College football 2024

I believe the Aggies themselves say that

Maybe, but that is all me. I certainly never heard an Ag say it, and there are plenty in Brenham.

If you would like to hear what it is like behind the scenes of your favorite stadiums video board, this might give you an idea.

War Eagle Productions Inside the Control Room: 4OT Thriller Edition

Wow

Thatā€™s pretty cool.

Two years after I graduated from LHB. Iā€™ve never been so certain of what we would play and never felt so proud of my band.

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I admire the hard work you marching band guys had to do on getting the precision formations down, all while playing demanding song on your instrument at the same time. Being a stringed instrument guy and a wanna be keyboardist, I never had the opportunity to fuck up a marching band.

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I did take up the trumpet at age 30 and got fairly decent blowing sounds through it. Played it in a rock band and an improvisational jazz band. Iā€™ve only played it infrequently since moving to Texas in '95 and my embouchure gives out after 15 minutes.

Back in the Aughts, the local Texas Exes president used to do a weekly newsletter. His 2004 Texas-Texas A&M preview included a jab at the Aggie band that Iā€™ll never forget (and I starred the email so I could always find the exact quote):

Make sure you stick around and see the most heavily armed college band in the country turn to the right with predictable regularity and dazzling accuracy at halftime.

In HS weā€™d change up our halftime show once competition season ended and the playoffs began, and our director, a former marine Corps band member, loved to do the military marching shows - he called them ā€œdiamond drills,ā€ and they always incorporated John Phillips Sousa. It was a fun change of pace, but as tiring as it was doing the same show from late July until mid-November, I think I would have quit way earlier than Senior year had we exclusively done military style.

Semi-related: competitions were probably my favorite thing to experience, outside of actual Friday nights. There are some amazing HS bands out there. I think this was discussed in one of the other threads a few months ago, but I was blown away by the quality I saw.

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One of my co-workerā€™s husband is a band director. BDā€™s have an amazing dedication to their craft.

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That was so wonderful.

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We had a high school band director who everyone liked a lot, but our senior year he left for a bigger school, or at least a different school. I later heard that heā€™d left his family and job and run off with a 16-year old twirler. Probably hard to get a job in most school systems after that.

Was he any good at blackjack?

I donā€™t know, I doubt it. As I recall he was Church of Christ, and gambling would be a sin. Last I heard he was running for Congress in Florida.

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That tracks.

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Obscure reference to a comment in a different thread. Sorry.

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Brilliant.

Band directors are the people who keep my business percolating. They are some of my best friends, and they ARE dedicated. High school directors, at least the ones I know, during marching season Aug-Oct if they are lucky, and thru Nov-Dec if they arenā€™t so lucky (football teams going into playoffs, when directors would rather be playing concert music), get up at 3:30-4:00AM to prepare to motivate their students for a demanding schedule that runs outside of the school day. Itā€™s a lot of work for the kids, marching in the August-October heat, and can be quite the expense for the parents who, if they are part of a competitive, traveling program, will suffer exorbitant band fees for plane trips, uniform maintenance, and other general overhead that a school district might not agree to absorb. This teamwork can however create a life experience with friends that will remain with a person for the rest of their life, as it did in my case. I didnā€™t have the college experience, and I admire those of you that did, but I just had my 50th HS reunion, and 90% of the folks Iā€™m still in touch with are from band. 1974 Churchill HS SATX.

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Holy shit youā€™re old.

Old is the train to which one is chained, but you can lock feeble up in a box and put it in the top of the guest bedroom closet.