| |
Line up with the Mustang Band!
Memberships dues and donations from alumni, friends, and fans like you pay for uniforms, game-day meals, transportation, instruments, and scholarships.
Support your band and show your spirit.
Take your spot in the Diamond M today.
Learn more and pledge your donation here.
| |
| | In this Issue | 1. Join Us at the Band Hall Dedication
2. Mustang Band Wins Halftimes
3. Game Day Blvd. Tailgate Is Back!
4. Perkins Demolition Update
5. Battle of the Decades and Perunathon
6. Report from the Podium
7. Drawing Up the Charts
8. Alumni Band Update
9. Last Chance to Answer Our Survey
10. Monthly Lexicon
11. Nostalgic Photos
| |
| Read the Board! | Upcoming events!
Friday, Sept 19
7:00pm band hall dedication
8:30pm Mustang Band concert and SMU pep rally
Saturday, Sept 20
12:00pm Boulevard lunch
2:30pm kickoff, a&m vs SMU
Saturday, Sept 27
tbd, Boulevard brunch
11:00am kickoff, tcu vs SMU
| |
|
Keep in touch
| Comments? Questions? Article suggestions? Nostalgic photos?
Email us:
diamondMclub@gmail.com
Follow us on Twitter:
@DiamondMClub
Follow us on Instagram:
@DiamondMClub
| |
|
Forward to a friend
| Know someone who's a Mustang Band supporter but who may not be getting this e-mail?
Send this newsletter to them and let them know what they're missing! Click the button below.
| |
|
|
|
Join Us at the Band Hall Dedication
As we all know, this Friday, September 19, will feature a very special event as SMU celebrates the Mustang Band, formally dedicates its swanky new band hall, and gives thanks to the generous contributions made by friends and alums like you who made it all possible.
An RSVP is not required. Just put on some red SMU spirit attire and get thee down to campus.
Here again is the schedule:
7:00pm Dedication and Open House
7:30pm Block Party
8:30pm Mustang Band concert and Pep Rally at Doak Walker Plaza
Rumor has it that SMU is expecting over 400 Mustang Band alums, plus who knows how many other dignitaries, students, and passersby. It's going to be a packed house.
And if you haven't yet joined the Diamond M Club for this year, we'll be on hand to take your membership dues. We'll even have a prize drawing exclusively for those who join that evening. (We give good prizes.)
Now listen up. Our event isn't the only one on campus that evening, just the most important. So parking will be tough. No surprise there. Try to get to SMU early and give yourself extra time to hunt for parking. Start with the Moody and Binkley garages (see graphic below), but be flexible. One possibility is to park at Mockingbird Station across 75 and either walk or take DART's SMU Express (line #768).
In other band hall news...
* The SMU Board of Trustees held their meeting in the new band hall last Thursday, September 11. No word on whether the freshmen gave them a "hubba!"
* From the SMU Development Office comes word that there is one final naming opportunity available in the new band hall: the Hall of Honor. There is a movement afoot to name it for David Percival, the original Mustang Band Weatherman who died suddenly of a brain aneurysm. The goal is $250,000 and $156,000 has been raised to date, leaving us just $94,000 short. For more information, contact Arlene Mathey at amanthey@smu.edu.
|
|
Mustang Band Wins Halftimes
While the football team struggles, the Mustang Band displayed its gridiron prowess during the first two weeks of the season by besting the Baylor and UNT bands on the field of play.
Behold the Diamond M formations in Waco (top, courtesy Kellie Johnson) and Denton (below, courtesy Jon Greene). Chomp chomp.
The Mustang Band is expanding its social media presence and we all get to benefit. Below, via the band's YouTube channel, is the halftime show in its entirety from the September 6 UNT game.
Mustang Band director Don Hopkins believes this performance may well be the best he's ever heard the band play since he became director. Indeed, UNT fans gave the band a standing ovation. The video doesn't do the show justice, we're told. Even some of the grumpiest critics on hand that day had to admit that the band kicked tail and took names. We'd heard already that the acoustics of the new band hall has improved the band's ability to hear itself in rehearsal, but Don also thinks the new AV set-up played a key role. The band could see the Baylor performance in vivid clarity and recognize their mistakes, pushing them to work harder to fix them for the UNT game.
 | | SMU Mustang Band - Halftime 9/6/14 (at UNT) |
|
|
Game Day Boulevard Tailgate Is Back
With all of the activity surrounding the September 19 band hall dedication, let's not forget that Saturday, September 20 brings football back to the Hilltop. The game - pitting SMU against the aggies of A&M - will be televised nationally. It may be a long day for the football team, but think of the national TV exposure the Mustang Band might get.
But before kickoff... you're all invited to join the Diamond M Club on the Boulevard for food and beverages.
We're at the same place we were last fall - the corner of Binkey and Bishop between Boaz Hall and Meadows. If you need directions, email us at diamondMclub@gmail.com.
Our caterer will again be the great Barney Barnett. This week the menu features gourmet hot dogs, chips, beverages, and ice cream.
Here's how it'll work:
12:00pm, general public served food
1:00pm, Mustang Band served food
1:45pm, last call for food
2:30pm, kickoff
There is no fee for this lunch because it's been graciously sponsored by Billy Everitt and Brook Mays Music. Hubba!
That said, you still need to get there early. This is a first come first serve situation. See you there!
Next Saturday's (September 27) kickoff against the frogs of tcu is 11am. With the early start, we'll provide a brunch spread before the game, this one generously sponsored by Jerry Patrick (Mustang Rental) and Keith Karnes (BTerrell Group LLP). Our Boulevard schedule is TBD, but we'll keep you posted.
Interested in sponsoring a Boulevard meal and helping feed the Mustang Band and its supporters? Email us: diamondmclub@gmail.com.
|
|
Perkins Demolition Update
Below are some photos plundered from Facebook, taken by David Henry, Aren Cambre, and Roy Goodloe, who have all been doing a great job documenting the undoing of Perkins Natatorium.
The most poignant photo is perhaps the bottom one, showing a lonely, red-framed, doorless opening leading down to the old Mustang Band ramp.
The Mustang Band has deserved a modern band hall with a flat ceiling for many years now and the new space is absolutely perfect. But the taking apart of Perkins is a bittersweet event for those who created so many memories and worked for so many hours in the cramped old space under the bleachers.
|
|
Battle of the Decades & Perunathon
A quick reminder regarding our "Battle of the Decades" contest. As you join the Diamond M Club and pledge your money, be sure to select which decade you want to help win. This contest will end at 11:59pm on Thursday, October 30. The winning decade will be announced at Pigskin Revue on Friday, November 14 and become the proud official sponsor of the final home game Boulebard tailgate on Friday, November 28.
As of last week, we had 30+ Diamond M Club members for 2014-15 and collected $12,000 in dues and gifts. We need your help to get those numbers up!
Here again are the directions. Go to www.smu.edu/SupportDiamondM. After you pledge your gift amount, check the "In honor of" button, and enter the decade as shown in the example below.
But wait! That's not all.
Next month we'll unveil another game: Perunathon. Playing "Peruna" over and over... and over again is time-honored tradition in the Mustang Band (yes yes, we know, no one will ever be able to play it as often as you played it when you were in the band).
In a variation of those old PBS pledge drives, we'll be taking pledges for how many times the Mustang Band will play "Peruna" at the November 28 university of houston game. The Mustang Band Peruna Counter will keep track and report back to us the final tally. For example, if you pledge $1 per play and the band plays "Peruna" 100 times, you've promised to give $100.
More details to come soon.
One last note: for those who have been asking about the status of the pledge letters an brochures, those are coming soon. There's been some adminstrative delays as we update our marketing materials. As Bob-o used to say, "Thank you for being patient even if you weren't."
|
|
Report from the Podium
It's always "Mustang Band season" - even when the football team is on a bye. This past Saturday, the band was climbing on buses at 6:30am to participate in the Heart Walk downtown. They marched a little in the walk, then played for participants at the finish line.
Here are some URLs to Vines of that morning, courtesy SMU.
We also learned that the Mustang Band drumline started a Twitter account (@SMUdrumline) - you should follow them. How else would you learn about the drum line's tour of SMU fountains?
Finally, we found this nugget below via the Mustang Band's YouTube page. As you may know, at the end of every rehearsal on the football field, the band plays the "Peruna" sequence, followed by the Rodeo Yell.
This involves yet another odd Mustang Band tradition - during the final portion of "Peruna" one band member (sometimes unsuspectingly) is selected to be the sole recipient of the full force and fury of all those brass bells, blasting right in his/her face.
Glorious.
 | | BuzzEmUp 8/17/14 |
Beat the hell out of texas a&m university.
|
|
Drawing Up the Charts
Last fall we talked to Mustang Band assistant director TommyTucker about how he arranges the music of the Mustang Band. It's only fitting that this fall we learn more about the band's visuals ("Catch the eye and the ear will follow" said a famous Mustang Band director once) and visit with director Don Hopkins about the band's marching drills.
As you'd expect, the music comes first because that drives many of the drill choices. For example, if there's a big moment in the music, Don wants the band planted in one spot on the field. Most of the halftime music gets set by the middle of June, at which point Don can start developing the drills. Don's been watching other marching band shows and hopes to add a few new elements to the Mustang Band halftimes. Don also plans to cover more of the field this season than he has in the past. But there are, of course, certain limitations to his creativity. The Mustang Band often gets no more than 7-1/2 minutes at halftime, which must of course include the traditional Diamond M formation. So the band can usually perform only two songs before launching into "Pony Battle Cry" and the Diamond M. If there's no visiting band that day, they can maybe squeeze in a third song.
When it comes to deciding which song and drill goes into which game halftime, there are a number of factors to consider. First are the practical elements. For one, the Band doesn't want to play the same song two years in a row against the opponent. Also, when the band faces games in back-to-back weekends, Don and Tommy try to make it easy on the students and change as few elements as possible. Remember that this is not your father's Mustang Band rehearsal schedule. The band is only together at Thursday evening practice and briefly on game day morning. Otherwise, Don's working with the band in groups - three separate one-hour sections on Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays and one 90-minute section on Tuesdays and Thursdays.
There are also aesthetic decisions involved in picking which game gets which song and drill. Don wanted to "break in" Baylor's new stadium back on August 31 by peeling back the home crowd's faces with "Malaguena." And for the Texas A&M game, he figured the best antidote to the Aggie band's monotonous military style is a collection of charts inspired by Earth, Wind, and Fire.
Sight lines are another factor to consider. Ford Stadium, which has low sight lines, isn't always the best venue for certain drills. For "California Dreamin'," for example, the band made a car and "drove" it down the field. In the Superdome, the crowd loved it, but at Ford, the crowd wasn't oriented high enough to see the car and get the joke.
The hardest part of making drills may be just getting the drills done. Don jokes that he spends a lot of his time erasing what he just did. Some drills come together quickly and easily, other take longer. Don says he worked out this year's drill to "Bali Hai" for this season in about two hours. The "Malaguena" drill, on the other hand, dogged him for two weeks.
The days of handwriting drills on big printouts of football fields are over, of course. Don now uses a software application called Pyware. In describing it, he uses the word "awesome" more than once. The latest version of Pyware provides a pre-visualization of the show. He can create uniform colors for band member avatars, program high-knee-lifts or glide steps, all of it timed to the music. There are also options for basketball courts and soccer fields. Now that the band hall's TVs are hooked up, student leaders don't have to simply teach the drill using photocopied instructions and crude drawings; they can now see the show via Pyware. Can you imagine? Once Don finishes a drill, he'll show it to Tommy. Don says Tommy is usually too nice to say something's terrible, though Don can tell when Tommy "squirms in his chair."
Before this new version of Pyware, Don would have to sometimes make adjustments on the field once the band actually put the drill on its feet and marched it. Before, he might overlook smaller details that Pyware now helps him catch. Which means that, nowadays, once the drill is finalized and distributed to the band, the bugs have mostly been worked out. This is a welcome benefit of Pyware because Don has noticed that Mustang Band members today (especially, perhaps, engineering students) expect every instruction spelled out in minute detail. They've grown up getting detailed directions. That's in contrast to a perhaps more loose and improvisational vibe of older Mustang Band incarnations where the members might find a hiccup in the drill and just work out a solution.
Don created his first drill way back in 1986 for Dripping Springs High School. He learned some of the basics at SMU when he was undergrad, but he credits Bob Brandenberger with being his most valuable mentor. Bob's first year as the assistant director in the Mustang Band was Don's freshman year.
Don's favorite recent drill was one they did for an armed forces salute. Using Mustang Band uniforms, Don created an American flag on the field (the drummers with their white shells and blue coats formed the field of stars in the corner). But maybe a drill this fall will be even better than that one. We'll keep you posted.
|
|
Alumni Band Update
Our first Sunday afternoon rehearsal on September 14th was a resounding success. We'll be doing more of those in addition to our regular Thursday evening practices. As soon as the next Sunday session is set, we'll post the information on the two Mustang Band Alumni sites on Facebook - or if you'd prefer, you can email me at stanshipman@verizon.net and I'll personally let you know the times and dates. Be sure to include information on your instrument and part so I can have music all ready to go for you.
These can be very tough times for many of our grads and the Alumni Band can be a great way to manage the stress in your life. But just as important is the care of the soul, something this music is tailor-made to nurture. Should those of you not currently participating decide to join us, Alumni Band will be happy to welcome you into the fold.
The most enduring aspect of the Mustang Band is the incredible spirit that is common to all eras of our history. And it is that marvelous spirit - and the music that goes along with it - that is such a potent tonic for your heart and soul.
I also guarantee it to taste better than Peruna!
Hubba!
Stan
|
|
Last Chance to Answer the Survey
Are you tired of hearing about our Diamond M Club market survey?
We've gotten a good response, but we'd like as wide and varied a pool of respondents as is possible.
So if you haven't had a chance to answer our questions, please pour yourself a nice frosty beverage, put on some soothing music, and click on the link below. It won't take you more than 10 minutes.
We need your perspective about the Mustang Band and the Diamond M Club. Please help us.
Remember that you have the chance to enter to win a $75 Barnes and Noble gift card. The survey will close after the September 20 home game. We'll announce the winner before the second home game, September 27.
|
|
Nostalgic Photos
 | From the 1992 Rotunda, freshman Cathy Adams
paints the block. |
 | |
The 2012 Compass Bowl, courtesy Brent Ruppi,
which is paired nicely with...
|
 | |
...the Mustang Band in the stands at UT in 1982,
from Ken Howard. Some things don't change. |
 | |
Big Naomi at the Alamodome in early 90s,
from John Rothermel. |
 | |
Bob Brandenberger in his natural habitat, c 1993.
Photo by Matt Taylor.
|
|
|
