Did your marching band play anything cool?

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Did your high school/college marching band play anything out of the ordinary or unexpected?

My HS band played "Iron Man" all the time during football games. That and "The Final Countdown."

From what I've heard, the USC marching band plays "Tusk" during games -- that's f-ing great.

― PB, Tuesday, 12 April 2005 14:17 (twenty years ago)

USC marching band plays "Tusk" during games..

Isn't that a bit obvious by now though? (still, it would be cool to see the first time..)

― dave225 (Dave225), Tuesday, 12 April 2005 14:21 (twenty years ago)

http://media.bestprices.com/content/music/50/272854.jpg

― mark grout (mark grout), Tuesday, 12 April 2005 14:23 (twenty years ago)

We did "Journey to the Center of the Mind".

― brianiac (briania), Tuesday, 12 April 2005 14:36 (twenty years ago)

We did "Get It On" by Chase.

― JAS, Tuesday, 12 April 2005 14:39 (twenty years ago)

No, but I just flashed on a memory of being bored at marching band practice and figuring out how to play (on saxophone) the brass section part of this early Marilyn Manson song. "My Monkey." SO UNCOOL.

No kids are more bitter than the ones who want to rebel but can't quite take that ball and run with it, and so they're still stuck in the marching band! hah.

― daria g (daria g), Tuesday, 12 April 2005 14:53 (twenty years ago)

we too played "the final countdown." i don't know that it was cool. the james bond themed show we did when i was in 9th grade was pretty cool, or so i thought at the time. i loved james bond themes at the time.

― andrew m. (andrewmorgan), Tuesday, 12 April 2005 14:55 (twenty years ago)

25 or 6 to 4 by Chicago is the ultimate marching band song...all others bow down.

― M@tt He1geson (Matt Helgeson), Tuesday, 12 April 2005 15:02 (twenty years ago)

A friend of mine went to a marching band competition. The school that won it all did this big Orwell's 1984 themed show (complete with stage actors all wearing different color shirts walking through a box and coming out the other side wearing grey shirts).

― David Allen (David Allen), Tuesday, 12 April 2005 17:00 (twenty years ago)

The band at my high school did "Do Me" by Bell Biv Devoe at the friday afternoon pep rallies.

― arch Ibog (arch Ibog), Tuesday, 12 April 2005 17:10 (twenty years ago)

OTM on "25 or 6 to 4"

― ken taylrr (ken taylrr), Tuesday, 12 April 2005 17:30 (twenty years ago)

The school that won it all did this big Orwell's 1984 themed show

Wow.

In high school we did Oliver Nelson's Stolen Moments, and for the Star Wars show next year we did a mash-up of the Cantina Band theme with Sing Sing Sing.

― Jordan (Jordan), Tuesday, 12 April 2005 17:43 (twenty years ago)

The year before I joined marching band, the show was '70s-themed: "Free Ride," "Taking it to the Streets," "Saturday in the Park," and a "Green Eyed Lady"/"MacArthur Park" medley with a kickass drumline feature as a segue.

The year I joined marching band they did some shitty Latin-themed show, and I quit as soon as the semester ended.

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Tuesday, 12 April 2005 18:23 (twenty years ago)

We did Prince's Batman

― dan. (dan.), Tuesday, 12 April 2005 18:25 (twenty years ago)

you know what's nice about this thread title? that it makes it seem like a marching band is something everybody once had, all their own, like a first kiss, or first cd bought. that marching band was yours.

― carly (carly), Tuesday, 12 April 2005 18:30 (twenty years ago)

my friends and i would bust out into herbie hancock's "chameleon" whenever we were bored at football games.

oh and "tear the roof off the sucker," but we were actually allowed to play that.

and let us not forget the year our marching routine was THREE CHUCK MANGIONE PIECES. HIP THRUSTS LIKE NO TOMORROW.

― joseph (joseph), Tuesday, 12 April 2005 18:36 (twenty years ago)

ACTUALLY, my real favorite thing that we did was what the conductor called the "space chord," where when the opposing team had kickoff, our entire band would all play a note of our choosing (so it sounded discordant and really distracting, which was obv. the point) and held it up until the opposing team's player kicked the ball, at which point the band resolved into concert B-flat. i loved having officially sanctioned reasons to be obnoxious in marching band.

― joseph (joseph), Tuesday, 12 April 2005 18:38 (twenty years ago)

Actually, our marching band did play "25 or 6 to 4," but I've never heard the song, so I have no idea what it was supposed to sound like and probably fucked up my part pretty badly.

― daria g (daria g), Tuesday, 12 April 2005 19:02 (twenty years ago)

Did your marching band play anything cool?

No.

― Mr. Snrub (Mr. Snrub), Tuesday, 12 April 2005 23:15 (twenty years ago)

25 or 6 to 4 by Chicago is the ultimate marching band song...all others bow down.
If only they'd play "Papa's Got a Brand New Pigbag"...

The band at my friend Brooke's school only knows 30 seconds of "Eye of the Tiger"...and when it's over they look around confused and strike it up again. Pep rallies and football games.

― Ian Riese-Moraine. To Hell with you and your gradual evolution! (Eastern Mantra), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 00:24 (twenty years ago)

P-Funk!

― stephen morris (stephen morris), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 00:33 (twenty years ago)

Mine plays "Roll Out" in the stands occasionally

― Curt1s St3ph3ns, Wednesday, 13 April 2005 20:47 (twenty years ago)

I arranged "Reign In Blood" by Slayer for the marching band at my high school.

The flautists couldn't get the trills to mimick the guitar riff in the breakdown, so I junked it.

― Brooker Buckingham (Brooker B), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 21:29 (twenty years ago)

o man i bet "roll out" sounds great

― j blount (papa la bas), Wednesday, 13 April 2005 21:30 (twenty years ago)

this may sound strange to you, but, sitting here, just off rainy Holloway Road, but school marching bands are wonderfully exotic to me. we just dont have anything like that here.
theres something forever 1975 about them, somehow

i have some recordings of school bands, notibly that schoolbands play the darndest things compilation. how much of this stuff ever gets recorded?

songs i'd like to hear done in this style:

call me, my tane, little heaven of the seven seas, wichita lineman, hawaii 5-0, montage from how sweet it is, my funny valentine, moon over monakoora,

― charltonlido (gareth), Sunday, 17 April 2005 23:00 (twenty years ago)

I wasn't in the schoo' band but I remember our high school's football field was sorta built in this valley and the drumline always sounded so great in there. I always wanted to do a song with a marching band drumline but that idea seems a little worn by now.

― Johnny Badlees (crispssssss), Monday, 18 April 2005 10:24 (twenty years ago)

Black Sabbath's 'The Wizard' would make a great marching band song.

― 57 7th (calstars), Monday, 18 April 2005 15:29 (twenty years ago)

twenty years pass...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTNiEPPQoF0

is this for real? (and not someone in 2026 making a track and pretending it's by a 1980s school marching band)? I think it's adapted from Moon Ride by Universal Love: https://www.discogs.com/master/588965-Universal-Love-Moon-Ride-Its-You-Girl

there are two other tracks apparently from the same record on that youtube channel (somewhat more conventional renditions of Journey's Open Arms and the Fame theme). there's also a facebook post from 2015 by someone who was in the band in 1984/5 and says they played Prince's 'When Doves Cry' and Sheila E's 'Glamorous Life': Prince's 'When Doves Cry' and Sheila E's 'Glamorous Life': https://www.facebook.com/groups/36304646555/posts/10152812892676556/

― Platinum Penguin Pavilion (soref), Saturday, 17 January 2026 15:06 (two months ago)

i don't know enough about Aaron Dilloway to speculate whether he'd try to fake something like that, or be complicit in passing off a fake, but i sure hope it's real. it's definitely awesome

― budo jeru, Monday, 19 January 2026 04:25 (two months ago)

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