Once More, With Feeling
I’ll talk about the marching band reunion a bit, but first a little background. I was conceived within view of Ohio Stadium - my parents were students at OSU and living on Lane Avenue (sorry, Mom. She’d hasten to assure you they were married), so there may be some predestiny involved in my arriving at this juncture. I was introduced to the Ohio State marching band in the early 60s when my parents got a couple of their records. I was already a Buckeye fan, had started to play the trumpet, and was transfixed by the sound of a first-rate all-brass band playing a ripping repertoire of school songs, classic marches and concert pieces. From that point on, I always had it in my mind to play in the band if the opportunity arose.
Eventually, the opportunity did arise, I tried out for the band and made it. They have a grueling week of tryouts, both for their up-tempo high-stepping marching style and for playing acumen. I began my lifelong running regimen in preparation for band tryouts. The pride of the shared achievement creates a bond among bandsmen, especially in your “row” of people playing the same instrument, as you practice, travel and perform at places like Ohio Stadium, the Rose Bowl (I got there in 1971) and, yes, even Michigan Stadium.
Here’s my Mom, me and the future Mrs. Perils at the 1969 homecoming game.
For the last 30-some years, the band has been sponsoring a reunion at an early-season game. This year, over 650 alumni participated. They allow us to perform in the pregame and halftime shows, designed so that we can rehearse music Friday night, walk through our formations and find our spots at an early Saturday morning rehearsal, and not embarrass the organization at game time.
When I was in the varsity band, the first time I saw the alumni band I swore I’d never participate in it when I graduated. I disdained their comparative lack of precision and general dishevelment, and resented having to share precious field time with them. For many years, I kept this promise to myself. However, my youngest brother, 10 years younger, made the band and, in his senior year, wanted me to come to the reunion, and I did. On the field that day, our routes through our respective Script Ohios came close and he glanced over to me as he made a turn, and in that moment I was glad I’d done it, and knew why I would come back in the future.
That’s a compelling aspect of our reunion - it’s “vertical” as well as “horizontal”. A normal class reunion is “horizontal” - everyone’s the same age, and you were all in school together. The OSUMB reunion has that characteristic, but there are also people from a wide range of years - this year, from 1934 to 2004. A good friend of my brother’s played in the alumni band this year while his son played with the varsity band. I remember sitting at a rehearsal a few years back. I had just turned 50, I think. Sometime during the rehearsal, they announced the passing of one of the older members, one who had been in attendance the year before. Later in the rehearsal, a young woman trumpet player leaned over to an acquaintance and whispered excitedly, “I’m pregnant!” So it has this whole birth-and-death thing going on.
This clarinet-playing fellow predates October, 1934, when the band became all brass and percussion. He must still have his faculties - everyone else seems to be scrambling through their charts at this Saturday morning practice while he looks pretty self-assured.
There’s another kind of crossing-over occurring as well. Each year, there’s a new crop of alumni band members who were in the varsity band the year before, and they’re looking across the divide from the other side for the first time. I mean, all of us in the alumni band gaze wistfully at our counterparts in the varsity band, with their crisp turns, sharp uniforms, near-perfect playing and their youth in general. It’s a lot harder, I think, for these first-year alumni to apprehend that Stygian separation.
It’s a lot of fun, though, mixing with people from so many different years, to hear their various Michigan game and bowl game experiences. This year, the current members of C Row threw a party Friday night and invited C Row alumni. We were properly venerated (veneration is not a social disease), and they caught us up on new traditions (a seeming oxymoron, but it illustrates how one can become prehistoric). We had no sympathy when they complained about a bus trip where they were forbidden to put South Park on the bus’ video system. Our bus rides across the bleak late-autumn Big Ten terrain involved some singing, a hazing ritual that resulted in people arriving in downtown Chicago in their underwear and an old-school Greyhound driver, Feasel, who might swerve the bus violently when someone was using the lavatory.
Old and young C Row members. I’m front row, third from left.
And it’s also still a dead-flat thrill to strut onto the field while over 100,000 cheer, and awesome to look up at the huge video screen and see yourself marching toward it.
