Columbia's marching band is back...
Again.
And I'm glad.
Despite all the issues with the band over the years, I did miss hearing the sounds of the team fight song being played and other tunes during games. (When I could hear them... see below).
If you're wondering how this can all happen from scratch, remember that Columbia starts this season with two games on the road. That means the process for assembling a band has plenty of time to go before the first home game of the season, 32 days from now.
My biggest beef with the band in recent decades wasn't the off-color jokes or even the bashing of the team, (though I didn't love that last part).
The problem was that whether it was the songs played during the games or the halftime comedy show... in recent years you could almost NEVER hear them at all! Hopefully, that will be a lesson the university employee hired to oversee the band will teach them first.
5 comments:
My problem is that they were just awful- not funny, not clever, not prepared. The looked and acted like a bunch of clowns pulled off the street. And attacking our own team was the final straw.
Amen!
The announcement:...the new band will be supervised by a band director employed by Columbia, who will manage the group with input from both the Columbia Athletics marketing office and the Columbia University Band Alumni Association. Interested students will have to audition to join the band.
A prior embarrassment.....Hopefully, a new beginning
The new setup sounds very similar to how the Princeton Band is run. But it really comes down to the students and whether they are in it for the music or not. Princeton makes the same awful jokes as Columbia but their musical quality is very high and they excel at pep-band music, playing often and well. Is that because Princeton also has a good orchestra and jazz band and many students from those groups will play in the marching band a little as well? Is it because Princeton's basketball successes trained the band to play pep-type music well? Was it just random luck as the band size rose and fell over the years? Hard to say.
The CUMB often would go an entire quarter without really playing anything, and when they did play it was awful. Maybe this will now change, but you still won't be able to hear them if they continue to be seated down low on the side, facing the visitors.
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