Now, this is a halftime triumph amidst a disaster zone, as the UA Million Dollar Band performed in a freaking hailstorm and monsoon at Legion Field on Nov. 10, 1984. We were all wearing unwieldy rain ponchos to protect our uniforms and the delicate plumes had been collected by the band managers prior to halftime. The LSU band was finishing their show and exiting the field as the pellets of hail began to fall from the sky, beating down on our hard-topped shakos like snare drums. It became difficult to see and hear. Half the band was situated in the north endzone along with the percussion and that half of the band started stepping onto the field to start the show before we in the south endzone could hear and realize the show was starting! We had to hurry on to catch up, only to see the shoe polish "track marks" we had painted onto the yard lines to guide us were turning into soap suds in the downpour that trenched the artificial turf. You can see in the excellent video from WDBB-TV that we would soon become a waterlogged band, with Crimsonette makeup running like war paint, woodwind pads soaked and ruined and flags being carried away by the wind. One thing that our flag corps did was open up four big parachutes and attempt to balloon them and spin them as the band members disappeared under them during a clever hide-the-band percussion drill, but these things quickly filled with water. I remember being underneath one of these parachutes while some other bandsman quipped, "Isn't this some crazy shit?" It really was! I also remember the press box PA announcement, "Kathryn Scott, call the press box if you can." Like how is she going to call the press box from her ladder on the 50-yard-line while she is directing the band? Cell phones were not yet invented. We later learned someone was trying to tell her that the 100 high school brass players who were supposed to play along with us from the upper deck of Legion Field had run away in the stormy night and the halftime show was about to fall apart. But, somehow, the graduate assistants persuaded those young men and women that this was COLLEGE HALFTIME and they needed to risk their lives and battle Zeus in the heavens for the pride and glory of SEC football. They were in place in time and the show did not fall apart. They provided the first-ever marching band surround sound in the history of football. We sounded like a million dollars, like always, but that TV camera from the endzone did capture some very crooked lines. Give us a break; it was a hurricane out there, for crying out loud! When we left Legion Field, the MDB traveled to a high school band competition that same soggy night and marched on a very muddy field, where white shoes got sucked off our feet and some people slipped and fell. The woodwinds were soaked and out of commission by then. But it was all great fun! I still tell the story, and Chud made up some cool T-shirts that said the MDB marches in hail and high water. And The Birmingham News wrote an editorial about us, referencing the line from the fight song about Bama's pluck and grit having writ her name in crimson flame. They said the MDB showed some pluck and grit of its own that night. This video is great, but it doesn't capture just how dark and how damp and how windy it was that night, or the hail hitting on the shakos. I'll never forget it. "Kathryn Scott, call the press box -- if you can!" I'm sure she would have told them the show must go on, and Roll Tide!
21 окт 2024
