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Post by helenagamecock on Oct 19, 2023 14:20:48 GMT -6
My son will be attending in fall 2024. We went to the football game on 9/2. 1. I don’t know the history behind the traditional songs like quilting party and I fly away. Can someone explain. 2. Has the southerns ever done a more pop music halftime performance like Ohio state and Alabama? 3. Why don’t the southerns march out to playing in pregame like the auburn university marching band?
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Post by leeroy on Oct 19, 2023 16:07:46 GMT -6
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Post by ntxgamecock on Oct 19, 2023 16:23:23 GMT -6
😝 Exactly what I was thinking. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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Post by leeroy on Oct 19, 2023 17:13:04 GMT -6
😝 Exactly what I was thinking. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Whup Em All has been typing/editing for 2 hours by now.
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Post by Whup Em All on Oct 20, 2023 10:24:51 GMT -6
😝 Exactly what I was thinking. Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Whup Em All has been typing/editing for 2 hours by now. LOL ... I got interrupted midstream. Had to finish later.
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Post by Whup Em All on Oct 20, 2023 10:25:38 GMT -6
My son will be attending in fall 2024. We went to the football game on 9/2. 1. I don’t know the history behind the traditional songs like quilting party and I fly away. Can someone explain. 2. Has the southerns ever done a more pop music halftime performance like Ohio state and Alabama? 3. Why don’t the southerns march out to playing in pregame like the auburn university marching band? 0. "Southerners" not "Southerns". 1a. Quilting Party was just a "Ballerina tune" arranged by former director Dr. David L. Walters in or around 1968. It has such an iconic 20-J part, and is so fun to play (at least for the hornline) and sing that it became a sort of staple for the band every year, even on years they didn't perform it during the show. The Ballerinas learn their own version of the dance every couple of years and will show up at the Southerners reunion (the La Tech game this year) and each group will dance the one they used during their time. Hard to explain. It's just ingrained in Southerners culture. 1b. Former Southerners drum major Freddie Pollard (1961-1965) was a flamboyant personality with a penchant for street preaching. At a parade in Montgomery in or around 1965, he took advantage of a long delay to climb the base of a lamp post and start preaching. Members of the band gathered around him to watch and cheer him on, as bored band members will do in a situation such as this. At some point, someone started humming I'll Fly Away, and everyone soon joined in. Since those were the days when everyone sang in church, the band members broke into harmonized parts pretty quickly and naturally. After humming it a couple of times, they decided to speed Freddie along by singing it through once. But they finished and he kept going. At this point, desperation set in, as the Southerners tried to find some way to shake him from his preaching frenzy. The Spirit was in him, as they say. The band members quietly spread the word among themselves to sing it through one final time, but this time to shout the lines "in the morning" as loudly as possible, directly at Freddie. It worked. Freddie was caught totally off guard, and the band seized the moment to yell a quick "AMEN!" to end the impromptu performance. Somehow this organic, improvised moment became a standard way of ending Southerners' rehearsals and performances from that point on. It was already fully engrained as tradition by 1968, and remained a band-only tradition through the mid-2010s. Then, starting around time of the football team's national championship run (or a year or so after), the team started coming over and singing with the band at the end of the game. Several players were used to this, from their high school years coming over to the band postgame to sing their school's alma mater, so this seemed natural for them, and Coach John Grass, a devout Christian himself, was certainly not going to do anything to discourage his players from singing an old hymn together with other students. The student section soon joined in, along with the hundreds (or thousands) of band alumni in the crowd, and after only a couple of games, it was engrained as a schoolwide tradition. 1bb. The prolonged "in the morniiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnnsggshdfhgsdhfgshdfhagsdjhfjhdsgfhsgdhfghsdfhgsdhfgg" is NOT how the band yelled it for most of their existence. This only started in the very late 1990s with a couple of sections basically showing their a$$. It used to be yelled in time, loud as hell but in time -- "IN THE MOR-NING!" -- and didn't create an awkward pregnant pause while the drum major waits for the last screaming student to complete his seizure. Now we have 500 members a year (plus 100 football players plus 1000+ students a game) thinking this is how it's done, so I guess that's how it's going to be done. Fine. This is fine. *sigh. Get off my lawn. 2. The Southerners used to play such chart-topping pop hits as "Siboney" and "Perfidia" and "C'est Si Bon" ... then the 60s ended. Southerners went corps style in 1974 and focused more on classical and jazz, since, for the most part, those are much more suited to the timbre of a marching band than the hits of Taylor Swift and Duo Lipa. So does the band ever play "pop" shows? No. And they likely never will. That said, the Ballerina tunes often have pop/rock influences (Venus, Moondance, September) and recent ballads have included songs by artists such as Enya and Sarah McLachlan. There could be an exception for an opener or closer if a pop tune ever happens to fit a niche in a show, but don't expect a "Hits of the Backstreet Boys" show to happen. That's just not our style. 3. We didn't do pregames at all until the late 2010s. Auburn's fast march (I'm not 100% sure what they call it... but it's where they come on at a double time pace) is a distinct marching style that is diametrically opposed to the Southerners' style. They're both valid marching forms -- just two different styles. (It's like asking why Taylor Swift doesn't open her concerts with War Pigs by Black Sabbath. On that note... I heard a high school band play War Pigs a couple weeks ago. It was freaking awesome. But I digress...) As for why the Southerners don't march (in their own style) into the stadium and onto the field for pregame, it's probably as much a time-saving decision as anything. It's easier and quicker to come in, lay out of the way behind the teams as they warmup, then simply walk to the sidelines before falling into attention.
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Post by helenagamecock on Oct 20, 2023 10:45:49 GMT -6
Thank you Whup Em All! I appreciate the info. I'll be attending more games starting next year. My niece plans to try out for the southerners. I like to watch all types of marching bands and basketball pep bands. I like all differnt styles, some of my favorite are: the Notre Dame pregame march out and tradional songs 2. Texas AM marching style 3. USC Southern Cal (sun glasses / LA lifstyle current hits) 4. Auburn and Bama
About the only band I don't like is the liberal idiots in the Stanford band and the dumb looking tree dancing around.
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Post by leeroy on Oct 20, 2023 11:27:08 GMT -6
One thing I've noticed just as a student/fan starting in the late 90s is that a lot of Southerners tradition and lore grew independently of the football team. Folks would start showing up about mid 2nd quarter and leave right after halftime. It seemed to be two separate events that happened to go on at the same time. There's been great progress made in integrating the two in recent years.
Whup, as far as my recollection goes, the football team began singing "I'll Fly Away" during the 2015 playoff run because I still have a video of it after the SHSU demolition, and I remember how disappointed I was that they didn't stick around in Frisco. I think it's firmly entrenched now.
They have never formally marched into the stadium as long as I've been around. Sure, I think something like that would be cool to see if it makes sense as far as getting in place, but that band is huge, and we don't have a good path for them now to get where they need to go.
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Post by helenagamecock on Oct 20, 2023 12:02:21 GMT -6
Is the post game performance always the same / similar to the halfetime performane? Ive been wathing youtube video and the songs sound the same different order.
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Post by leeroy on Oct 20, 2023 13:43:53 GMT -6
Is the post game performance always the same / similar to the halfetime performane? Ive been wathing youtube video and the songs sound the same different order. Normally, if they do a post-game performance, it's because they didn't have time to perform the full show during halftime. Think Homecoming, visiting band, Southerners reunion.
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Post by Whup Em All on Oct 20, 2023 14:51:57 GMT -6
Is the post game performance always the same / similar to the halfetime performane? Ive been wathing youtube video and the songs sound the same different order. Normally, if they do a post-game performance, it's because they didn't have time to perform the full show during halftime. Think Homecoming, visiting band, Southerners reunion. Exactly what leeroy said... The thing to understand about the Southerners is that, while MOST college bands learn a completely new (and usually very easy) show for each home game, or perhaps an "early season" show and a "late season" show if they're REALLY serious about things, the Marching Southerners generally do ONE show per year, but the degree of difficulty is way, way higher than usual college bands. Now to be clear... I'm not talking about the degree of difficulty in mastering a particular step style or turns at a precise 2-step interval or anything like that. There are lots of bands out there with their own distinct styles, and some of those are really difficult to perfect. I'm speaking of the show itself -- drill, music, and auxiliary work. Where this difference in difficulty is most apparent is in four areas: 1) the number of drill sets per show, 2) the percussion music and visuals, 3) the colorguard routines, and 4) memorization of all music. There are plenty of bands out there who hit on a couple of these, but it's exceedingly rare to find a college marching band that tops out the scale on all of the above. I only know of a handful of bands who come close. Such difficulty is only possible because the Southerners work the same show to death, from August (May for some sections) all the way through the final rehearsal. Every now and then, the Southerners will learn a second show for some special event, such as a patriotic show on Veterans Day or a joint performance with another band. (We've done such joint shows with FSU and with troy state in the past.) But this generally only happens every 2-3 years at most. But this doesn't mean all halftimes are exactly the same. Each show is generally made up of an intro and opener, a Ballerina tune (featuring the dance line), a ballad (usually featuring the colorguard), some form of feature chart (often including a percussion feature), and a closer (depending on the show, the percussion feature can be included here instead; also, the feature chart can BE the closer). This gives the band roughly 5 different pieces that can be swapped out for different games. Additionally, "Quilting Party" or some other traditional Ballerina tune can be swapped into the show in place of the show's normal dance feature, allowing for even more flexibility. Here's this year's repertoire: Intro/Opener: Reflection/Firebird Ballerina Tune: Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy Ballad: I'll Fly Away/Somewhere Over the Rainbow Closer: Malagueña So the first home game's halftime show may feature Reflection/Firebird and Quilting Party. The second home game may be the Reflection/Firebird and Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy. The third home game may be Boogie Woogie and Malagueña. And so on. It can be adjusted however it makes sense, both for timing if a visiting band is in town, or for any special occasions (Homecoming, etc.) which may take place at halftime. (A Ballerina tune of some sort will usually, but not always, be played during halftime to appease the older fans in attendance. Politics. You may notice as well that the Ballerinas tend to wear their traditional uniforms during halftime, but a more modern uniform during postgame. Also politics.) Once the full show is on the field -- usually by the 2nd home game -- if the halftime show is abbreviated, the Southerners will stick around for a postgame show after the game, so fans can watch the full show. This is a courtesy both to fans and alumni who've traveled from out of town and may only get to one or two games all year, as well as to visiting high school student recruits who may only attend once game. Because who wants to travel 300-400 miles to see the Southerners for the first time in years, only to walk away having only seen an abbreviated halftime show?
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Deleted
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Post by Deleted on Oct 27, 2023 5:17:00 GMT -6
College pregames and halftimes have been abbreviated over the past couple of years so it's almost impossible to get the entire show on the field. Even with all the dumb liberals and conservatives working together.
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Post by steelman on Oct 27, 2023 6:36:33 GMT -6
One cool thing to notice is each song generally ends with the same drill set (except the closer), which allows Southerners to piece together the selected songs to be performed to fit the timeslot as Whup outlined above.
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Powdered Soap
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Posts: 47
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Post by Powdered Soap on Oct 31, 2023 14:20:39 GMT -6
My son will be attending in fall 2024. We went to the football game on 9/2. 1. I don’t know the history behind the traditional songs like quilting party and I fly away. Can someone explain. 2. Has the southerns ever done a more pop music halftime performance like Ohio state and Alabama? 3. Why don’t the southerns march out to playing in pregame like the auburn university marching band? Now back in my prehistoric days they WOULD march in for exhibition performances (not football games). At BSF, for example, they'd march onto the field, via the gate to the visitors locker room, to the sound of the drumline cadence (which is different from the one performed now). They'd form an arch facing the back side of the field to play warmup songs, typically Salvation and Stars Fell on Alabama. After warmup they'd then walk to their position in the starting set. They don't seem to do that for exhibitions anymore. Presumably the Southerners are just too big for it to be practical, these days. Another difference in my day: there wasn't an on-the-field a pregame show at all, marched or not. I took a 5-year break from attending JSU games, after college, and when I later came back to my first game in a while, I thought the idea of a pregame show was nearly blasphemy, haha. It felt too much like we were trying to copy other schools.
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Post by leeroy on Oct 31, 2023 15:11:43 GMT -6
What year did the pregame show start?
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