The Band Screams for Free Ice Cream!

After a long Spring Break (except for me. Thanks thesis) the Band returned to jolly ole Brown!! On Tuesday, not only did the Band get to play our favorite songs…WE GOT FREE ICE CREAM!!!

Ben & Jerry’s on Thayer Street had their annual Free Cone Day and the Band was there in force.  In a historic move by Mother Nature, it didn’t rain cats and pygmy-puffs on Free Cone Day.  For every Free Cone Day in my Band career, it has poured. Ok, since I joined last year there has been only one other Free Cone Day but I have been informed by our other Bandies that there has been a tropical storm almost every year.  See file photo below to witness how much rain there was last year:

Upon further review, it seems that our file photo of last year’s rain storm is actually the Titanic sinking. Either way, there was lots of rain last year and sooooooo much sunshine this year!!

Due to the great weather (and the fact that the Brown Band promised everyone a puppy who came to Free Cone Day *terms and restrictions applied*) the line for free cones went down the block! (See photo below. 10 Band points for you if you count all the people in the photo)

The line went all the way down to the corner! It was like they were giving away free ice cream.

For 20 minutes the Band put on a great show as the crowd angrily happily waited for their ice cream.  During our performance, one person even came over to dance (it was kind of like an interpretative conductor arms flailing dance). After every song, the crowd cheered for us. 10 Band points to the members of the Brown and Providence community for that!! As a reward for our musical talents, Ben and Jerry’s created a “bands named the Brown Band only” line!  And luckily for us, our name is the Brown Band.  Simply stated, we cut the entire half hour line.  Some flavors available were Chunky Monkey, Phish Food, and Vanilla.  Wait, how did vanilla get in there?  I didn’t even think a Ben & Jerry’s flavor without 1000 different ingredients existed.  All our Bandies were fed with delicious ice cream.  Look how excited Courtney (nicknamed NYAAAAA by the Band) was with her free cone!

Let's give a cheer for ice cream!

Special thanks to Ben & Jerry’s and our lovely fans in line at Free Cone Day for making everything possible!  Tonight the Band attends our annual Band Passover Seder!  And as a reminder, today is the final day for Band alumni to register for Commencement 2012!

Look at all the Bandies performing at Ben & Jerry's Free Cone Day!

Commemcment Band 2012 Sign Up!!

HEEEEEEEEYYYYY BAND!!!

Good thing you instinctively shouted back “HEY WHAT?” at your computer screen because we have exciting commencement news! Sign ups are in full effect and we have many wonderful Bandies already registered for it. If you are one of those people:

A) Give your self a hug.
B) Go to Cambridge and laugh at Harvard students.
C) Run around your office singing “You Can Call Me Al”.
D) Find one of your friends who went to Cornell and sing the entire 5 minute Cornell Song to them.
E) Buy a puppy and congratulate it on being more handsome than Handsome Dan.
F) The Princeton Band (but we love them anyway!)

If you have not, don’t panic! You still have time to sign up! Commencement sign ups will close on March 31st. However, please sign up now as the open spots are limited! We hope to see you there to honor our graduating seniors and our favorite Brown alumnus, Mr. E. Snidley ’69.  As a reminder, our first event that attendance is required for alumni is on Saturday, May 26th at 10am for rehearsal.  Current Band members are required to come for uniform pickup on Friday the 25th at 3pm.  The big day where we march through the Van Wickle Gates (once again!) is on the 27th with a 9am call time.  For more information, check out our Band Alumni Newsletter and our Facebook page by clicking on the underlined words!  Don’t you wish there was another link to go to? Ok! Check out our Band Twitter page as well!

Band alumni may sign up here and current Band members can use this link.  See you soon!

Love,

The World’s Greatest Commencement Band

Low Brass wants you to join Commencement Band to help them make this year's low brass commencement pyramid!

Songs Discovered by Band Archaelogists!

Great moments in archaeology:

1922 – Tomb of Tutankhamun Discovered
1936 – Indiana Jones locates the lost Arc of the Covenant….Oh wait, that was a movie.
1947 – Dead Sea Scrolls Found
2012 – The Brown Band brings back jams of the past!

Last Tuesday our Band conductors, Joanna, Zoe, and Adam put on their archaeologist hats and brought back some of our favorite songs from the Band’s past during our annual “Music Unstuffing”. The conductors dug through the billions of old arrangements (No really. It looked like there were a billion songs to choose from. Then again, engineering students like myself aren’t required to count well) and selected a handful of ones they thought the Band would enjoy playing the most.

Look at all the songs we got to choose from!

The new discoveries were laid out on the piano and in the official Band shopping cart (you may have seen this cart carrying out hot chocolate during Holiday Caroling!) where our lovely section leaders gathered up the parts for their musicians.  We were able to play over ten songs!  While gathering up the parts for the songs, the Percussion section discovered that all the older songs had tambourine parts written for them!  I know what instrument I’m switching to now.

The saxophones rock out to their newly found songs!

Fun times were had by all as we decided to bring back a whopping total of six songs!!  We hope you can join us at our lacrosse game on April 26th where we might get to show off our discoveries!  What were your favorite songs that you played during your time in the Brown Band?  Perhaps it is one of the songs that will be making a comeback!

Hi Trumps!

You can follow the band on our new Twitter account! Also be sure to Like our Facebook page and subscribe to our YouTube channel!

Women’s Basketball vs. Princeton

Stop me if you’ve heard this one. What did one person at the women’s basketball game against Princeton this weekend say to the other person at the women’s basketball game against Princeton?

I don’t know, I didn’t hear it. I was too busy listening to the Brown University Band!

Saturday was Senior Night for the Brown women’s basketball team, so we stopped by to show our support. It was also special because it was our last performance until after spring break and it was the last indoor sporting event with the band for our seniors, at least until they come back and play with us as crusties. Except that’s not going to happen because they’re not going to leave us because that would be too sad.

Seriously, don't talk about that.

Unfortunately, the Bears lost, 77-60, but we actually outscored Princeton in the second half, 33-31. And we still finished the season with a 16-12 record. I don’t know anything about peachcrateball, but I’m pretty sure 16 is greater than 12.

Action shot!

For our part, we did our best to distract Princeton’s free-throw shooters by creating visual distractions behind the backboard. Observe:

I don't remember how this specific play worked out, so I'm just going to assume that we fooled the foul thrower into thinking that the Earth's gravity had suddenly undergone a massive shift, thus causing her to misjudge the trajectory she needed the ball to follow in order to get it into the basket. What hooligans we are!

Everyone had a great time—as we bandies are wont to do—and it was a great end to a great indoor sports season. Hope to see you at an event in April!

You can follow the band on our new Twitter account! Also be sure to Like our Facebook page and subscribe to our YouTube channel!

A Visit From Colombia

This weekend the Band said “¡Hola” to the National Basketball team of Colombia! They traveled a whopping 2,607 miles to come see the winningest Band in the world, the Brown Band! We were very excited to meet their players and discuss how their qualifying rounds were going for the upcoming 2012 Summer Olympics in London. Then we realized they were from Columbia, the lesser Ivy league school in New York City. Ohhh!!

Oh. Turns out they came from NYC, not South America for the game.

Anyway, that could not stop the Band from pouring their hearts into the game to help good ole Bruno. We really stepped up our cheering efforts for this game. Some may call it heckling but we really don’t think yelling out “AHHH LOOK THERE’S A BAT” seconds before a Columbia player takes a free throw is distracting. This paragraph sponsored by Sarcasm Warehouse.

During this match up, the Band put the “puppet” chant into play. During every Columbia possession in the 1st half we shouted out whatever the opposing player was doing such as “bounce bounce bounce pass bounce bounce hesitate hesitate!!” And of course when the player went for a shot, “MISS!!” It worked quite well as Bruno opened up a 15+ point lead in that half on the cowardly Lions!

During the intermission, the Band almost won free pizza! Key word: almost. They said that whoever cheered the loudest would win the food. Another lucky Bruno fan was chosen as the recipient of prize. Perhaps our instruments gave us an unfair advantage? Maybe we didn’t have enough cowbell. Nah, that’s impossible. Although we didn’t win a free pizza to divide up into 32 individual pieces, our awesome cheerleaders did give us free basketballs to play with!

Bandie Basketball!!

Bandie basketball was a great success as our sousaphones served as nets with the ball being tossed from all the way in the front where the conductor was! We think sousaphones should serve as the new nets on the court because it makes the game much more challenging. And it will help Bruno on defense. Actually, it would probably really hurt them on offense as well. O well. Back to the game!

The 2nd half was thrilling as the Lions tried to chip away at the Bears lead. Bruno regained control and was able to go up by more than ten points with five minutes remaining. That can only mean that we got to play one of our favorite songs, The Final Countdown!! Because the Bears games have been so close this semester, we have not been able to play this song which lets the opposing team know that they can’t do anything about the game and have wasted a weekend road trip to Providence.  The Final Countdown, well, served as a final countdown and the game ended with a Bruno victory!

We won! And we all know 1:19 starts the countdown to our favorite second in the game.

And the best part about winning the game: we get to play That Song!!  The Percussion section got to sway together and sing at the beginning of the song as the Band did a great job of honoring Brown.  Then of course we played You Can Call Me Al!  Stay tuned next week as the Band tries to substitute a tuba for a net when the Princeton women’s team visits Brown for some basketball!

Winning Band (with spirit fingers!)

Band Alumni Weekend Time Warp!

The song goes, “Let’s do the time-warp again”….so we did it! That’s right, last weekend was the heavily anticipated Alumni Ice Show Weekend where some of our favorite Band alumni returned to their old stomping grounds. Kristyn ’10 summarized the past few days the best with “weekend of crusty awesomeness!!”

Our great group of Band alumni, also known as Crusties, started to arrive at Brunonia on Friday afternoon. Some lucky alums were lucky enough to have puppy play time with our Band dog, Ivy (what a fitting name). Ivy likes meeting people so much that she once attempted to jump off my balcony so she could go play with a person walking past my house on the street. You can imagine her excitement when she got to meet some of our crusties! Wendy ’11 approved of puppy play time and helped Ivy put on her official Band puppy rugby.

Yup! Wendy and Kristyn made that puppy rugby!

Then it was time for everyone to put on their non-puppy rugby to get ready for the game!  During our pre-game alumni event in Fulton, our crusties were reunited with their friends and got to meet new ones.  Most importantly, there was a cheese plate!  The highest quality cheese was acquired from East Side Marketplace for this classy occasion.  And to really step up the classiness level, there was a giant “Box-o-Joe” from Dunkin Donuts.  And then it was time for the big event everyone had waited for.  No, not Oprah’s final show, it was time for our hockey game vs. Harvard!

The 10,000 men of Harvard showed up in their finest jerseys made of tweed.  The game was an intense back and forth battle and our alumni were loud and passionate for Bruno the entire game.  Also along the way, apparently the Band time warped too hard and brought a Viking warrior back to play with us.

We always wanted a real Viking warrior to join the Band

The game inched closer to the end and with one minute left the Crimson led by the score of 3-2. Between having a Viking, our alumni, and the current Brown Band, the Harvard hockey team was too intimidated and decided to let us score with under a minute to go! The Band will now buy each Harvard player their own jar of Grey Poupon as a present for their good deed.

Adam '09 is a fan of Vikings and the Bears not losing! By the way, Band wins again!

And then it was time for our grand Alumni Ice Show!!! (Insert fireworks and party sounds)  Talking about fireworks, this show featured one of the Band’s first moving formations on ice!  We played Disney’s “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” and formed a cherry bomb with our flutes serving as the fuse.  As the final seconds of the song approached, the fuse was lit and on the final bar the Band scattered outwards like a real explosion.  Don’t worry no Bandies were injured during this act!  Then it was time for the Band’s favorite song, “You Can Call Me Al”.  As the Skull and Crossbones formation assembled, our alumni were thanked for coming back to join the world’s only ice skating band and the seniors were honored in the script.  You can call us alumni (har har, get it? It sounds like the song we played but because our alumni were there…I’ll just keep writing).  And then it was time for the world famous “In the Fray” Counterskate. With the help of our alumni and the Viking warrior, we performed this maneuver perfectly!  To see the full alumni ice show, click on the video below!

The next night we were lucky to be joined once again by our Band alumni for the final home game of the year vs. the Dartmouth Big Green!  The time warp continued as some of conductors from the past returned to ally with our current conductors!  Eli ’08, the next Hanz Zimmer and brother of current Band conductor, Zoe ’15, teamed up with his sister to perform some of the Band’s favorite songs such as Ghostbusters and Sweet Caroline! Fun fact: Did you know Eli arranged those songs for the Band?!

Team Fieldsteel in action!

Another former conductor and current senior, Benny G ‘ 12, also conducted!  Then it was time for the seniors to have their fun and enjoy their last game as undergrads.  All seniors were invited to guest conduct along side our current lead conductor, Joanna ’13.  As the game came to a close, the seniors performed to a song about clothes.  The end.  Stay tuned next week as the Band gets to come face to face with Colombia’s national basketball team!  Or is it the team from the university with that name?

Thank you Band Alumni for such a great weekend!!!

To Cayuga Goes the Brown Band: Winter Trip 2012!

Ah, February. It’s a time for groundhogs. A time for love, and the obligatory purchases of overpriced flowers and chocolates to express that love. A time for a sudden long weekend? (Thanks Brown!) And, of course, a time for a bajillion weather-related reasons why getting out of bed is a bad idea.

But it’s also the time for the biggest event of the Brown Band year: Winter Trip! We packed our bags, hopped on the bus, and took upstate New York by storm this weekend—and had a grand old time in the process. Here’s how we did it.

It all started the morning of February 10—also known as last Friday. After waking at the ungodly hour of 9 a.m., we arrived at Fulton to find this:

We loaded up the instruments, climbed on board the bus, and off we were—to Ithaca!

It was quite an eventful bus ride. I’m pretty sure we all had to go back in time to teach nerdy kids from the 1950′s about rock ‘n’ roll. Or maybe I fell asleep while we watched Back to the Future and I’m having trouble reconstructing reality. Either way works.

Thanks in large part to Doc Brown’s DeLorean, we made it to the gorges land of Ithaca in no time at all, giving us plenty of time to see just  how gorges Ithaca is. No seriously, they actually say things like that:

This was taken in an actual Ithaca store window.

After a quick stop at the hotel—fun fact: according to a student there, the Holiday Inn Express we stayed in is actually the tallest building in Ithaca—we headed to Cornell!

We banged, blew, and caused general raucousness to our hearts’ content. A good time was had by all.

Oh yeah, there was hockey too. We lost, 5-2, to the Big Red (Big Red What?). But we were winning for a while and it was a much better game than the lopsided score would suggest.

Action shot!

The next day, after awakening and sampling some local Ithacan cuisine for breakfast (if you ever get the chance to try bacon-flavored cream cheese, take it), we headed to ShoppingTown Mall for an afternoon of shopping. And, more importantly, arcade games! A particular highlight was laser tag, the venue for which we effectively took over for the better part of two hours.

After we’d had our fill of running around and making laser noises, it was off to Hamilton for our game against Colgate.

Though we lost 7-6 at the hands of the Colgate Toothpastes (I’m pretty sure that’s their team name), the Bears came this close to completing an epic comeback. And, more importantly, we sounded awesome.

Not to mention we made some great new friends: The Colgate Band!

Somehow we’d never met them before, but they were as friendly and welcoming as they were awesome. Turns out the only thing that’s better than the Brown Band is the combined force of the Brown and Colgate Bands playing together!

The next day, a very sleepy band boarded the bus for the final time for the long trip back to Providence. So marked the end of Winter Trip.

Special thanks are due to the trip’s main organizer: our Corresponding Secretary, Ayano Kondo ’14! Seen here in this file photo:

Everyone agreed that the trip had been a great success. We’re all looking forward to another round of great adventures next year!

You can follow the band on our new Twitter account! Also be sure to Like our Facebook page and subscribe to our YouTube channel!

Follow the Band All the Way, All the Way

Big news: The Brown Band has a brand new Twitter account, meaning we are now roughly as technologically advanced as the average 12-year-old in 2007. Follow us for all the latest news, updates, pictures, and videos of our shenanigans! Click the massively oversized text below to find our page:

@BrownUBandStand

Also be sure to Like our Facebook page and subscribe to our YouTube channel!

The Superhero Ice Show

By day, they’re an inconspicuous and mild-mannered group of Ivy League students devoted to their studies. By night, they play awesome music while ice skating. Also they beat criminals to a pulp and defend the world from overambitious scientists who the rest of the world just doesn’t understand.

It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s a plane covered in feathers! No, it’s the Brown University Band!

Once upon a time, there was an origin story. It all began the evening of February 3. The Brown Bears hockey players were minding their own business when suddenly they were attacked by the evil forces of Clarkson!

The villains weren’t all bad, though. The goodness of the Clarkson Bandies shone even amidst the darkness of their team’s quest to conquer Brunonia in the name of The Bagelry.

Despite a valiant effort, the Bears lost the great Battle of Meehan, 3-1. So it was up to us to save the day!

And save the day we did. We changed into our alter-egos and, instruments in hand, we stormed the ice rink. After several minutes of music, skating, and general awesomeness, we emerged victorious in the final battle. Here’s a clip of what it looked like “In the Fray”:

Brunonia was saved, thanks to the mysterious masked-yet-somehow-extremely-familiar-looking strangers known as the Brown Band!

Records Are Made to Be Broken…Again

Flashback to Ocotber 29th, 2011. The finall buzzer has sounded (well I guess it was a horn or whistle since it was football) and we see the UPenn men’s team walking off the field in shame. It was all their fault. Their 18 game Ivy win streak had come to an end. Most importantly, the Penn Band’s world record for world’s longest baton had been shattered by the Brown Band!

Flash forward to February 4th and the Quakers and Penn Band have returned for basketball. The game got off to a fast start with Bruno going up 13-12! And in our new band tradition, we stopped our feet in synchronization (three quarter notes followed by two 8th notes for those keeping score on their Bandstand Blog scorecard) every time the Bears got a bucket. I think we won the game because the last photo I have of the scoreboard is that Brown was winning 13-12.

See we had more points than Penn! Therefore we won!

That’s all we need to know about the game.  During the evening we got to sit next to the Penn Band!  And they were actually quite well behaved!  They even sang along when we played “Even True to Brown”!  What fine sportsmanship.  I’m positive they did not subsititute their own lyrics.  No band would ever do that; especially the Brown Band when we sing Cornell University’s Alma Mater on the bus.  *Wink wink*

Yes, they did litter our arena by throwing confetti in the air the first time they scored, but we forgave them.  That was until we realized President Simmons campaign “Brown is going Green”.  To pay for their heinous acts and destruction of the environment, the Brown Band decided that the Penn Band would witness another record breaking moment.  This time we broke the record for the world’s smallest baton!!

World's smallest baton. Aww it's so cute!

Conductor Adam Siegel ’14 can be given credit for leading the Band to the record books once again.  And as a tribute to last football season, he called the same song that we played with the world’s largest baton, “The Ding Dong Song”.  The Brown Band is now a master of all batons, big and small.  You jelly Penn Band?  Since we have the records for largest and smallest batons, we decided to be nice and let them have the awkwardly named “world’s most average sized baton” world record.  The Baton wskillfully made by a team of the Band’s best engineers and ninjas from the finest quality wood and duct tape the engineering building’s roboticslab could provide.  Below you can see the concentration of Adam as he enters the record books!  Tis was a fine moment in the history of Brown University and will undoubtedly make national headlines.  Stay tuned as we will share all the details of  when the Brown Band saved the day at our superheros ice show!

Adam enters the record books!! You might have to zoom in on his right hand.