UAPB Band

I'm sure our band is technically great and I know they love and support the frogs through all kinds of weather/conditions, etc. but sitting in the end zone after UAPB played, I swear I've heard louder elevator music. My wife didn't even realize they had started playing until I said something 3-4 minutes in.

I have to believe a real spread would have been much higher.

 

That's the first time I ever stood up (standing "O") for a marching band. They entertained me. I could care less about marching techniques...just entertain me!

 

All I have to say is we followed a fantastically energetic UPBA band with “Penny Lane”. I love our band but WTH is the TCU band director thinking?

 

Just wait until the new music building is done. Then we can finally get better band recruits

 

Somebody on KFC (can’t remember who) had a great line about the halftime shows. It was like watching Jimi Hendrix open for Lawrence Welk.

 

I've complained about this for 15 years and I just get push back because of our "sound quality". The UAPB band was awesome!

 

Lawrence Welk is the TCU band announcer

 

Sound quality is a studio concern. We’re trying to play a $5,000 Córdoba nylon string classical guitar through a Shure SM7B mic, when we need to start playing a $500 Strat through an old Marshall turned up to 11.

 

I'll take their announcer too. The thing about UAPB that I like is they march. Our band no longer marches. Our band is like all the Texas high school bands now. They have a theme, they have all of the percussion instruments along the sidelines, and they don't play anything anyone wants to hear. That stinks! Why can't we take a lesson form these SWAC schools march, play loudly, and play songs people like. How hard is that?

Finally, we can't even play Deep in the Heart of Texas the correct way. What numbskull thinks this jazzy rendition sounds good? IT DOESN'T!

 

Maybe he was thinking that we’d enjoy a piccolo trumpet solo???? Just a guess

 

We still march. I just don’t think we marched this past game bc it was the first game of the season and they must not make the students get to campus early to learn a routine for the first game.

Either way, UAPB kicked our ass at half time. Wasn’t even close.

 

For those that missed it (or want to watch again):

 

As much as our football team has to beat the odds with recruiting, our marching band has it much worse.

First off, a typical school has about 1 band member for every 100 undergrad, which means TCU should have around 80-90 people in the marching band. TCU manages to get over 200, but the way they do that is by allowing anyone who has ever picked up an instrument into the band. Schools like UT and OSU have auditions and you have to prove you know the music. TCU can't afford to do that and have a similar sized band. (UAPB has a huge band for how big their enrollment is btw)

2nd, most schools don't force their music majors to be in the band. You'd think having music majors in the band would make it better, but it doesn't when half of them don't actually want to be there. Imagine if you were an engineering major on an engineering scholarship, and they said, "As part of your scholarship stipulations, we want you to spend 10 hours a week practicing water aerobics so that you can perform while showing us math equations at the weekly swim meet. And we're going to pair you up with a bunch of people who struggled to complete algebra II." You wouldn't put much effort into it.

Lastly, the actual caliber of players at TCU is much lower than many public schools simply because of how expensive it is to go to TCU. It is much cheaper and much more prestigious to go to UNT if you're wanting to become a professional musician. When most music majors are looking to either take a teaching job (making less than $50,000) or go on to graduate school, it doesn't make financial sense to go to TCU.

All that being said, I think our band does a decent job. I'd personally rather have their performances over Rice or Stanford's.

 

They need to earn the chip!

 

Even sadder is that many of our band members are not even TCU students. TCC and UTA students can get paid for marching with our students or it would be even smaller!!

 

They also had a ton of brass, which a marching band should have. UAPB had roughly twice as many tubas, for instance, as we do.

I didn't mind the jazzy Deep in the Heart for the first ten years they played it, but it's getting a little repetitious and long in the tooth.

 

I wonder if we could just pay the Toadies to get back together and play our halftimes?

 

Well they played at the Hop in the early 1990's so why not?