Post by mountaineer501 on Feb 19, 2010 9:48:48 GMT -5
By DAVID JONES, The Patriot-News
February 16, 2010, 7:57PM
.If you love college athletics and prefer it over the pros, one of the reasons is probably the atmosphere. And no matter the window dressing applied by the “gameday experience” chieftans who've sprung up all over the college sports marketing landscape, nothing juices a game better than a great band.
Maybe you're not the type to notice bands. But when a great pep band is rocking a college hoop house, I hear it. That happened last week at West Virginia when I covered the Villanova game.
The WVU pep band was awesome. A mere 60 musicians, half the size of a marching band. Yet their sound clapped like thunder through the old WVU Coliseum. They played standards but also stuff you don't hear all the time from college bands.
Jay Drury was a trumpet player on the band when he was a student back in the mid-'90s. For the last six years he's been its director. Unlike at some schools where the basketball pep band is sort of a volunteer collection of stragglers from the higher-profile football marching band, the membership of Drury's pep band is structured and consistent. You're expected to put in the same effort as the football band.
“Our pep band is actually a class; the students get credit for it,” said Drury. “We get together in early October and practice as often as possible before the season starts.
“We do like to play crisp and clean, if you will. The kids take a lot of pride in it.”
Pep band members are expected to know 80 different songs, any one of which Drury can order up during a game without warning, based on what sort of timeout is taken. And they aren't just the same stuff you hear everywhere else. Kool and the Gang's Jungle Boogie gets a complete treatment. And Stevie Wonder's Sir Duke is not your typical fare, nor is it easy to play.
These kids make it sound easy, though. The bass line and rhythmic foundation supplied by the low brass and the percussion just boom and crack out loud. It's the same great framework you'd get out of a power bass and drum combo like John Bonham and John Paul Jones or Keith Moon and John Entwhistle.
You can tell immediately if a band has taken the time to prepare when you walk in an arena.
Drury said his attitude is, if anything is worth doing, it's doing well:
“I think it makes a difference. I think it helps the atmosphere.
“We think we have a good band program overall. And we treat the pep band as just as important as our marching band or any of our other bands.
“We like to have fun and we're there to support the team. But we think we should be doing it the right way, too. It means something. We're not just a ragtag bunch of kids who comes together