letsgiveacheer

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Nice to see so much green being worn by our new staff.

Excellent, Emmitt! Your daughter is very cute. Thanks for posting!

Well, I seem to remember Plumb, GreenJoe, SilverEagle, GrayEagle, and myself. There were a few others, too.

The idea of a forum for old farts to talk about the Hayden Fry days is a good one. Let me suggest we call this: "Fry Street". A forum for those even older can be called the "Rust Belt" I also suggest we wait 40 years or so before we establish another forum for the current youngsters if they are still interested and posting so they can talk about their "good old days". In 2050, we can call this "Dickey Days", "Dodge Ball", or even "Mac Attack".

The web site is bush league. Here we are asking people to buy seats, but we don't even bother to post a complete schedule. The information on the new coach is spotty as well. Wouldn't it nice to really highlight his career with pictures and video clips? There is no explanation of the difference between general admission ($100) or season tickets ($150). How many games goes the family package support, etc etc? Our sports marketing department can do better.

At least they have a nice stadium!

Synthetic vs real turf?

SMU TCU Texas Tech Baylor

Wasn't Jim Harbaugh one of our three finalists when we hired Dodge? What a great game Stanford played against Va Tech tonight!

Sorry Joe, but do not have that. Winslow came after I graduated and I only met him on two occasions. The first is when he came to audition for the position. He was director of bands at UCLA prior to coming to North Texas.

Thanks for the suggestions about file sharing sites. I hope this works! Here are several favorites from the McAdow days including the original fight song. Please remember that these were recorded using vacuum tubes (boy, am I getting old!) The first link is the famous fanfare that Silver Eagle often writes about. It is from a Wagner opera and was played before the band entered the field for pregame. Pregame usually consisted of a march down the field. Then we turned to face the visitor's stands and played their fight song. Then into a block formation facing the home stands for the alma mater, then another formation for the national anthem, usually conducted by the visiting team's director if they happened to bring their band. Then off the field playing the fight song. The fight song is the original version as posted earlier. You'll recognize the melody of course, but this arrangement is completely different. "Glory to the Green" was sung by four guys out of the band! The other three tunes are representative of what we played on the field. "Colonel Bogey" was often used when the band was marching in a precision formation. "Them Basses" was a McAdow favorite played in the stands. "Robinson's Grand Entry" is a circus march that was sometimes played as the band was finishing its half-time show. It was transition music as we moved into an interlocking NT or NTS formation. The band then launched into the fight song while in those formations and marched off the field. Someone suggested that we have a throwback show and play the fight song as originally written. A few years ago when we were having a marching band reunion to raise money for a McAdow scholarship fund. I wrote the current director suggesting we do this for that occasion but did not receive the courtesy of a reply. I hope everyone enjoys these. http://www.4shared.com/audio/-KRZCKDa/Fanfare.html http://www.4shared.com/audio/zEG3AL-p/Fight_Song.html http://www.4shared.com/audio/32Ad3Jb3/Glory_to_the_Green.html http://www.4shared.com/audio/G-16LAVI/Robinsons_Grand_Entry.html http://www.4shared.com/audio/TOtq8Xuy/Them_Basses.html http://www.4shared.com/audio/k01m56JN/Colonel_Bogey.html

For the benefit of all, I'll explain this in non-musical terms. As Silver said, the fight song was played as originally written until 1975. At that time, Bob Winslow took over as director of bands and wanted to make his mark on the program, given that Maurice McAdow had been director of bands for such a long period. Besides ditching the long standing band traditions, he also "updated" the fight song. The original "Fight, North Texas" contained not only the melody that we are all familiar with, but rich counter-melodies and harmonies, in other words, the bass instruments were playing one thing, the tenor instruments (trombones, baritones, etc) another, the alto instruments (saxes, horns, etc) still another and the melody was played by instruments such as the trumpets and clarinets. The result was a very exciting and complex fight song that reflected the great music program at North Texas. The "new" fight song eliminated those counter-melodies and harmonies. Now, everyone plays the melody other than the bass instruments. To my mind, it is bland and uninspiring. There were also some other changes. The original went, "let's cheer the green and white..." The new version goes, "let's cheer the green and let's cheer the white". Oddly, the official words were never updated to reflect the change in the music. If anyone can direct me to a site that will allow me to share large files with the forum, I'll be happy to post the original fight song as well as a few other tunes from the McAdow days. I think you would enjoy them.

This video has been making the rounds for several weeks but I resisted posting it as I did not want to sound like a broken record. In the old days, this was how all marching bands performed, and no one did it better than North Texas. At any given halftime, you could see an eagle flying across the field, a typewriter complete with a movable carriage with keys going up and down, a tiger in a cage, a steam boat sailing across the 50 yard line, etc, etc. And the crowd ate it up! And as I have said, we presented a new show every game. Kudos to Hawaii for having the vision to realize that this corps style of marching that permeates almost every marching band, including our own, is about as exciting as watching a house plant grow.

One of the best games I've seen all year! SBC 2, MAC 0

We also have a great tradition of changing our traditions: Nick name: Normal Boys (unofficial) to Eagles to Mean Green Colors: green and white, to green, white, blue, and copper, to green and white, with some black thrown in for good measure (not to mention every shade of green imaginable to man) Fight Song: "Dumbed down" in 1976 Alma mater: eliminated the first and second verse, now only sing the refrain Joking aside, welcome to the board! We have a great time here and that's a tradition I hope we keep.

These are tragic memories. In 1970, fellow MVC member Wichita St lost most of its football team in a crash in route to a game with Utah St. They continued their season but were never the same. They finally gave up football sometime if the 80"s. The Wheat Shockers has to be one of the best nicknames in the NCAA.

I agree, green and white only with no black! Other schools seem to do just fine using their two schools colors, we should be able to do the same. Regarding the shade of green, I am no fan of the current kelly green but I would hate to see us go to another shade. If you go to MTSU, you will see everything in their distinctive blue; football uniforms, band uniforms, signage, etc. The last time I was on campus in Denton, I saw at least 10 shades of North Texas green (whatever that is) when I stopped counting. The last thing we need is yet another green. Besides black and green makes you look like a x-box.

Congratulations!

I recall the ranked SDSU game was at Fouts. I remember this because there were only 300 fans at the game. Reported attendance was 1000! It was as empty as I had seen Fouts including the dismal Rust 1-10 season. While this has nothing to do with the MWC, the cagey Fry reportedly voted SDSU as high as he could the week before we played them, bumping them even higher in the rankings.

Here's my offer, if you can find frequent reference to "The Snake Pit" in an old Yucca or NT Daily, I'll gladly stand corrected. I never recalled the Pit referred to as the Snake Pit in the entire four years I was at North Texas. I looked through my Yucca's and the few NT Daily's I own and in every case, I see reference to "The Pit". Granted, it was an opposing coach who "named" the Pit by saying something like, "playing in that place is like playing in a Snake Pit". Besides, wouldn't we now be playing in the Super Snake Pit, instead of the Super Pit?

Happy Birthday, DG!

It was never called the Snakepit...just "The Pit".

I visited one of the IU fan boards and there was no mention of Bowen at all. Interestingly, in recent posts, they did think they were opening our new stadium next season and had nice things to say about it. One poster hoped we didn't embarrass them!

I'd agree with you if that was the case, but we just finished the season last week and I'm sure the decision to participate in the Stars game was made long before then. Also, I have some GB members as Facebook friends and one of them just posted that he was turning in his uniform for the last time today. Our band looked pretty rag-tag in that photo.