Memories

Whether a member of the University of California Marching Band or the Straw Hat Band, band members have a perspective that puts them a little closer to the action than most students or ardent fans. Band members who play at away events can find themselves the obvious targets of the sodden masses.

Consequently, victory can make for the sweetest of memories.

“It was the 2007 Pac-10 men's basketball tournament in Los Angeles,” said Parent, who was playing with the Straw Hat Band. “There were UCLA fans all around us, and they were screaming at us all game. Then Ayinde Ubaka, with his blue tongue, starting hitting 3s and Cal ended up winning. I was so happy that I saw Sandy Barbour walking by us, and I gave her a big hug and lifted her off the ground.”

It was also last year when the 6th-ranked Cal football team defeated 11th-ranked Oregon 31-24 in a tightly contested game in Eugene where again the nearby Duck fans weren't behaving with restraint. With Oregon coming into the game favored, the Bears' improbable win led to an emotional outpouring after the game.

“When DeSean Jackson and Robert Jordan came up after the Oregon game and took turns leading the band,” said Kasturiraman, “That was great.”

Sometimes a fond remembrance will come not so much based on the outcome of a particular game but the experience.

“Tennessee was my favorite away trip,” said Chien. “Even though we lost the game, the fans were amazing. They treated us really well, and to see all those fans packed in and all singing Rocky Top with the “Woo!” was amazing. And then to get us out there they gave the band bus a police escort on the wrong side of the freeway.”

But sometimes the lasting memories come not out of one particular moment.

“For me, it's always that feeling when we're in the tunnel before the game,” said Castro. “We'll stand there, we're all ready, we begin to march and then the bomb goes off and all the new members are startled.”

McPherson echoes that thought.

“When you come out of the tunnel and you hear the crowd and it's a noise like you've never heard before,” she said.

Movies

Given Hollywood's propensity to perpetuate stereotypes and then dig into them, it's no surprise that marching bands haven't ended up faring all that well in the silver screen. The American Pie movie series hardly disspelled the notion of band members being geeks and nerds and the Drumline story line focused on an individual, which is largely at odds with the idea of a band which places a high degree of emphasis on order and unity.

Although they march in uniforms and hats with big plumes and like dancing in front of the student section, and have an entertaining march from Sproul Plaza up to the stadium following their pre-game rally (“We've got one of the most unique marches up,” said Chien. “We're not just marching, we're yelling, we're dancing and we're running up stairs.”), that shouldn't detract from the fact that they're serious musicians.

“There are no good marching band movies,” said Parent. “The most honest musical movie that's been made is Amadeus. “One time we had a choice of movies between Drumline and Amadeus and we all wanted to see Amadeus.”

“I'd go with Mr. Holland's Opus or Amadeus,” said McPherson, who like almost all band members went to some sort of band camp during high school and rolls her eyes at the American Pie rolling punch line. “Every year at camp, our t-shirts read, 'And one time at band camp...'”

A fellow band member didn't look as dimly on the series, even though the movie he favored was without Alyson Hannigan.

“I liked American Pie 4 Band Camp and Remember The Titans,” said Kasturiraman, who when asked to spell his last name, will simply toss you his student ID. “In high school everyone thinks band camp is nerdy, but when you're out there playing you see that little kids really like you and then you'll see band alums come and watch and then it's really not so bad.”

High School Band Day

One of the more colorful days during football season in high school band day. High school bands from throughout California descend upon Memorial Stadium, in full uniform with cheerleaders and flag bearers to take part in the halftime show.

Aside from the chance to play for a few minutes in front of thousands of people at Memorial Stadium, it's also an opportunity for hundreds of students to visit a college campus and play in a big-time atmosphere, it's also a chance for them to look past their immediate lives of midterms, carwash fundraisers and taking the SATs, and gives them a moment to peer into the future.

“One high school band member came up to me afterwards and said that to be able to play like that in front of that many people was so inspiring,” said Coonley. “Not all schools get a chance to do something like that and a lot of people in bands haven't been to a college campus.”

Band members volunteer to be aides for each high school band and take each band on a walking tour of campus.

The band's Public Relations Committee begins working with schools several months in advance on planning and logistics, coordinating everything from music and practice to where the buses will be parked.

“I was the band aide for Sierra High School out of Manteca,” said Chien. “I took them over to west side of the Campanile and had stand and turn and look into the Bay. Some of them probably would have stood there forever if they could, and one said to me 'I need to come to Cal.'”

And even though the actual time that the high school bands are on the field playing only lasts a few minutes, which might seem like a small amount of time considering the amount of time spent travelling and practicing, it's an opportunity and a trip that bands will go through extraordinary means to make.

“There was one band that had just had their homecoming the day before,” said Castro. “They'd had their homecoming dance the night before and they all ended up sleeping in the band room, so they could wake up at 1 in the morning and make the drive down here.”

Coda

After sitting with the band members for a couple of hours, a constant that comes through is their exuberance about being not just a member, but also being a student, and being a part of Cal. While college is certainly about classes and homework and setting out on a direction in life, it's also about relationships, experiences, and memories.

While as a spectator, one could understandably look at the band as a monolith that goes from point to point, from their perspective, there are hundreds of observations going on at any single moment, knowing when people are there:

“Every Friday afternoon during our noon rally at Sproul, ther's always this one guy who's wearing a knit sweater vest with Oski on it,” recalls Coonley. “He's in his late 80s and he comes to every concert and he's up front, dancing.”

And even when they aren't.

“There's always a little boy who's dressed in white who's always in front of us at Sproul who's there with his toy clarinet,” said Castro. “We love him but we haven't seen him this year.”

Among the band members, you'll find some of the voracious sports fans on campus, who watch all the games, read all the newspapers, and yes, even Internet message boards, as well as some who like the musical aspects of the band as well as the marching and camaraderie but whose are still nascent in their appreciation of sports.

“We've got people who started off with the band who didn't like college football,” said Coonley. “They'd show up to games at first and bring books and they might look up when we scored. They end up loving college football.”

For other band members, part of being a band member in college means the perpetual unsolved mystery.

“There's a problem with this highway sign. They have trouble spelling Stanford correctly, so the sign on the 101 is always having to be fixed,” said Chien. “Then somebody will try to fix it, and then someone will have to go back and correct it so that the top of the “o” isn't there. My mom will call and ask what's up with the sign and I have to tell her it's not us.”

As is the case with any group that's yoked together for a period of time, there's bound to be drama from time-to-time, causing one member to say, “the next reality show should be on a marching band, but I don't want it to be us.”

Each of the members present will tell you that the hours of preparation are unquestionably worth it, but some special moments make it even more so.

“I'd just started at Cal, I was in the dorm, and I had on a Cal band shirt, and this really pretty girl started staring at me and said, 'Omigod, are you in the band?,' remembered Coonley.

The clarinetist responded in the affirmative and braced herself for the follow-up only to be pleasantly surprised.

“That is SO cool!”

 

To learn more about the Cal band, visit their website at http://www.calband.berkeley.edu/calband/