Sounds of the stadium marching band concert

FirefightnRick · October 13, 2005

Metro area NT Exes have, or will recieve their invitations in the mail for this event.

7:30, Tuesday, October 25.

The Green Brigade, combined with the marching bands from Denton, Ryan and Guyer High Schools will showcase a concert in the Super Pit.

There is a 6:00 p.m. reception in the NT Exes Alumni Center.

Gateway Building-Under the Arch

6:30 Welcome and Concert Preview.

7:30 Concert in the Super Pit.

Cost: $10 General Admission

$5 NT Exes Members(with membership card)

This event being hosted by the Dallas, Denton and TARRANT County Chapters.

That's right, I said TARRANT COUNTY chapter.

WE'RE BACK!....in green and black, we hit the sack

we've been too long and we're glad to be back [i bet you know...]

Yes, we're let loose

From the noose

That's kept us hanging about

We've been looking at the sky

'Cause it's gettin' us high

Forget the hearse 'cause we'll never die

we got nine lives

Cat's eyes

Abusin' every one of them and running wild...cause we're BACK!

OOPS! Sorry for the AC/DC reference there but I couldn't resist. The Tarrant County Chapter is finalized now and we will be getting in touch with you on future, upcoming events so stay tuned.

As I was saying before,

Most of us rarely get to sit and enjoy the Mean Green Brigade as much as we would like to. Now here is our chance to see them let it all go along with future area musical talent, all under one roof, as well as a great opportunity to raise money for scholarships.

RSVP by Wednesday, October 19th, via email at: bsanders@unt.edu or telephone at 940-565-3162.

Hope to see you there.

Rick

Edited October 13, 2005 by FirefightnRick

PlummMeanGreen · October 13, 2005

In 1982 I was on a "Bands OverTexas" committee of 3 (Dr. Robert A. Winslow, Dennis Fisher and yours truly) in a promotion that then NT President Dr. Alfred F. Hurley Hurley wanted to see take off and to even happen on an annual basis. The problem was that Green Brigade marching band director Dr. Robert "A" (figure it out for yourself) Winslow and Fisher did not want this to happen on an annual basis so the 1'st annual "Bands Over Texas" became the last annual "Bands Over Texas." Like that name? Well, you can blame that one on me.

Anyway, if anyone on campus wants to throw a monkey wrench into any idea from alums or elsewhere, you can count on it not happening whether the NT Chancellor/President wants it to happen or not. That is the power and influence of the NT College of Music at work. BTW, the NT College of Music (albeit a fine academic dept. on our main campus) is not yet at the level of quality that they have advertised themselves to be all these decades. Short-term NT President (future TAMU President) Dr. Frank Vandiver even pointed that out to th NT COM as I recall which was among many other reasons he never gained popularity in Denton.

Sometimes when you tell it like it is at NT, you don't get invited to the better cocktail parties on campus for those that such things are of such vital importance in their life. When the NT College of Music receives a ranking such as Berkely College of Music and similar, then they can start doing some good ol' fashioned Texas bragging. I think NT's College of Music doesn't even have that as a goal, though, and may be too large numbers-wise to really ever attain it.

The 1'st and last annual "Bands Over Texas" was (according to many oustide of the COM) a success with about 2,000 bandsmen in attendance in Denton on a 1982 Game Day because we also had marching band contests that Fall morning at Fouts Field. BTW, guess who won that competition? How about the Highland Park High School Highlanders marching band who even stayed for the Mean Green football game to get their trophy at half time.

Band Days happen at numerous college outposts in the USA but not at UNT (the 2'nd largest College of Music in America) because we still have those on in our COM who say this is impossible to do in Denton Well, maybe the 2'nd largest College of Music in America should go to Lubbock and see how Texas Tech does theirs).

FFR, I think Silver Eagle can tell all of us on GMG.com how successful Band Days were at UNT during the Maurice McAdow (then Green Brigade director) since SE attended a few when he was in an area high school. With Dr. McAdow we had one on campus back in the day who said "we can do this at NT." Amazing what a little "can do" can do, eh? Maybe one day, a new crowd of officials at our NT COM will see that a Band Day can still happen in this millenium.

Another project on a short wishlist that I wish the the 2005 Green Brigade would take on would be the initial organization of an NT Green Brigade Alumnus Band (just like they do at UT-Austin). That would be fun to even see that group come back home on a Game Day. How about each NT Homecoming for starters?

GMG!

Edited October 13, 2005 by PlummMeanGreen

SilverEagle · October 13, 2005

"FFR, I think Silver Eagle can tell all of us on GMG.com how successful Band Days were at UNT during the Maurice McAdow (then Green Brigade director) since SE attended a few when he was in an area high school. With Dr. McAdow we had one on campus back in the day who said "we can do this at NT."

Well, it looked like a big deal to me.....mainly because I had not participated in, or experienced, any sort of College game day experience before attending North Texas homecoming with my HS band. I suppose that it took a big coordinating effort on the part of the COM, as well as other departments to pull off getting around 10 or more HS bands to participate in the homecoming parade as well as the half-time show.

The Denton HS band always participated, as well as the usual "local" bands, but every year they would get some new bands to participate. One year they invited the Waco Carver Band and MAN! were they ever a talented group. I would have stacked them up against many of the college bands of that era.

Participating in the homecoming activities gave me an opportunity to watch D-1 football for the first time. It also gave me an opportunity to compare it to SWC football after I started attending some TCU games.

I came away from my experience very impressed. Of course, I went to a 3-A (the classification was 2-A back then) school.

It might also be noted that this band day event was organized without the use of computers or e-mail.

letsgiveacheer · October 13, 2005

"Well", as President Reagan would say, "here we go again."

To respond to Plumm's comment, I don't know why in the world a few people on this board continue to take swipes at the College of Music. Please let me know about the ranking system to which you refer. I would like to see a reference.

I will say the College of Music works very hard to achieve the success it does. There are no other public universities in the country, other than a few flagship schools such as U of Michigan and Illinois that achieve the reputation of our music program. In fact, the current Dean was the Dean of the School of Music at Univ of Illinois before he assumed the same postion at North Texas.

I am the director of the opera company serving the Durham and Chapel Hill area. Any artist with whom I work beams when I tell them my undergrad degree is from UNT...regardless if they are from Julliard, Manhattan, whatever. The College of Music is a fine school among 20 or so others.

Back to Band Day. In 1973, Maurice McAdow (Mr. not Dr.) fired his grad assistant and asked me to help. Organizing the Band Day was a big deal. I recall the bands would arrive on Homecoming Day and march in the parade in the morning, have lunch and then practice with the NTSU band. (It wasn't the Green Brigade then, it was called the Marching Band)

Before the game began, the bands would march around the track and have a chance to show their stuff in front of their parents, which was a good thing as there certainly wern't many fans there.

At half time, the bands would join the North Texas band for the finale, which was quite a sight. The bands came from all over the state and a few from out of state. There were also a few service bands and Mr. McAdow would always invite them to march with the NT band at pre-game and play the National Anthem with us.

All in all, it was quite a bit of work. But, it was done for many, many, years. There is no reason for this tradition not to be reinstated.

FirefightnRick · October 13, 2005

By the way, this Concert idea for the 25th was the brain child of one of our alumns in the NT Exes.

I am hearing that the original Band Day deal has been turned down due to the amount of work that is required and that we don't have the personnel to pull it off. If however we could bring back more of our music alumni to campus I think we could recruit enough people to help. There are several alumni, including a firefighter, who is volunteering to put this music event on.

I say we email those in charge and continue to request it. We may get our wish someday. We certainly are going to need the extra attendance that it would generate here in a short time.

This is a perfect example as to why it is extremely important that our Music and Athletic departments learn to co-exist.

Rick

PlummMeanGreen · October 13, 2005

I don't know which ranking system ex NT/future TAMU president Frank Vandiver was referring to but he all but told one reporter that our College of Music was merely a local legend it its own mind (so to speak). I cannot forget Vandiver's comments on this because I remember how it both pissed me off and surprised me to hear him say it. Yet we all know that we have a fine College of Music at NT. Hellsbells, I even took a couple of music courses as electives and with NT College of Music icon 'Fessor Floyd Graham as one of my instructors.

We have numerous NT ensembles (starting with the multi-Grammy nominated One O'Clock Lab Band) that gives our school national and international recognition as individual groups, but where we seem to not get our respect is with publications such as US New & World Report and other such rags who rank colleges and universities.

Most of those kind of magazines give NT modest marks "as a fine music program" but not what any North Texans would expect or what we have always been led to believe about our COM. I'm sure there would be some publication out there that would give our College of Music its due, but it seems that when that NT academic department is mentioned it usually has more to do with how large it is, not necessarily its quality. I would welcome from anyone how we compare "academically" with other schools that seem to always get the national publicity, ie, Berkely College of Music? Even the arts magnate school in Dallas in a Dallas Morning News article a while back mentioned how many of its students were busting their butts trying to get accepted into Berkely with not one mention about the NT College of Music only 45 minutes away from this special Dallas HS for the gifted.

BACK TO BAND DAY: Anyone else think a couple thousand bandsmen would have looked nice under our Daktronics at Fouts Field during our recent (and only) nationally televised game ever 2 weeks ago vs Troy U? All NT has to do is just look around what other SBC schools have done during similar national broadcast and you can start with Troy U and their game vs Missouri last year when their entire main scoreboard end zone area were full of HS bands (and on a weeknight). It looked nice on national TV. Have you seen a tape of our game vs Troy and the glare of all that aluminum under the Daktronics? But my personal observation of Troy U is that they seem to have more "can do" about their school than others in the SBC seem to have.

Band Days have been around NT much longer than I ever started my letter writing campaign to Chancellor Hurley about having this promo continued in Denton back in the early 1980's. As a youth in the Houston area, I was fortunate to attend (probably) the largest Band Days in Texas (or America for that matter) when the University of Houston would have as many as 14,000 bandsmen at their promotion on Game Day back in the 1960's.

Could NT stand 14,000 HS bandsmen in our upcoming future football stadium at Eagle Point on one given Game Day each Fall? Is the Pope Catholic? Is Billy Graham Baptist? YET.............It will still take an NT College of Music staffer to get the religion concerning this kind of promo and then he/her proceed with the confidence that the 2'nd largest College of Music in America can really pull this off much easier than 99% of other NCAA D1-A schools whose music departments are dwarfed by ours. QUESTION: What if we just invited (along with the local HS bands) other HS bands whose band directors graduated from NT? Surely we would have a long list of such alums and wouldn't they prefer to bring their bands back to Denton than Lubbock or Waco or wherever?

NO FREE RIDES (or free game tickets even for HS bandsmen)? How about if 100 of them come back and enroll at NT because they attended an NT Band Day? Doesn't that make it more than cost effective whether they had to have a ticket under-written for them or not? Even a novice mathmetician could tell you that that a Band Day in Denton would be most cost effective.

In the past and up to the present most likely, we just have those on campus who did not want to do much more than their 9 to 5 routines. Sadly (and IMHO) from first hand experience as a committee member of a Band Day, that is the #1 reason we don't have a Band Day at NORTH TEXAS post-Maurice McAdow era.

Edited October 13, 2005 by PlummMeanGreen

letsgiveacheer · October 14, 2005

US News ranks the grad programs only and I don't think that has been done for music for at least three of four years. UNT's school of music was 15 and 17 for the two years I recall. Berklee was unranked. The UNT jazz program was #1. At any rate, UNT is among the top twenty and is by far the least expensive of any of the top schools, which is important.

I know some folks who teach at Berklee and can say it costs big bucks to study there. They do some very nice things at Berklee, especially in the area of music technology and it is a very "hands-on" type of school.

Again, back to Band Day. Here is what we did in those simpler times. Mr. McAdow whould assign a responsible band member to each visiting school. As the school's busses would arrive at the Fouts parking lot, the UNT band member would hop on, introduce themselves and direct the bus to the parking area for the homecoming parade. The band would get in order, the UNT band member would rejoin our band and the parade started.

In the meantime, the busses would meet their bands in what is now the parking lot near the City Council, ( I think..it has been some time since I have been back to Denton). The busses and bands would proceed back to Fouts where they would eat lunch.

After lunch, the bands would practice with the UNT band for halftime, then march around the track as I mentioned earlier.

The point here is that it was not that hard. It didn't take any money, just time.

Finally, let me say that one reason that we had such a nice turnout is that most of the HS directors owed their jobs to Mr. McAdow! Rarely a day went by that some supt would call him and ask for a band director. I'm not sure that exists today!

SilverEagle · October 14, 2005

Here is what we did in those simpler times. Mr. McAdow whould assign a responsible band member to each visiting school. As the school's busses would arrive at the Fouts parking lot, the UNT band member would hop on, introduce themselves and direct the bus to the parking area for the homecoming parade. The band would get in order, the UNT band member would rejoin our band and the parade started.
In the meantime, the busses would meet their bands in what is now the parking lot near the City Council, ( I think..it has been some time since I have been back to Denton). The busses and bands would proceed back to Fouts where they would eat lunch.
After lunch, the bands would practice with the UNT band for halftime, then march around the track as I mentioned earlier.
The point here is that it was not that hard. It didn't take any money, just time.
Finally, let me say that one reason that we had such a nice turnout is that most of the HS directors owed their jobs to Mr. McAdow! Rarely a day went by that some supt would call him and ask for a band director. I'm not sure that exists today!
←

Yep, that's exactly how it happened. The only other "logistical" matter was choosing the "mass band" tune to be played and making sure that all of the invited HS bands had the tune either in their music library's or send them copies of it.

It would be even easier today now that everyone has e-mail. Hell, for that matter most of the local HS bands have their own web-sites.

PlummMeanGreen · October 15, 2005

US News ranks the grad programs only and I don't think that has been done for music for at least three of four years. UNT's school of music was 15 and 17 for the two years I recall. Berklee was unranked. The UNT jazz program was #1. At any rate, UNT is among the top twenty and is by far the least expensive of any of the top schools, which is important.
I know some folks who teach at Berklee and can say it costs big bucks to study there. They do some very nice things at Berklee, especially in the area of music technology and it is a very "hands-on" type of school.
Again, back to Band Day. Here is what we did in those simpler times. Mr. McAdow whould assign a responsible band member to each visiting school. As the school's busses would arrive at the Fouts parking lot, the UNT band member would hop on, introduce themselves and direct the bus to the parking area for the homecoming parade. The band would get in order, the UNT band member would rejoin our band and the parade started.
In the meantime, the busses would meet their bands in what is now the parking lot near the City Council, ( I think..it has been some time since I have been back to Denton). The busses and bands would proceed back to Fouts where they would eat lunch.
After lunch, the bands would practice with the UNT band for halftime, then march around the track as I mentioned earlier.
The point here is that it was not that hard. It didn't take any money, just time.
Finally, let me say that one reason that we had such a nice turnout is that most of the HS directors owed their jobs to Mr. McAdow! Rarely a day went by that some supt would call him and ask for a band director. I'm not sure that exists today!
←

letsgiveacheer, your description (I outlined in gray) of how yall pulled off the "McAdow era" Band Days seems just too simple and too easy for it to ever have a chance to happen at today's NT because too many times today we try to make mountains out of mole hills at our alma mater. Pulling off a Band Day at the University of North Texas? Well...........they are pulling off this band oriented activity at the Super Pit, now arent' they? And in light of this very event, I hope we never hear again how a similar event can never happen on a Game Day at NORTH TEXAS. (Of course, it is easy to observe that the NT Athletic Department is hardly involved with this activity, too)

I know our NT Athletic Department would love to see Band Days re-instated in Denton because I've spoken to an official over there who has said such, but they seem to get zero cooperation from the NT College of Music "elitists?" who make work out of creating reasons, excuses or whatever as to why we can't do such things at NT (but probably because the idea did not originate from them if truth be known).

Anyone else notice how our new Green Brigade unis' are no more in line with what Chancellor Jackson and his Branding Committee had in mind with the (supposed) new shade of green NT is using now? Guess what? The life span of an NT Green Brigade uniform is usually about 10 years, so get used to their unis' (which I sorta' like, myself).

Chancellor Jackson's un-timely announcement on all this branding business was probaby more the reason for this than anything as I suspect the NT College of Music had probably already ordered their new marching band unis' "after" the Branding Committee comes riding in on their white horses with their Big Branding Announcement for us all. Once again, though, a sad statement at NORTH TEXAS that the left hand doesn't always know what the right hand is doing on our campus which is nothing new for all of us NT alums who have observed this too many times in decade's past.

Yet a little team work on our campus would be appropriate when it involves an activity that 99% of our North Texas Exes would really like to see re-instated in Denton, and that being an annual Game Day Band Day at the University of North Texas. Anyone who would vote in the negative for such an activity has never seen a successful Band Day.

From my own personal experience of going to a few University of Houston football games as a youth and seeing their Band Days, it was truly a crowd-pleaser of an event that left an indellible impression with me.

Edited October 15, 2005 by PlummMeanGreen