A night when Band Kids beat up the Jocks! Crossmen 1984 (true story) 

Imagine picking a fight with 100+ adrenaline jacked teens

I was in the Crossmen 1984 tenor line - this absolutely happened. Good times....

Also in 1990 the Crossmen got bullied by some locals and the guys found out the hard way that most of Crossmen were inner city Philly kids :)

Honestly, never had this problem either. Our school’s football team is really chill and brought us gatorade after rehearsal one time :)

In 1990 Crossmen, we were on tour and staying at Washington Twp NJ. I was a member of the pit and one night we found some local "townies" in our equipment truck, trying to steal our gear. Needless to say, they were quickly captured and corralled outside the truck, and the entire corps surrounded the perps. The corps director was called into the circle and he explained to the locals that they had 2 choices: we could call the police, or "let the corps handle it". Of course, they immediately said "no police"! The corps director just shook his head and said, "wrong choice", and walked away....the circle rapidly closed in and you can guess the rest....

We had a similar feud but with the cheerleaders. We got our revenge by changing the songs they would dance to to 15/16.

We, the 1990 Boston Crusaders, had an encounter with some local jocks when I marched. The local police were called and proceeded to make fun of the football players for getting beat up by the ‘band.’ It was awesome.

Luckily my old high school resides in an area where marching band is taken pretty seriously and we get treated pretty well. The football team captains came out during our summer rehearsals to give a speech about how they appreciate our support during the season. Our cheerleaders and dance team even took the time out of their lives on a Saturday, making an hour long trip to support us at a marching competition. Hell, one of my buds was even dating a varsity cheerleader my senior year.

Proud 84 Crossmen member!!!

Crossmen didn't eff around back then. In HS (Ridley 88-91) my drill instructor had marched Crossmen, but probably before 84. I can totally see him doing something like this, though. He yelled and screamed at us, but he was funny so we all liked him.

6’5” 250 power lifter who marched 4th and 5th Bass many years...some of us band dorks don’t fit the stereotype!

I miss the freedom of the '80's. No cell phone cameras, no social media, teachers looked the other way if you were bullied and decided to "stand up for yourself".

Hey Eric I’m leaving for bootcamp on June 13th 2022. I’ll be in one of the marine corps bands as a percussionist and I hope to meet you one day. Until then thank you for the entertainment.

In 2019, my corps was in New Jersey for the MetLife event. As our members were loading onto the busses, a group of middle schoolers began congregating in the parking lot. A minute or two later, a couple of them started throwing hands at each other and our bus driver, the corps director, and the local police had to intervene. I won’t say it got the perc bus hyped but it was definitely one way to start a performance day.

Good morning! Tales Of A Drumline is a fantastic read! His book about the San Francisco Renegades was great too

Our football team sees most of us as equals and we respect each other’s activities

Ahhhh. Back in the days when you could get away with things, and DCI corporate never found out

Our football team despises our band because of our competitive success when their best season was 2 games won. I remember a football player going on a rant about how marching band is worthless and the fact we ‘only got 10th at state’ proved it. When one of them found out we were talking about how they hadn’t won anything (because of said event) they tried to all enter the band hall and one of them tried to pick a fight with our band director. Our school’s football team is to be frank a bunch of assholes.

I’m starting band rehearsals tomorrow… such a nice story to inspire me lol…

The 84 crossmen were a wild crew

The fact they all got out on both busses just makes me proud and it's so funny to think about.

Super proud Crossmen alumni here 👍🏻

This makes me feel so glad to be a Crossmen

EMC your story editing and video making is on par with your legendary drum skills. King among Kings.

Proud member of the '84 Crossmen snare line....my age out year. In fact, I marched right next to Lee (I'm 3rd snare in from the left)....Lee is 2nd in from left. Young line, real fun year. Your feature literally has the final seconds of my DCI career...end of show - check out monster head bobbing from 3rd snares in....me. :)

I like that the drum major's uniform looked like Evel Knievel's costume

Russlan and Ludmilla! I was at that show in Parkersburg, West Virginia. Crossmen were fantastic and of course the Garfield Cadets championship winning show West Side Story brought the house down. I had never heard the story you just told, wonderfully I might add. Back in those days you waited for the newspaper Drum Corps World to get delivered two weeks after the show. I don't remember reading about this incident. Not surprising though, Parkersburg was not exactly the drum corps capital of the world and I just never heard about it, until now. Great shows though and a good year for DCI. Thanks for reviving the memories.

Yeah we don’t really have this problem at my school. Mostly everybody in the band has friends on the football team. We’re actually good this year, and the cheerleaders are coming up to us saying that we sound amazing.

Both football and basketball teams of my school where extremely supportive of the band. The entire basketball team even went to the end of the year concert and were really respective. But other schools on the other hand were not so friendly. We were warming up ready to take the field at another school and some foul hooligans would throw full Gatorade bottles and then run off and one girl even got hit by a bottle and was pretty badly hurt.

Having lived in Parkersburg for half of my life, it’s really cool to hear about this in my own town lmao

I also marched that year and agreed out and this is a true story. Dave Reirden was the baritone player that got punched. After he got hit and we realized what happened our bus ( BOHICA) emptied out as fast as we could. Next thing you know there’s a bunch of jocks got separated and were all being chased down by small packs of Crossmen. Divide and conquer! Still to this day, the question remains… How a dozen jocks thought taking on 128 corps people was a good idea. 😂😂😂😂 I’ll never know.

I haven’t experienced something like that but during concert season we stop at a road that has a target we go in there to get snacks when I got back onto the bus one of my friends told me they Connected one of the speakers to their phone and they started playing “noises” the manager just started running towards the speakers but they left. they almost got caught

I marched Crossmen snareline 81-85 and was center snare and drum captain in 84 and 85. Check out the video. I'm the cat 5 in from the left with the white wrist bands. Yes, we did get into more than a few scuffles with the local trash in the cities we toured but this account is highly embellished. Basically a group of jack asses decided to start some crap with us by throwing some bottles and harassing the group etc. We pretty much poured out of the busses and chased them down. They were outnumbered and the scuffle didn't last long. Everyone on "Herbie", which was mostly the drumline bus and a handful of horn cats was armed with something stashed under the seat. Knives, bats, my brother had an ice pick. It was never wise to screw with the corps. As another commenter stated, many of us were from around the Philly area and we all had each others backs. That same year, I recall an incident where I went back to the bus along with my fiancé' at the time to get something off of the bus. We start hearing the cat calls and the local bullshit. Within a minute I noticed a growing number my drumline brethren lurking in the shadows to take action if necessary. Skeeter, Curtis, Andy, Frank, Walter and many of my buds. Awesome to know that they were there. "Randall" artjock 47 who are you brother?

Ask 1983 Boston Crusaders how they faired with the locals in Miami.

Marched in 1984 Bridgemen. Boy, got a couple stories about dealing with football teams while on tour.

Honestly, growing up a band kid in WV in the early 90’s, we became kinda numb to people throwing things at our bus. Certain towns were notorious for going after the away school’s buses, no matter the occupants. Small towns were pretty boring, and still are, but especially before the internet.

Your editing skills are nice, Mr Carr.

Eric needs to be an anchorman. Well researched and engaging

The wildest story I have is a few weeks ago my high school marching band was at a after game meeting and we were all facing west and saw this huge double flash of blue light, within probably a millisecond all the lights in the stadium went out and emergency power was turned on and we heard a voice say that the local transformer went out. We were not able to go up the stairs with our instruments in the dark so we had to wait around an hour for the lights to come back on, this had happened a week before except instead of a power outage my band literally summoned the rain, (we won that competition) and then I have so many more stories similar just in my sophomore year of high school but of course it would take an hour to explain that stuff.

I used to work with a guy who had marched Boston Crusaders in the ‘60’s and early ‘70’s. He always said, “It was different then…we were like a street gang! We’d get in fights all the time,”

That must have been a fun season

Hilarious story! And hey, I used that Mustang crashing clip in my "World Doesn't Care you Marched DCI" video. I know you're watching my stuff, EMC!!!

I am proud to be auditioning for the Crossmen next year

I marched In the New York Lancers, a corps based in the south Bronx In New York City. We experienced a similar situation in Elizabeth, NJ in 1976, except it was a motorcycle gang of grown ass men trying to fight a bunch of teenage drum corps kids during our rehearsal.Luckily, the staff was able to get the police out to chase them off before any one got hurt, because we were not backing down, which probably pissed them off more, we were ready to throw down (even the guard grabbed flag poles and rifles) they didn’t know we’re a bunch of kids from the Bronx, some of us were former gang members who were ready to go for it.

We had a few incedences with Boston, including the 1976 high school Superbowl that was filmed by local news channel

has anyone else heard of the tale of the 2 ticks? the story goes as 2 members of a corps who were apparently from the uk. they were so bad tht one night a bunch of corps members got together and allegedly beat them. and the method they used was similar to how you fill a sock with peanut butter, except the sock was filled with mouthpieces…and from then on the 2 ticks got better, at least thts how the story goes. don’t remember if it was my fellow members who told me or if it was one of the brass staff, but i just remember hearing about it when i marched Golden Empire 2018. p.s. tht year was the first time our corps got to go to Indie and participate in open class finals and go to lucas oil. it was so cool to watch all the other corps. one of my favorites was Mandarins, which they got into the top 12 tht year and got 10th.

Decided to purchase and download: Lee Rudnicki’s Book "Tale of a Drum Line. Will probably start reading it after The Commandant's Own performance this evening at DCI Celebration!

While in the Marauders tenor line someone called the cops on us for a noise complaint. We ignored the first cop so 5 cop cars come as back up. Then in some small NY town locals started throwing rocks at us and 1 cop car shows up and 5 cops pile out of it. Can't make the stuff up

Need more band kid stories

6:09....you wound me, EMC (trust me, those top 2 scores are burned in my brain!)

Epic

Old school Crossmen? Checks out.

I’ve seen a schools football team show up to BOA since their band went to and did pep band for all their games so I guess times change.

Back in the 00’s when I was in HS, we were BOA GN finalists while our football team was…well…lucky to win a game or two each season. However, these were really great guys and I was friends with a number of them. Since band and football had the exact same schedule, we had all the same classes together. Each year, there was always a Saturday football game or two that fell on a BOA Regional or some other marching contest. The football players always hated these games cuz no one would show up and of course there was no band to keep the morale up. So they would let us know this in class on Monday. Or if it was a Friday before said games, they would all be bummed out about the next days game 😕

My school treats our marching band so nicely. Everyone shuts up when we start playing and the football team respects us.

For some reason buses are always breaking down for my band We've been at highway rest stops past midnight with a broken bus multiple times

...this kind of thing happens more often than I thought 😂. Seems like there's endless stories being unearthed from the rowdy earlier corps. Bridgemen seemed like they could've been a biker gang LOL

big BOOT energy 🙏🏻

@emcproductions 6th grade year and I’m the first one to audition at this point my stand had broken so I’m freaking out crying and had had only two lessons on the music (this was all-city) and I end up missing last chair by three chairs. And then after that I get taken out to eat but I can’t so once we leave I throw up and say “I’m hungry now”

I marched Crusaders in the 80's - A couple years before I joined, the corps had a reputation of being scrappy, including an incident in Miami... Bridgemen also had a bit of a reputation... Don't think modern DCI is anything like that....

Yes, messing with Drum Corps or Marching Band groups is a good way to get jumped!

I marched drum corps in Chicagoland from early to mid 80's. Some of the guys I marched with and was taught by were little more than gang members. A couple of times we were staying in some little towns, the townies would mess with us. Found out quick that we weren't typical bandos. Stuff like that happened more frequently in the 70's and 80's.

Maybe you can tell the story as to the UNT incident back in the 90's. I have no idea wtf happened but most UNT drummers I know are basically almost sworn to secrecy... Keep up the video.

I play basket and percussion at the same time and thankfully there is no bullying.

Good morning

Nice I’m from Parkersburg 2:16

A modern day FB coach would kick their teams ass if they caught them doing that. I think that also impacted FB team to Band relations in the modern age

Yes

This story is amazing 🤣🤣🤣 look into the Prairie View A&M vs Southern University 1999 band vs band brawl.

o know this is gonna sound cheesy but im legit cryin

My sophomore year of high school, 2016, Music City stayed at our high school for spring training. (It was also our band camp, so we shared the school) But one night, the football team had finished up practice really late, like 11pm to 12am. They storm into the school, rush the halls and bang on classroom doors and yell really loudly to wake up the members. They're all asleep after a 12 hour day of rehearsal and they're getting woken up by a bunch of shitheads who never win any games. That pisses me off. They were all resting and asleep. Til they're rudely awoken by the football team.

I never had issues with the football team. Shoot, I was good friends with the quarterback and he now plays for West Point!

My schools football team straight up said that people don’t go to the games for football anymore but to see us and that we’re dope. -Edit: Although the football team staff was mean to our band directors frequently though.

A LOT of the videos are GONE???

The Crossmen live in a society

We have a similar story with that. I remember when we are on a parade and playing our instrument then suddenly a riot came out and we got involved. We're really pissed because we weren't doing anything wrong and then some random dude hit our member. Brass member starting to punch and we drumline starting to hit them with our Carriers. Good shits

Imagine if spirit of atlanta was also at the scene. Those jocks would have been killed!

I was always told that people go to football games just to see the band perform and then leave after halftime. (atleast thats how it was growing up in my town with a 6A band)

I played football and also in the drumline in high school 89-93. It goes both ways, but it usually starts with band kids telling everyone how dumb the jocks are, which makes the jocks bully the band kids.

What do you think about msu drumline ?

I was cool with the football team since I played football with most of them in middle school that went to same high school with me but i chose band over football (thank God since I got to march DCI). Since I was cool with em they probably didn't mind messing with band I think modern days football players and the cheerleaders are cool with band kids. That's how it was for me too, they loved jamming with us band kids

I had a high school football game with our number one rival, my senior year, the day before out biggest show, around four days after one of our most beloved band parents (who was also the local Scouts troop leader) died tragically from a heart attack behind the wheel. We are practically high on adrenaline, grief, piss, and vinegar, when, to make things worse, the opposing team's fans (adults AND their kids) start throwing trash and bottles at us. Let's just say, after that, the band directors had to just let us go. I'm surprised no one was killed that night, seriously. And I was in suburban Ohio.

Literally 1984

What happened to the agt videos?

Okay short story, our marching band was better than our Drum Corps, it was a very small drum corps my brother is actually March Crosman Drumline in 83, that aside, when I was in band I was in the rifle line up front near where the football team was getting ready to come on after the halftime break was over and I was still performing of course and I told the football player not to come near me without your helmet cuz I was throwing a toss and he didn't listen and got in between me and my toss and I just simply let it land on his head and the coach was all mad at me and I said well I warned him from then on we got a little more respect from the football team

bro at my school the football team was so shit that the band kids bullied them💀

I am so glad I am not the only one that had peed in a Gatorade bottle 😂😂😂

Never happened at my school cause it doesn’t have a marching band :(

Very Revenge of the Nerds

Never F with the Low Brass, old school drum corps.

Here’s one story that happened recently Some of the electronic members lit a fire in the Front Ensemble Storage room

90 Crossmen nearly beat the crap out of some local a holes in Washington Township, NJ.

Video 30 of commenting until EMC makes an entire battery percussion section out of spocks and 8 inch splash cymbals

I honestly can't tell if this is any more brutal than a war waged with scandals like they are nowadays.

Dear

We had another one in '86 i think. 2 guys tried to steal our cart and it had some of the girls purses. Within seconds we were chasing them down. Ended up ar the railroad tracks just me and them. I warned them.I had backup and it was in their best interest to return with me. They chose not to. Suddenly Crossmen were everywhere and we drug them back to the busses. They definantly didnt feel so good after that. THEN thay came back and were hanging out in the fully boxed in chainlink basketball area. They ended up locked in there for hours with the cops laughing at them.as we left. They claimed to be "martial artists and in a gang". Needless to say a few of theit bones were broken,but BONES DID WHAT WE DO DONT MESS WITH BONES!!! Or the colorguard in Alllentown !! Rat.

Well sadly a few years ago I'm pretty sure a band kid got beat up by a football player for no reason...... I wasn't there but I've seen things saying random things online about a fight...

That's honestly not just Parkersburg

Marched HS drumline 02’-05’. Don’t think any of us bandies really ever got picked on (minus the one guy who marched flute. Does that even really count tho….?). However, there was this one jock that would always randomly drive by during our Tuesday and Thursday night practices yelling all hysterically and screaming things like, “whooohoo, get em band!!!” I think it was partially to make fun of us but was too dang funny to be upset about. 🤷🏻‍♂️

So what happened to the thrown drumsticks? I assume they’re gone for good?