Hanging in the open air of Thunderbird Stadium, imagine hearing this 2009 club hit, played some dozen times over four quarters by a corral of flutists: “Cause we gonna rock this club, We gonna go all night…”
Breaking from scrimmage, football players catch notes of the woodwinds: “We gonna light it up, Like it's dynamite!”
Four years ago this fall, Max Bogard, himself a trombonist dedicated to his high school marching band in California, humbly began the Thunderbird Marching Band, one of only a handful of student-led collegiate bands of its kind on the continent and now the only one in Canada west of Ontario.
During that first effort playing for school spirit at a T-Birds game in the form of a stationary pep band locked to their seats, Bogard said they made an impact if not a lot of noise. “We had six people — two drummers, two flutes, a trombone, that was me, and a saxophone,” he said, noting the bass drummer was also trained in the flute but including percussion was critical. “We sat in the stands and played 10 songs over and over again. The first rehearsal was an hour before the game. It was hard to hear us because flutes are not very loud.”
A veteran of drills and arrangements and a fan of hundred-member strong marching bands at schools such as Ohio State, the economics student knew the fledgling TMB also needed trumpets to boost its presence and carry the crowd.
Several months later, the band returned to Thunderbird Stadium with more than double its ranks. Plus, there were now three trumpets and three trombones. Together, they performed the Canadian anthem and “The Star-Spangled Banner” before a rugby game. “We were playing full songs, not just 10 or 20 second snippets,” said Bogard. “That was really the performance where people realized how much potential we had.”
Running Free
Four years later, having stepped up its repertoire of Taio Cruz’s aforementioned “Dynamite” to introduce original arrangements and sophisticated drills, the TMB carefully selects and arranges music for its creative, quirky and contemporary medleys.
In its first half-time show this season, the band performed its Canadian Suite, marching to Drake’s “Hotline Bling” and “Can’t Feel My Face” by the Weeknd at War Memorial Gym. The playlist representing some of this country’s best pop included one deliberate omission.
“We didn’t play any Bieber,” said Vivienne Zhang, the band’s president and bass drummer.
Now 30-members strong, the TMB put on one of its largest performances earlier this month when it played the half-time show of a March 19 game during the four-day CIS men’s national basketball championship. Called “A Retro Adventure” and lasting nearly nine minutes, the performance began with an introduction heavy with “Footloose,” oversized gold jewellery and Scrooge McDuck.
“I wrote in a few really cheesy ’80s references and jokes. I had too much fun with it,” said drum major and third-year political science major Fred Cholowski, who is 20. “Basically what a person who was not alive in the ’80s would know of the ’80s.”
The music and formations for “A Retro Adventure” carried vintage video game themes with incredible imagination. The P.A. announcer cried out that the Princess had been kidnapped before the musicians played the classic tune from Mario Bros., capping it all by forming the outline of a mushroom. That followed the band members marching the length of the court, streaming across the hardwood in the shape of Tetris pieces, slotting together on the baseline before erupting again.
When leading the marching band through its paces, Cholowski’s blond curls bounced wildly with his movements as if lifted by the beat. He arranges the songs along with Bogard, while Tanner Bokor choreographs the kaleidoscope of drill patterns.
Two days before their largest-ever half-time show, the musicians learned their paces over five rehearsals in a second-floor auditorium of the old Student Union Building, where volunteers mapped out a large border to replicate the basketball court at the Doug Mitchell Sports Centre where they would later perform.
Zhang, the bass drummer, wore a sleeveless Iron Maiden T-shirt and hauled around the giant bass drum as Cholowski beat out instructions like the drill sergeant he is. But their roles are akin to the kind of leaders you find in many of the university’s sports programs.
“I’ve often compared Vivienne to a general manager and myself to a coach,” said Cholowski about Zhang and himself. “And in a way, yes, that is my job, to keep everyone’s ducks in a row. Generally, I make sure people are learning things and just making sure we sound good.”
The marching band is a student club under the governance of the Alma Mater Society and can apply for up to $1,200 in grants each year. Valued in the ballpark of $15,000, they own the majority of their large and unusual instruments such as the drums, sousaphone, which is a marching tuba, and the mellophone.
Priceless pop and cherished classics
The Athletics Department supports the marching band by welcoming them at events and supporting their performance efforts.
“They’re awesome. They can play ‘Hotline Bling,’ and you can’t put a fricking price tag on that,” said communications manager Len Catling. “You see all walks of life and all kinds of Thunderbird fans get into their performances. You have alumni who come to games and might not be into Drake when they hear him on the radio, but when our band is there, they get right into it because it adds so much to the atmosphere. We have alumni who have been coming to our games for a long time and new fans who are all attracted to the band.”
Thunderbird Marching Band fight song, reprised from the past
Hail UBC
Hail to the Thunderbirds,
Hail UBC,
Thunder and lightning,
Onward to victory!Hail to the blue and gold,
Hail UBC,
UBC forever!
Onward to victory
— Words and music by Stephen Chatman
UBC basketball alum and former national team player Howard Kelsey has seen the TMB at two games and said they contribute to the live event but have room to grow, particularly by moving out of the stands more often to march during games.
“The intent is good. It needs to be beefed up a bit,” he said, giving Surrey’s MEI Eagles high school marching band as an example to follow. “The intention is good. Anything that bring school spirit is great.”
The band hits the right note for the head coach of the women’s dynastic volleyball program, Doug Reimer. In an email message, he used exclamation points to show his appreciation.
“We love the band! I wish we could clone them so that they could be at all the games,” he wrote. “The enhanced atmosphere and spirit of the live band just can’t be beat at athletic events. I am from a generation where the pep band was part of high school, so for me it brings back those memories, but I know our present student-athletes love it as well.”
Compared to the Athletics Department, the TMB is not similarly supported by the Faculty of Music, though several players overlap between the formal school and the T-Bird entertainers.
Catling said there is no evidence a marching band ever existed at the university during its past 100 years. But the TMB does play historic fight songs from a music book that appears to be from the 1930s; songs include “Hail UBC,” which they play most often, as well as “Hail to the Blue and Gold” and “Here is to Dear Old UBC.”
But is it a sport… really?
The musicians and athletes have more in common than sharing gym space, said Cholowski. All are loyal and accountable to their teams, individuals contribute to a whole, and together they train to execute collective goals under pressure.
“I think everyone is a nerd in their own way — jocks are just nerds for athletics. If you can tap into that passion, everyone can work together,” he said.
The debate rages whether or not marching bands qualify as sport. Bogard said the topic is “controversial” and pointed out there are judged competitions for but doesn’t agree the comparison is complete.
A former Duke Blue Devil lead trumpeter declared last month that marching band and drum corps were both sports. “There, I said it! Not only are these musical activities sports, they are some of the most mentally and physically demanding sports in existence,” wrote Rob Stein in a pre-season strength and conditioning guide.
A researcher told Reuters in 2008, “In the past 20 years, marching bands have gone to these highly choreographed visual shows, where performers are literally running around the field at very high velocities with heavy instruments while playing very difficult passages.”
One of the main reason people slip into sedentary lifestyles is because of a lack of enjoyment, a fact that led kinesiologists at the University of Rhode Island to examine marching band members and changes to their fitness over the course of a season. Comparing woodwind with brass musicians, the differences were negligible though drummers took nearly twice as many steps as anyone else and all musicians increased their cardiovascular endurance. In an earlier study by an exercise physiologist, drumline members were shown to work as hard as football players.
Counting upwards of 200 musicians in some cases, U.S. collegiate marching bands take competition very seriously, offering scholarships to students and treating them like the athletes who play in the periods around their halftime shows. The Ohio State University Marching Band blitzes crowds with their song selection, including “Gangnam Style” a Michael Jackson tribute, and fanciful formations, such as a skull and crossbones as well as Clark Kent entering a phone booth to emerge as Superman and upright a crumbling building — learning the precise demands in as little as a week.
In it for the thrill of it
The Thunderbird Marching Band will not likely perform the “Canadian Suite” or “A Retro Adventure” a second time to UBC audiences. If invited to competitions or to perform on the road, they may turn to their vault but otherwise will bring fresh material to entertain fellow students and T-Birds sports fans. Queen’s and Western universities in Ontario have decades-old marching bands (a century in the former's case) while McMaster in Hamilton started its marching band in 2009, inspiring Bogard to do the same once he moved to Vancouver.
When they perform at a street festival in Point Grey this summer, Bogard said they don’t know what songs will make the cut. “Some of the songs we will be doing have not been released yet,” he said.
Fresh and current, the Thunderbird Marching Band is a hot ticket, even when performing tracks from decades past.
“People should get involved in music in whatever way there is,” added Bogard. “You get the thrill of performing.”
