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!!!

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!

Women’s Hockey, Conductor Debuts, and Ice Rehearsal!

Hi friends! My name is Lewie and I’m the newest addition to the FOBB team. I’m a sophomore concentrating in economics and political science and I play tenor sax in the Brown Band. I’ll be helping Brandon out with the blog and taking over once he graduates (which he never will because if he does I’ll miss him too much). If you really can’t get enough of my blogging, you can also check out my blog about the Cleveland Indians. Or, as I like to call them, the Believeland Windians.

This is how excited I am to be writing for the blog.

My blogging debut might be the biggest band-related news of the week, but it turns out that other things happened too! On Friday night, we had our first sports-related performance of the year at the women’s hockey game against the Dartmouth Big Green. Big Green? What’s up with that? “Oh hello, I play for a sporting club called the Diminutive Periwinkle.” “What fun! My sporting allegiance lies with the Nondescriptly Sized Off-Whites! Jolly good!” (You were supposed to read that in a British accent. Go back and do so now.)

Anyway, despite their nonsensical name, the Big Green bested our Brown Bears, 3-1. But it was still a big night for the band, as not one, not three, but two new conductors made their public debuts. First up was Zoe Fieldsteel ’15:

She's the one waving her arms.

Followed by Adam Siegel ’14:

Both of them did a bang-up job, and we’re all very much looking forward to their leading the band for years to come!

But we were just getting warmed up. On Saturday, the moment we’d all been waiting for finally arrived: our first ice rehearsal of the year!

Hey, this picture looks familiar.

In case you’re wondering, Brandon attempted a similar feat:

Which, of course, led to:

I mean this was kind of predictable.

What was the ice rehearsal for, you may ask? For an ice show, of course! What a silly question. But it isn’t just an ice show. If you happen to be in the vicinity of Meehan Auditorium this Friday night after the hockey game, you can catch our Superhero Ice Show! That’s right—just in case being able to skate and play instruments at the same time doesn’t count as enough of a superpower, we’ll be assembling a collection of caped crusaders that would put the Justice League to shame.

Speaking of which, I must be off—there’s evil afoot, and with great power comes really expensive utility payments. Hope to see you this weekend!

Brown Band Goes Hollywood

Last weekend lived up to its hype as the Brown Band concluded Iron Band month.  Friday night, the Band took to the ice for a classic ice show.  But this time with a special theme, the Oscars!  Since we are the world’s only (AND BEST!) ice skating band, we were nominated for an Academy Award! We love Brown’s campus too much to leave and go to Hollywood, so we decided to stay and wear our suits and dresses on ice during the ice show! The Band was a winning band (after Bruno defeated Cornell 3-2 in overtime) AND a classy band that night.  We performed classics like the Beatle’s “Hard Days Night” and Brown University’s “In the Fray”.  Also, the Band played one of our newest songs “Dynamite” by Taio Cruz. We would like to thank the Academy and Ice Wizard (the man who resurfaces the ice during the game) for making this ice show possible.

The next night the Band took over the Pizzitola Center for some peach crate ball! Since basketball originally started by using peach crates as baskets, we thought it would be a lot cooler if we just referred to basketball as peach crate ball from now on.  We were there to witness history as Bruno scored 100 points! Brown has not hit triple digits since the 2003-2004 season.  I’m sure the basketball team was motivated to score that many points after they heard we had changed the name of their sport to peach crate ball.  How could you not get excited about that!?

There was also a competition in the Band to think of a new way to annoy the opposing team.  My favorite was making sheep noises at any Dartmouth player who came to shoot at the free throw line.  When the game ended and Bruno claimed victory over Dartmouth, the Band literally ran over to the Meehan Center for hockey vs Colgate. We pretended it was a fire drill and were able to make it to the hockey game in under five minutes.  Bruno erupted for six goals that night as we defeated Colagte 6-4.  That is why the Band’s favorite toothpaste is Crest, not Colagate.

And the Academy Award goes to... the Brown University Band!

 

Pure classiness on ice!

 

Photographic evidence that Bruno scored 100 points!

 

Do we have a winning band? YES, we have a three-time winning band!

Band segment on BTV

This week, the BrownTV program 25:36 — the University’s first live, student-run talk show — aired a segment on our ice skating band.

The ice show was Oscar-themed, so it’s only appropriate that the affair was documented on the small screen. Stay tuned for a more thorough update on last weekend’s three exciting sporting events from Brandon GS’12, who, if you hadn’t noticed, is the newest addition to the FOBB team.

The Brown Band hits the ice!

This weekend, the Brown Band performed in this season’s first of two ice shows. After a tough loss against Dartmouth (3-0), we think it’s what the crowd needed to lift its spirits.  At least, that’s what we tell ourselves. The Band performed ‘Soul Man’, ‘The Ding Dong Song’ (arr. Nick Hagerty ’10), and ‘In the Fray’ before finishing off with the fight song.

I'm not really sure what this is supposed to be. Copied without permission from Bryan Chu '11.