neonvincent

Two videos of the same song. First, Muse with the UCLA Band.



Next, the UCLA Band alone playing "Pressure."



They sound a lot better than the U$C Band playing Radiohead.

I concluded The U$C Band playing music from Game of Thrones by writing "the UCLA Band does cool stuff, too. When I finish my series about my years in the Bruin Band, I might post those. Stay tuned." I'm not waiting, for today at Crazy Eddie's Motie News, I posted The UCLA Marching Band at the 1969 Oscars for Marching Music Day. Here it is.

Happy Marching Music Day! Since the Academy Awards are also tonight, I've decided to make today's theme marching music at the Academy Awards. To that end, here is my the marching band of my undergraduate alma mater in Ingrid Bergman, Sidney Poitier and the UCLA Marching Band: 1969 Oscars.

Watch on YouTube

Ingrid Bergman, Sidney Poitier, Paula Kelly and the UCLA Marching Band offer their own interpretations of "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang" at the 41st Academy Awards in 1969.

I watched that as a nine-year-old and was enthralled. I suppose it was one of the reasons why I marched in the UCLA Band beginning eight years later.

By the way, the power's back on but the Internet is down.  Because of that, I may not post last month's top posts at Crazy Eddie's Motie News until Tuesday.  Stay tuned.

I'm finally ready to resume this series. Here is the video of the concert UCLA and Oregon State put on at the end of the parade I posted last time. If you don't hear anything, it's not you. As the video description itself notes, there are "Sound dropouts at 2:30 to 2:54, and 7:55 to the end."

One of the things that struck me at the time was how much the focus was on UCLA. There was even a singer at the rally performing a hit song "Yes, We Have UCLA Feeling." Unfortunately, he didn't make the video. As a result, Oregon State was neglected. It's not as obvious here, but their signs said Oregon and were in red and white instead of Oregon State in orange and black.  We in the UCLA Band felt sorry for them.

As for what strikes me now, 38 years later, it's how well J.J. handled the questions. In particular, she was both funny and diplomatic when she answered "who is the most popular guy in the UCLA Band?" That stands out across the decades, while it was merely amusing at the time.

I have two more videos about the Mirage Bowl to go before I end this series. Stay tuned.

This is the last performance for which I was flag coordinator.  That reminds me, the previous flag instructor had his name announced at the start of pregame.  I don't recall hearing mine announced once.  I don't think that registered with me at the time, but listening to the videos, it sure stands out.

I was very happy with the amount of flagwork I put in the show and pretty happy with how it was executed.  I put two things in here that I probably wouldn't have if this hadn't been a U$C game, the flag toss in the middle of the opener and the headchoppers in "Moondance."  Both of those were "F-you, can you do this?" to the U$C flag line, especially the flag toss.  The headchoppers were recycled from "Dream Police" in the Punk show performed at Cal; I used them because they were impressive and I knew the flag line could pull them off.

In case my readers can't tell what the last formation is, it's the Los Angeles Bicentennial logo.  The camera is just looking at it upside-down.

After all, the entire show was a salute to L.A. on its 200th birthday.  This wasn't the first anniversary logo.  The entire time I marched and instructed, the opening set of the pregame show was the arcs from the UCLA 50th birthday logo (that anniversary was the inspiration for the 1979 U$C show, too).  Unfortunately, that image hasn't survived on the internet.

I have three more videos from the Mirage Bowl.  Stay tuned.

And now, the last UCLA marching band performance of 1979.


On the whole, this is a good performance by the flag line.  The issue that I had earlier in the season, that one side was visibly less together than the other, had pretty much cleared up.  My one regret was that I didn't have the flags do a brief routine while the band was halted in the middle of "Long Time."  Looking at the video, that would have helped the entertainment value.  Still, I am a lot happier about the amount of flagwork in this halftime show than I was in the pregame show.

As for the show itself, it felt ironic to extol all of UCLA's then-record 30 NCAA championships, particularly playing "We are the Champions," while the football team was being blown out and UCLA was about the complete a 5-6 season.  Then again, we knew our team sucked by that time, so losing this game hurt less than losing the previous two, 1977 in particular.  That we lost in the last minute and UCLA went from going to the Rose Bowl to not going to a bowl game at all.

Finally, this was my sister's last performance with the UCLA Band.  She left after seeing the new uniforms and having to deal with all of the politics of the band going to Tokyo.

That's it for 1979.  Stay tuned for four posts with performances from 1980.

A couple of days ago, I wrote about the 1979 Band Day that I didn't remember anything about it but I was sure I was there.  I got to the end of this video and started to remember.  I had to hear "Stars and Stripes Forever" to recall anything about the day.


I remember writing that routine, just like I had to have written all of the flag routines.  Then I taught it to the flag line.  The morning of the game, the high school bands showed up for rehearsal and I split the flag line into pairs, who then taught it to the high school flag lines.  That was the standard procedure.  I did it again in 1980, which was much more memorable.  If that ever gets posted, I'll tell the story then.  I also have a story about the 1976 Band Day, which I attended while I was still in high school.  UCLA played Air Force and the USAFA Drum and Bugle Corps was there.  I sat on the Air Force side.  I also met a girl in Workman High School that I kept in contact with until 1980 and whose friends I marched with in Anaheim Kingsmen in 1978.  It's too bad that long distance phone calls were so expensive back then.  I'd have talked to her more.

Enough of Band Day.  Tomorrow, I post the Disco Suck show, which is the best show I never saw live while I was in the UCLA Band.

This is the first of three videos from the Washington State Game, 1979 - UCLA vs. UW Halftime Band Day March In 10/27/79. Honestly, I'm not sure I can claim this as one of "my performances."  1979-1980 was an odd academic year because I was geology major and this was the year I took field geology.  That meant I spent a lot of weekends out in the field, including during the fall of 1979, when I spent two weekends out mapping Rainbow Basin northeast of Barstow.  I know I missed one UCLA band performance, the "Disco Sucks Show" that I'll post on the last day of the month, but I didn't think I missed another.  That written, I don't recall anything about the 1979 Band Day except that when the 1980 band day rolled around, I remember knowing what to do, so I must have done it before.  Other than that, nothing.  Strange.  Maybe I should ask my baby sister, who marched in the flags that year.  She's marching on the side of the band facing the camera as one of the first eight flags from the front.

Anyway, enjoy watching the high school bands parade into the Los Angeles Coliseum.  Some of them are still playing the same competition marches today, nearly 40 years later.


I'll post the pregame show tomorrow.  Stay tuned.

Now for the first of more videos from 1979. Today's show is very similar to My performances in the UCLA Band #5: UCLA vs. Stanford halftime with the substitution of "What a Fool Believes" for "Running on Empty" in the GAS? to GA$ sequence.  I think "Running on Empty" was the better choice although I like how the routine for "Running on Empty" worked better.  Also, I the band and announcer were better able to be heard performing in front of a friendly crowd than the hostile one at Stanford (at least they didn't chant "FUCLA" like Cal and USC did; Stanford's fans weren't that organized).

The band's performance wasn't what was most memorable about this game.  Instead, it was the environmental conditions.  Note that this was a day game, but there is no sunlight.  This game also was played in early fall, too late for a coastal cloud deck yet too early for rain.  What could create the overcast?  I'll explain that after the video.


The one thing that can produce overcast like this in southern California during summer and early fall is fire.  When this game took place, there were forest and brush fires all around Los Angeles, large enough to completely cover the sky even in the middle of the city.  Worse yet, ash was falling out of the sky like snow.  It was depressing and foreboding, the kind of day that fits my description of Southern California that I tell my students: "364 days a year the weather is beautiful and the people are too, so everyone forgets that one day a year, everything goes to Hell."  Things were going to Hell that day.

The pall of smoke over L.A. even affected the cheerleaders.  During the 1970s, one of UCLA's Yell Leaders was a grad student nicknamed "Frisbee."  His traditional cheer was a bit of call and response prop comedy.  He'd hold aloft a football and ask the students "Is this a football?"  They would answer, "Yes, that's a football!"  He'd point at the field and ask "Is that a field?"  "Yes, that's a field!" the students would reply.  Then he'd point at the visiting team and ask "Is that the loooosing team?" "Yes that's a loooosing team!" the students respond.  "Are we the winning team?"  "Yes, we're the winning team!"  "Are we the Bruins?"  "Yes, we're the Bruins!"  He'd conclude with UCLA's traditional cheer, an 8-clap.  At the start of this game, Frisbee inserted this comment on the weather.  Between pointing at the field and the away team (OSU clobbered UCLA that day, so they weren't the losing team), he pointed at the sky and asked "Are we sick of this?" "Yes, we're sick of this," the students answered.  I don't recall that happening at any other UCLA game I attended.

Next up, the Stanford pregame.  Stay tuned.