From: tyg@HQ.Ileaf.COM (Thomas Galloway)
Subject: Re: LSJUMB's show at the Blockbuster Bowl
Organization: Interleaf, Inc.
Date: Wed, 6 Jan 93 03:24:53 GMT

In article <18588040@um.cc.umich.edu> R.Vincent.Lamb@um.cc.umich.edu writes:
>|>won't see it.  Not unless CBS decides to quietly ignore the old
>|>"you never show the Stanford Band live on network TV" policy.

Back in '81, the last year the Ivy League was in Division I-A (or I before
the split into I-A and I-AA) the tv contract basically said that 2-3 games
from each conference in I-A had to be shown at least regionally on ABC.
Given that Yale actually had a pretty decent team that year, both the 
Yale-Navy and Yale-Dartmouth (which pretty much decided the championship)
games were shown.

Now, the Yale Precision Marching Band had acquired a certain reputation
with ABC by this point in time. Something to do with forming ABC on the
field and changing the A to an N when the cameras went on. Or maybe it was
the peacock formation. Or perhaps the formation in the previous year when
the YPMB en massed dropped trou (wearing diapers underneath) on national tv.
Apparently ABC hadn't heard that we'd cleaned up our act and were now
"tastefully hilarious".

So for the Navy game, they showed the Middies marching around in straight
lines and generally being boring. When we took the field, they cut to
"scenes of historic Yale University". After showing said scenes, the
dialogue went something like this:
"And now, let's take a look at Yale President A. Bartlett Giamatti, who
is attending his first game of the season after recovering from gallstone
surgery (or somesuch minor malady)". Cut to Bart in the stands. Bart is
in the process of catching a can of beer someone has tossed him. Cut to
a rapid pan of the alumni sections.

Given this, ABC apparently decided that the YPMB wasn't so bad after all.
Or maybe they just liked our Navy/Parent's Day show which included a salute
to Oedipus with music of I Want To Marry A Girl Just Like The One That
Married Dear Old Dad and I Only Have Eyes For You (the latter accompanied
by our battleaxe player chopping out the paper mache irises of our eyes
formation along with the tossing of red streamers). But for whatever reason,
they decided to show our Dartmouth/Alumni Day show.

However, given their actions during the Navy game, we didn't think they would.
And we'd come up with a killer theme for this show...A Salute To Communism,
with the band in red shirts rather than blue. The first formation was a
hammer and sickle, with the handle of the hammer doing a kickline. The
ABC announcer was alledged to say on sighting this "And the Yale Band is
forming what appears to be a hammer and sickle in an apparent salute to
communism oh my god".

But they apparently didn't have any backup material, so they showed the
whole show. Even the last formation. Which started out as an outline C,
with the announcer giving the audience a test as to whether they were 
communists or not. But if they were, they shouldn't worry, because many
famous people were communists; Red Skelton, the Marx Bros., Red Auerbach,
and that group which is corrupting the great American institution of
baseball, the Cincinatti Reds [y'know, given the later Giamatti/Rose
situation, this formation takes on a whole new meaning]. At that point,
the band plays the first few bars of Take Me Out To The Ballgame. They
then segue into Back In The USSR as the formation changes to CCCP.

And at that point, we brought out a memento we'd "liberated" from the
broadcast booth earlier. Yep, we unfurled the ABC Sports banner directly
underneath the CCCP. And it was broadcast.

Finally, while not picked up on television, after the song was over our
announcer, Dr. Death, made what was probably the best ad lib in YPMB
history; "Note the color of their logo"...needless to say, it was red.

P.S. During the third quarter we got a message from Giamatti. "I would never
have believed that you could do a salute to communism that the alumni would
laugh at."

tyg   tyg@hq.ileaf.com