Fred's Princeton Trip

Over the weekend of November 10-12, 1995 I was at Princeton University as a member of the Princeton University Band
I was going to send this out as mail to my friends, but then decided it would be nice to hyperlink it.

Headin' Out

After dragging Jonathan (shown here, Bottom Center) down to my Alma Mater, just to see the Chime Tower,I agreed to tag along on a trip to his to experience The Princeton University Marching Band.

Plans change, so while we have tickets to leave around 6 pm, we fly on stand-by around 2:30 on a Friday afternoon. It is pouring rain in Chicago as we leave. The airplane experiences a lot of turbulence.
We arrive at Newark airport. It is completely beyond me why they would name a city "Newark" when it is right across the water from "New York". Do they think that will fool anybody? Foreign tourists, perhaps?
From the airport we call a limo-type service for the hour-long drive to Princeton. We arrive on campus and head for the room of Jonathan's friend Ted, in Pyne Hall, which most college campuses would call "a dorm." But it's different. Rather than the cold feeling of most dorms, this one, and all the other student housing buildings, are integrated into the campus and appear to be steeped in history. Even if they're not, they sure look it. Several buildings are named for the class that donated the money, so it's possible to live in 325 1903.
Anyway Ted's room, back in Pyne Hall, is pretty nice. It's about the size of my old Allen Hall double, but it's a single. It's got three gothic windows with a bench in front of them. Ted has room for a bed, desk, table, and a comfy chair with an extra-long foot rest. There is plenty of floor space to sleep on as well.

Glee Club

Jonathan and I through our stuff down and head out to the Glee Club concert in Alexander Hall. For many years, the Harvard, Yale, and Princeton Glee Clubs have followed their football teams to each other's school, for built-in home-home double Glee concerts. The concerts were filled with music (and one piece by Princeton which I would hesitate to give so generous a label).
One of the strange quirks I notice about the Yale Glee was that in a piece which featured a smaller group, one guy appeared to be singing Alto. My suspicion is confirmed later by the Princeton featured group, which prefaced a few Italian songs with a sketch which mirrored the song. In one, about a couple who loves to argue so that they can make up, he accuses her of wanting to go backstage after the concert to meet "that Freckled, Falsetto-singing Freak."
It is also tradition at these concerts to pull pranks on the other club. Both clubs, at the end of their set, sing traditional school song medleys which everyone (except me, of course) has heard before. The clubs take this time to put on a little show in front of the other club.
Princeton tosses a football tied to a string during the Yale performance, which is caught, ran to the other balcony and thrown up again, creating a line which is pulled across to reveal letters tied to it. You can guess what the letters said (it rhymed with "Sale Yucks"). Princeton also set up the auditorium so that a guy could hold up a mirror ball in the front balcony, and get appropriate lighting, while some club members dance on the stage.
The Yale Glee, not having the advantage of the home court, settle for a skit, using placards in place of dialogue. It involves making anagrams of "Princeton Glee Club" or something like it. The Princeton Glee, however, begins to steal and tear the cards, which was generally considered bad form. Yale's opinion of Princeton is summed up in one poster which read in large letters: "Harvard Sucks," and then in smaller letters under it "(Princeton doesn't matter)". It seems that during WWII Princeton suspended football, and since then the Big 3 Ivy league rivalry has only been a Big 2.

We get back to Ted's room, and we meet Jeff, who is also staying in Ted's room with us. Ted still has plenty of room, but the joke becomes that Ted's parents were also staying there, and then the Yale football team as well.
Ted, by the way, is the Drum Major for the band, and therefore doesn't have an instrument. Jonathan plays trumpet. Jeff plays washboard, and had bought a new one just for the weekend. More on this later.

Eating Clubs

Jeff, Jonathan and I head out for the eating clubs. I think the eating clubs used to work like a frat: a place to eat and and hang out, with the possibility of getting a room. While there are now frats as well as cafeterias, the eating clubs still serves these purposes. The clubs are all in a row just off of the main campus area. We go to one, different from the one Jonathan had belonged to, to hang out for a while. I meet Melanie, another of Jonathan's friends I'd heard about. The four of us play games (like balloon ping-pong) for a few hours until the club's activities have to shut down. Like bars in Champaign, they all close up the activities at the same time. We head back to Ted's room for sleep.

I sleep on the comfy chair/foot rest, which I extend using my backpack. I have my sleeping bag with me. The chair is very soft, unlike the hard wood floor, but I am unable to straighten my legs without my ankles sticking out. I manage.

Gameday

We wake up early, since we are band members. Ted, as the Drum Major, is now in charge. Ted's first executive decision for the day is that we should all sleep for another 15 minutes. No one complains.

Writing the Pregame Show

Once we get up, we head over to Harry's Lunchonette. A hole in the wall in the extremely small campus town, Harry's continues to be the only place that doesn't kick the band out, and thus has become a band tradition, regardless of the quality and prices. I meet a few of the other band members, and see Sharon Beth (shown here, center row, center-right), a good friend of Jonathan whom I had met before. We write the pre-game show for that afternoon. You can see the November 11, Yale Pre-game text here.

To get to and from Harry's, we walk through the Main Gate entrance to campus which faces campustown. This gate was locked for several years, and was opened only for graduation processional. When the gate was unlocked 20 years ago, to promote better community relations, it became superstition that undergrads should not walk through the gate until their graduation. Alumni enjoy to no end stepping back and forth though the gate. Once, I'm told, an undergrad's band hat was thrown through the gate. She had to run to the next gate and back (about 40 yards) to pick it up.

Band Practice

We head for band practice. I meet other members of the band, and several other band alumni who are there for the weekend. I get my uniform together. I am wearing white shoes, black pants, a white shirt, and Jonathan's black and orange tie (Jonathan is wearing a non-Princeton tie, but with the same color scheme). I am issued a band jacket (orange, with black plaid) and a band hat (straw, with a black & orange heat ribbon).
I also pick up my instrument. I had been fully prepared to fake playing an instrument I cannot play, but I am assured that I will fit in with the Trash section.
By the way, all of this stuff comes from the Band Van, which has to be seen to be believed.

Trash

The Princeton Band has the usual band sections: drums, trombones, trumpets, clarinets, etc. But the Trash section is surely unique. Trash players are respected for their energy and enthusiasm; musicality is not required. Jeff, as I mentioned earlier, plays his washboard. Sharon Beth gets her favorite Wisk bottle (she and it are shown on the left) out from the Trash Bucket. One current band member plays a plastic lawn goose. One alum plays her whip. One of my favorite pieces of Trash is a large stop sign. The student playing it would also run out in front of traffic as we marched by to hold it up. And the most imaginative piece of trash is a front panel from a blue-green late model sedan, which it's player insisted was two months old when it's original owner trashed it. I search through the Trash Bucket and settle on a clear plastic container with popcorn kernels in it. It affords a wide variety of sounds, styles and dynamics.

A Tale of Two Cannons

The band practices on a full-size field, but for the pre-game warm up we practice in the Cannon Green. The Green has a gravel-filled circle in the middle of it, and in the circle there is a black, metal stump sticking out of the ground.
"What is that?" I ask Jeff.
"It's a cannon."
"Why is it buried in the ground like that?"
"So Rutgers won't steal it."
It seems that in the late 19th century Rutgers students kept stealing the cannon, and another similar cannon across from the courtyard, which I later noticed. So to prevent future thefts, the university buried the cannons, leaving their ends above ground to remind passersby of what they symbolized. It seemed to me like Rutgers won in the end.
Jeff told me that the second cannon was lost for a few days soon after it was buried. A large hole in the ground and a pile of dirt were all that could be seen of the cannon's site. They searched for days before deciding to go ahead and fill the hole, sans cannon. Much to their surprise, they found that Rutgers had dug a hole next to the cannon, and simply left the cannon under the removed dirt, thus effectively "stealing" the cannon one last time.

Also while preparing for the game, band members took the time to confuse tour groups passing by. One tour guide is kidnapped, while another band member (who was also a tour guide) takes her place and continued the tour. Another tour guide makes the mistake of ending her tour in our vicinity and asking her group "Are there any other questions I can answer?"

The March

After rehearsing all morning and eating lunch in the courtyard, we line up for the pre-game march. The march takes us around a good chunk of campus. We stop in front of the bookstore to play a while. Then we go IN to the bookstore and play a song or two. Then we march to a parking lot near the stadium for a several songs, and before proceeding into the football stadium.
We play the pre-game show, which we had written just hours ago. We play a song or two before heading into the stands. My favorite part of the pregame show was the Whiffenpoof song, which we play both in straight time, and the conga version. As a Trash member, I get to join the conga line. The rain from Chicago catches up to us, and it begins to come down. It gets worse as the game continues, and we are issued plastic parkas.

The Game

The game is relatively boring. The field is very muddy. Princeton's team looked lousy, and only lead most of the game due to a fumble recovery on the second play of the game, which they ran back all the way for a touchdown. Eventually, Yale's persistence and good (well, better) play put Yale ahead with 5 minutes left in the game, and Princeton is unable to muster the necessary last-minute heroics needed to pull it out.

The halftime show is pretty good though. Our formations go pretty well, and the songs are done adequately. There are only four formations, and only one transition. The other transitions are all done in " scramble" fashion. The show is the November 11 Yale show on this list of halftime texts
For the "Band Forms Route 1" formation, I am part of the white dotted line, which involves taking my jacket off and lying down.

Arches

While marching back with the band, a few of us duck out and go to one of the several arches on campus. Several campus buildings are connected by an arch. These arches provide excellent acoustical properties. So the several established a capella groups on campus have a rotation, where they hold concerts under these arches. We hear one group under an arch; they sound pretty good. We could tell that the arch made a big improvement in their sound quality.
The marching band, by the way, sounds a lot louder when they march under an arch.

The rain gets worse as the day ends and the night begins. It's really pouring out. We have to navigate around several lakes in the middle of sidewalks, and everyone steps into a large puddle accidentally at some point.

After going to dinner with about 8 other band members, which was an experience and a story in itself, we go to the band party. This party is held in one of the rooms above an arch. It is incredibly large. It has two bedrooms for two occupants each, and a living room large enough for a couch, TV, a large wall of windows with a bench in front of it, and an entire counter which serves as a bar, bartender and all.

Goin' Back

Jonathan and I left in the morning, and got back in the afternoon. It was a pretty packed weekend, as you can see. It was also a wet weekend, but I suppose it was better than the snow that Chicago got during that time. Quite an Ivy League experience.

--Fred