Author:
Julia Perry
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Date Posted: 01:16:43 08/31/06 Thu
Being a Ram Band member is a way of life and as band chaplain Jayme Carson explained, “It’s what I put down for my business (on applications).”
“There’s nothing like it in the world than to see those people in the stands stand up and scream for you,” added Jay Rodgers, one of the sousaphone players.
“The band is sensitive. They keep telling themselves that ‘This is not the best we’ve done; we can do better,” Castillo said.
Cathy Meeks added, “You have to work to be number one. You have to prove yourself every day.”
On the field, Kuentz likes to put pizzazz in his routines. His motto is “Keep it simple and do it well.”
While the band marches during practices, he and Briggs walk among the players to listen to individual musicians and to see if everyone remembers to strut the high step at the right time.
The band shuffles, yells, since, prances, solos and alternately walks in a military stride during the shows. The prototype of the Ram Band is the University of Houston’s marching band directed by Dr. Bill Moffitt, Kuentz said. As a special number during the Rose Parade, the band will premier Moffitt’s new arrangement of Everything’s Coming Up Roses.”
Moffitt’s theory is that a show band is similar to a vaudeville performance, Kuentz pointed out.
“Performers had to win the attention of the audience with no props. You have to come out and grab the audience and at the end, hit the audience again with a big closing number,” Kuentz said.
Kuentz has been criticized by other music directors for putting a heavy emphasis on the band’s “show.”
“We might get criticized for that, but as Darrel Royal, the football coach of the University of Texas, says, “We’re going to dance with the one that brung us.”
“It’s the show band format that got us where we are. We wouldn’t be the John Marshall Band that we are if we changed that,” Kuentz added.
“Some of the criticism is probably legitimate and justified. Some directors admitted to me that they just can’t get those kind of results because they don’t understand it themselves. They can’t feel it. Some band directors try to make the patterns too intricate.”
“We have all found that if you do something that’s fairly simple, but do it well, the people will appreciate it. You don’t get credit for what you attempt, but for what you do well,” Kuentz said.
By keeping it simple, being innovative and doing it well, the Ram Band has sent the Marshall school spirit soaring. When they march on the field for a halftime show, they are greeted by thousands standing and cheering.
In the past, Marshall had been known for having a good band, but it had never infected the school and the community with the enthusiasm they have for it now.
“They (the Ram Band) were pretty good back then. When Mr. Kuentz came, and no offense to Mr. Lewis (Robert Lewis, former Marshall music director and now music coordinator for Northside Independent School District), there was some kind of magic. When he says something, people don’t have to do it, they want to. I have never seen people work so hard as those band members,” commented Allan Nussbaum, a Marshall student and a devoted Ram Band fan. He confided that he would “follow the band to the ends of the earth and to prove it, I’m going to California with them. I’ve also been interested in having a date with one of the members, but because of religious differences, it’s not a good idea to attempt to take piccolo and flute player Juli Perry out while we’re home in San Antonio. We’re looking forward to having an evening to ourselves during the Pasadena trip!!”
Nussbaum, a senior, has been influenced by the band and by Kuentz so much that now this student who “didn’t know how to play any musical instruments except the radio” wants to seriously study music.
Senior Sylvia Proctor, head baton twirler for the Ram Band, explains, “Before Mr. Kuentz, the band lacked something. We would just go to the games and never think about the shows. It wasn’t that important. We just went to have a good time.”
Band members have their own “fight song” for football games. Marshall music students sing to the beat of the actual Marshall fight song, “Fight that band across the field, show them the Ram Band is here. Set the earth reverberating with our mighty cheer: Go Rams!! Hit them hard and see how they fall. Never let that band march at all. Hail, hail the Ram Band’s here so let’s blow their doors off now.”
“We’re definitely in competition with other bands. Most bands think when they go out there that they are going to put on a good show. They don’t go out and destruct. Most bands are out to burn us now that we’ve gotten all this publicity,” said band member Cathy Meeks.
After being selected to represent Texas in the Rose Parade, the Ram Band did receive a good deal of publicity. They needed it to raise the $58,000 necessary to send the Ram Band to Pasadena, California. It costs $271.41 5o send one band member to the Rose Parade. Multiplied by 235 players, 4 twirlers, 2 banner carriers, 5 alternates, and 6 flag bearers, it was an enormous sum to collect between getting the formal invitation in April and the mid-October deadline.
In April, retired Col. Bill Manuelos, assistant credit office manager for USAA, offered to head the fund-raising committee. Originally the goal was $50,000, but in September when the Ram Band was just dollars away from this goal, the airline announced a boost in prices: $8,000 more had to be raised.
When the band accepted Harland D. Heath’s (Rose Parade music committee chairman) in-person invitation to march on New Year’s Day, school officials had no idea that the venture would be as expensive as it turned out to be, Manuelos said.
“At first, we didn’t think it was going to cost that much. But then, we started getting prices and it looked like a lot of money. We already had set the thing in motion as to how we were going to do it, se we went ahead.”
Transportation will be in exclusive use of a DC-10 and take over the Holiday Inn on Santa Monica beach. In addition to getting kids out there, we had to send 252 uniforms and instruments via air freight. Some other San Antonians are going, including parent chaperones, but Mayor Lila Cockerell and Mr. Cockerell are going along, also.
Their tactic was to get the band members’ parents and the community behind the effort.
The most successful money-raising ventures were the sponsorships by parents and the Memorial Day weekend Band-A-Thon, when the Ram Band played continuously for 52 hours and 2 minutes for a world’s record. This was a tough undertaking, and even recently graduated seniors who wouldn’t be getting to march in the Rose Parade helped pull off that undertaking.
Band boosters organized most of the fund-raising events. They rolled up their shirtsleeves to pitch in when 100,000 information packets at one mall needed stuffing (in exchange for a donation) and when food was needed to be prepared for a money-raising chicken dinner.
To march in the Rose Parade, probably the most widely viewed parade in the world thanks to television, was an honor on one wanted to pass up, Manuelos said. Collecting $58,000 was a matter of organization, hard work, and contacting people.
Suddenly it wasn’t just the John Marshall Ram Band that was going to the Rose Parade, but surreptitiously, it was all of San Antonio.
“We got donations from just about everybody,” Manuelos said.
Even the bands that usually compete with the Ram Band contributed generously toward the fund. Although the band boosters did not seek donations outside of San Antonio, gifts came in from as far away as British Columbia.
People held Hawaiian luaus, auctioned horses, took taste tests, sold soda at an air show, and helped clean Kelly Air Force Base field for the Rose fund.
Band members would play just about anywhere in large groups and individually to earn a few more dollars toward the trip.
Even from the northeast side of town, Big John Hamilton and his manager, Bill Scott, three open the doors of Big John’s Steak House for a chicken buffet that raised $4,200 for the band’s trip.
Why the effort?
“The importance of it is the pride in having come up with one of the bands that is going to participate. It’s a chance of a lifetime for the young boys and girls to do something that is a tradition to this country. It’s a real achievement for a group of students to be that good,” Manuelos said.
Marching in the 88th Rose Parade is important to the Ram Band members. There are some who will admit that the fanfare has “gone to some people’s heads,” but most of the band members have tried not to let the privilege expand egos too much.
The Rose Parade is important to me, but it’s not all that important. I was here before the Rose Bowl Parade. When I got in the band it was the pits, the bottom of the line. We worked hard. We did it for no reason other than we wanted to. It’s the sense of improvement that means everything to me. People have been generous. How one town can get together and give and give, I don’t know. I’d think they’d get tired of hearing about us,” said Flutist Lisa Black.
Added Sue Berg, “You have to compliment our parents. Fifty per cent of our success is our parents. They put up with a lot.”
After one particularly arduous practice, Kuentz sat with a group of players and commented, “We’ve created ourselves a monster. Sometimes it would be a lot easier to say the heck with it. The most humane, decent thing I could have tone tonight, I could have said to the kids standing in the rain “Forget about it.”
“People can be very inhumane. A majority of the people who watch us tomorrow will never realize how miserable we were in the darkness and rain. If we didn’t do it well, they’d holler and scream, ‘What’s happened to the band?”
“We’re not on top of the discipline thing yet. The band is not the ultimate yet. There is a wealth of talent here and it has allowed me to accomplish what I have in such a short time.”
On New Year’s Day when the maroon, white, and gold-clad Ram Band struts along the five-mile Rose Parade, it will not just be two directors and their band. It will be a large, talented family tempered in discipline and supported by a big-hearted community that is as proud of the marching Rams’ success as if it were their own.
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