How To Be a Good Fan

[Lauren '06]

[Q]CowbellGuy Wrote:
As for Cornell, don't get me wrong. I really appreciate the band. And this has nothing to do with Macho Man. They have, however, been on a bit of a downward trend the last few years. There hasn't been a very strong solo trumpet since Chris Orelup. The middle brass is thin and often, well, poor. But I think my biggest issue lately has been percussion. The percussion section is small, but still the most audible. However, they often seem to think they should be conducting and are completely off doing their own thing. There's rarely someone on bass drum who actually knows the songs. At Clarkson, I actually watched the conductor walk up and remind the guy he was supposed to be playing. He later discovered you can't play the bass drum while talking on a cell phone. Maybe I was spoiled by the band in the late 90's. Hopefully it's just cyclical. And the band certainly has nights when they sound like the best band in the ECAC. But there are other nights... I know the band gets almost no support. I literally watched instruments fall apart at Colgate. I guess I just don't like seeing other schools do it better.[/q]
The quality of the hockey band at SLU and Clarkson was down because half of the band was playing for the worthy cause of the Penn and Princeton basketball games (not to mention the various other commitments that happened to coincide on that particular weekend--jazz concerts, rock gigs... chorale concert?!), so instrumentation was particularly thin.  The conductor that weekend is a lead trumpet, so having him up front hurts already.  At SLU we had one percussionist simultaneously playing snare, bass, and two suspended cymbals.  At Clarkson we had a clarinet player on bass drum and a rotation of five conductors so that they could alternate playing their instruments and contribute to the band sound.  I put out the best band I could with what I was given.

Of course, thin instrumentation stems from a bigger problem.  We don't have the numbers we used to, because for some reason enthusiasm for the pep band has dropped in the past two years.  When I was a freshman, you had to claw your way to the top of the pile for hockey tickets.  Then the next year, attendance suddenly dropped.  The '07 freshmen weren't into it and the '06 sophomore class, while well represented in pep band, inexplicably shrunk to about 1/4 its original size.  Now, we have very few current pepband members from the class of 2007, and I'm often left with extra tickets to give to band alum as a result.  Some members of last year's pep band leadership are partially to blame, but it's also the result of having a strange concentration of anti-athletics types in the '07 class.  I can't force people to want to play for hockey, and many of them simply don't enjoy it for reasons that have nothing to do with the band or the crowd.

Fortunately, we have a new '08 freshman class that is by and large very excited about the hockey team... I get emails asking for links to polls and press all the time, they like the crazy solo ranting that some fans will do in the stands, and they want to be a part of the tradition of Cornell hockey.  That bodes well for the future of the pep band, because their enthusiasm will generate enthusiasm in future classes.  I'm optimistic.

-Lauren Forconi '06
2005 Pep Band Manager

[ninian '72]

[Q]billhoward Wrote:

 
There ought to be a pairwise comarisons chart for all colleges showing who got in where and who enrolled where. Harvard and Princeton probably don't lose many PWCs. We win some, we lose some (but look at our strength of schedule), because for a lot of people it's where we wanted to go (really!), for some it's a safety school (right), for some it's a reach school.

But seriously for a minute: Do the Ivies at least among themselves share information about who's jointly admitted (eg to Cornell and Brown and Yale) so they can internally track who went where? That would be an intriguing free-market counterpoint to the U.S. News kinds of rankings the colleges decry (especially in years when they slip). [/q]

Strange you should ask:

See the National Bureau of Economic Analyis report - Avery, Glickman, Hoxby, Metrick (2004). "A Revealed Preference Ranking OF U.S. Colleges and Universities."

Link to the abstract here:

http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=601105

and click on the appropriate button to download the report.

Also, an interesting piece on the longterm outcomes of attending elite schools:

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200410/easterbrook

[daredevilcu]

[Q]Credit where it's due: Clarkson's band sounds good this year. They've got the tightest percussion section in the ECAC, and also the biggest. Big enough that it drowns out most of the rest of the instruments, but I guess you flaunt what you've got. [/Q]

Thanks for that -- what makes it even better is that our drummers never have any music, and make up the parts for every song we have.  What happened with the electric bass?

RPI - Weak at best.  We were there for Black Friday at RPI last semester, and even with limited instruments, we outplayed them easily.  There's an article in the polytechnic if you want to read it... http://www.poly.rpi.edu/article_view.php3?view=3479&part=1

UVM - Weak.  Their hired director was a complete ass, and they were all playing into microphones.  We didn't bring a full band with us (5 or 6 instruments) and thus sounded awful but UVM was still lame.

Harvard - Too musically inclined.  Care too much about sounding musical with dynamics and stuff, and not enough about what's going on on the ice, it seems.

Colgate - Weak at best.  Lack of numbers, lack of talent, and they're the only band I've ever heard actually warm up with scales before the game.  Lame as hell.

Cornell - Good, but without the Lynah fans they are much less impressive.  Interesting music selections, but once again (when I've been there at least) seem to care about sounding musical more than what's happening on the ice.

Brown - The best place to visit in the ECAC.  So much fun, all their band members are wicked nice people, and you're not ripped on by the arena staff if you go talk to them en masse.  The only band we cooperate with and actually play a song (25 or 6 to 4) together since we have the same arrangement.  The skating thing's cool, pretty funny actually.

Yale and Princeton I have never seen.

[jeh25]

[Q]CowbellGuy Wrote:
Yale either has some prolific arrangers or a good line on sheet music. They may not be that great, but it's always amusing to hear what they've got in their repertoire. At least I think they're down to one Britney song per game. They seem to be well-supported by the school and faculty, which would be nice to see at Cornell for a change.
[/q]

I strongly suspect Tom Duffy deserves some of the credit. He's the Deputy Dean of the School of Music and the Director of Bands at Yale. (Note: that includes the Concert Band and Jazz Ensemble, as well as the Marching Band.)  Ironically, Tom earned his DMA at Cornell with Husa and Stucky. He also happens to be my advisor's husband.

But Age is right on about support: Yale has a faculty member in charge of the bands while the Cornell band can't get money to repair trombones. So even if Tom never even sees a single arrangement, having that level of support has got to help.



 

[Beeeej]

[q]And grow up and get over your hate for Cleary. It's really getting old and pathetic.[/q]

Cleary has never asked for, nor deserved, our forgiveness for what we hate him for.  Cleary is old and pathetic.  That having been said, I don't really think of him often enough, and it doesn't bother me enough, for it to be something I need to "get over."  Why stop calling it the Cleary Bedpan/Pisspot/Jell-O Mold when it's still funny to me?

Beeeej

[Trotsky]

No problem with Cleary, here.  He's been a fierce and outspoken pro-ECAC and pro-Ivy presence at a high level in college hockey.  Indeed, he and Laing Kennedy have been the only such among The People Who Matter in hockey for the last 20 years.  We need all the proponents we can get of academic-athletics where the hyphenated terms are in the correct order.

OTOH, Harvard still sucks.

[Beeeej]

[Q]Trotsky Wrote:
He's been a fierce and outspoken pro-ECAC and pro-Ivy presence at a high level in college hockey.  Indeed, he and Laing Kennedy have been the only such among The People Who Matter in hockey for the last 20 years.  We need all the proponents we can get of academic-athletics where the hyphenated terms are in the correct order.[/q]

I don't dispute a single thing you said, and I agree it's great to have him in "our" corner in that sense.  I think he was also a great player in his day, and obviously a good coach.  But that doesn't mean he's not an arrogant ass, or that he didn't, in his petulant last public act as Hahvahd's head coach, treat Cornell about as shabbily as we've ever been treated.

Beeeej

[Trotsky]

I don't think Ned rates high on the modesty scale either... ;-)

[Lauren '06]

[Q]daredevilcu Wrote:

 [Q2]Credit where it's due: Clarkson's band sounds good this year. They've got the tightest percussion section in the ECAC, and also the biggest. Big enough that it drowns out most of the rest of the instruments, but I guess you flaunt what you've got. [/Q]
Thanks for that -- what makes it even better is that our drummers never have any music, and make up the parts for every song we have.[/q]
I don't believe for a minute that the Conga drum solo was made up on the fly... it did sound great, though.

[q]RPI - Weak at best.  We were there for Black Friday at RPI last semester, and even with limited instruments, we outplayed them easily.  There's an article in the polytechnic if you want to read it... [/q]
RPI is weak, I agree, but they also suffer from poor placement in their rink.  They're all by themselves at one end, below glass level on a podium.  That suggests to me that their rink manager/AD/fandom/whatever don't respect them enough to help them out and give them good placement.

[q]Harvard - Too musically inclined.  Care too much about sounding musical with dynamics and stuff, and not enough about what's going on on the ice, it seems.[/q]
You're in the Clarkson band and you said that?  I find it disturbing/amusing that you consider this a put-down.  Are you guys a band or an inept cheering section with noisemakers?  I guess when Cheel has pre-recorded jock james piped in before the game, you don't really feel the need to sound good.

Oh wait, I get it.  That ridiculous train whistle right above your section has destroyed your hearing, and now you can only play at one level because you can't hear anything else.  Pity. :-D

[q]Colgate - Weak at best.  Lack of numbers, lack of talent, and they're the only band I've ever heard actually warm up with scales before the game.  Lame as hell.[/q]
Pattern developing... sounding good (or in Colgate's case attempting to sound good via traditional warm-up routines) = lame according to Clarkson band philosophy.  Hmm.

[q]Cornell - Good, but without the Lynah fans they are much less impressive.  Interesting music selections, but once again (when I've been there at least) seem to care about sounding musical more than what's happening on the ice.[/q]
Thank you?  I'm not sure which band you thought you saw in your rink last weekend, though.  We didn't sound terribly musical nor did we ignore the game.  The back few rows started several spontaneous on-ice related chants (not loud enough, fine) and responded in kind to jeers from the Clarkson band.  Selective memory?

[q]Brown - The best place to visit in the ECAC.  So much fun, all their band members are wicked nice people, and you're not ripped on by the arena staff if you go talk to them en masse.  The only band we cooperate with and actually play a song (25 or 6 to 4) together since we have the same arrangement.  The skating thing's cool, pretty funny actually.[/q]
Bah.  They haven't even bothered to have their band present at the last two games we attended out there (even Harvard had a full contingent), so I lose any respect I might have had for them.  The rink staff is very helpful, though.  Did your band discover the irritating little kids that like to grab instruments and throw things at you?

[q]Yale and Princeton I have never seen.[/q]
Yale is a fun group.  I don't think I've ever seen the Princeton band either, and from what I got out of the announcer's running boy last month, the rink staff doesn't like having them there anyway.

As for Clarkson.  I like you guys.  I like that when I went into Cheel to sort things out with the rink manager, whole packs of students shouted at me for daring to enter in my red Cornell jersey.  I like that your band really gets into what's going on (and tries to inspire the rest of your fans to do the same).  I don't like that your rink manager sends runners to give us a zillion different restrictions (no profanity, no entering other fan sections, no playing over the Clarkson band, no throwing things, etc) on pain of getting the band tossed, and yet lets you get away with the same sh*t they had only just warned us about.  I don't like that you continued to break the rule of not using noisemakers during play (drums and cowbell during chants) and didn't get penalized for it even after the referee complained to the rink manager and warned about incurring a bench minor.  It's unfair and it's frustrating.  I still blame the train whistle for rendering you insensate.

And by the way, don't forget that when you came to Lynah this year, you maligned our poor backup goalie Louis Chabot with shouts of "You suck, McKee!" before the game.  And continued to do it even after I corrected you (there's that deafness again....).  Good job.

[Liz \'05]

[Q]Beeeej Wrote:
I don't dispute a single thing you said, and I agree it's great to have him in "our" corner in that sense.  I think he was also a great player in his day, and obviously a good coach.  But that doesn't mean he's not an arrogant ass, or that he didn't, in his petulant last public act as Hahvahd's head coach, treat Cornell about as shabbily as we've ever been treated.

Beeeej[/q]

And this begs the question, for those of us who weren't around to see Cleary as a head coach, what exactly did he say?

...always willing to learn a little more Cornell hockey history :-P

[Josh '99]

[Q]Section A Banshee Wrote:
Fortunately, we have a new '08 freshman class that is by and large very excited about the hockey team... I get emails asking for links to polls and press all the time, they like the crazy solo ranting that some fans will do in the stands...[/q]Tell them it's my pleasure.  :-D

[daredevilcu]

[Q]I don't believe for a minute that the Conga drum solo was made up on the fly... it did sound great, though. [/Q]

The tradeoff of measures and count off are the only prepared parts.  The snare solo and quad solo are completely improvised (but obviously we've practiced it and they do some things the same).  The point is -- they still made it up at some point, and without music.

[Q]The back few rows started several spontaneous on-ice related chants (not loud enough, fine) and responded in kind to jeers from the Clarkson band. Selective memory? [/Q]

Not selective memory, just literally couldn't hear you guys.

It's not that we don't care about sounding good.  When there's a need to be musical with dynamics (anthems) we do our best.  For the rest, they're fairly easy and it would only take effort to sound musical if it was the first time you picked up an instrument.  We try hard to fill the whole arena with sound, and we usually can accomplish that no matter where we are.  Read that article in the polytechnic, we were louder than RPI's band with fewer people.  Most of our songs are rock songs that don't really change dynamics anyway, it's a lot to do with our selections.  We're also a VERY top heavy band, so our low brass has to play their lips off just to be heard.

[Q]As for Clarkson. I like you guys. I like that when I went into Cheel to sort things out with the rink manager, whole packs of students shouted at me for daring to enter in my red Cornell jersey. I like that your band really gets into what's going on (and tries to inspire the rest of your fans to do the same). I don't like that your rink manager sends runners to give us a zillion different restrictions (no profanity, no entering other fan sections, no playing over the Clarkson band, no throwing things, etc) on pain of getting the band tossed, and yet lets you get away with the same sh*t they had only just warned us about. I don't like that you continued to break the rule of not using noisemakers during play (drums and cowbell during chants) and didn't get penalized for it even after the referee complained to the rink manager and warned about incurring a bench minor. It's unfair and it's frustrating. I still blame the train whistle for rendering you insensate. [/Q]

Hm... that sounds a lot like the Lynah staff.  Cornell does the same exact things, literally, as far as those restrictions go.  We didn't continue to break the rule--well, we might have done one or two cowbells because of some nameless drunken fools--but we did stop drumming during play.  Most referees allow us to get away with it, Kotyra included, especially at Cheel.  I think the main thing that was annoying is that long black horn-like instrument that one guy likes to use.  The rule on noisemakers is based on a decibel level, I'm pretty sure -- not all noisemakers are disallowed during play.

The train whistle is deafening, because we do sit right under it.  I have noticed slight hearing loss in my left ear (as sousaphone I stand on the far right).  Yeah, it was embarrassing to make fun of McKee and find out it was Chabot, but you know, I was in the bathroom when that happened or something because I didn't even know about it until long after the game.  

As for the pre-recorded "jock jams" we somehow managed to play the numa numa song and spotlight our Jolly Fat Kid cutting a rug, which he does before every game anyway.  That... you have to admit that was pretty hilarious.

[RichS]

If you don't like arrogance in a hockey coach, how about Schafer?  Oh I forgot, you have those carnellian tinted glasses. ::laugh::

[jtwcornell91]

[Q]RichS Wrote:
If I interpret your statement correctly, I imagine Schafer and his boys pissed in the Cleary Cup?[/q]

G-d I hope so. :-D

Schafer certainly kept the celebration to a minimum when SHagwell first brought the Cup to Ithaca in 2002.  He nearly made Baby give it back.  In the middle of this, Arthur announced that other results that night clinched the Ivy League title, which we weren't supposed to care too much about, for Cornell, and everyone who'd been sitting on their hands during the Cleary ceremony cheered.

[Beeeej]

Any particular examples, Rich?  Or just blowing smoke?  And ranting about bad refs doesn't count, they all do that.

Beeeej