So the year is 1992, and the football season has not begun well for our heroes in the Pep Band. While the football team emerged victorious from their first two home games, not so us. Half-time and pre-game performances at the first two outings of the year fell conspicuously flat. The shows were not good. Morale reflected this.
Many felt that these weak shows were the direct result of watering down by the Review Board (consisting of faculty, staff, students, administration, alumni, and townspersons) which approves, and often censors, our show material. This claim had some merit (it's always at least a little true), but in retrospect it seems likely that we were really more the victims of our own lackadaisical and uninspired show-writing. None-the-less, the majority blamed the Review Board, and blamed it vocally. Representatives of the Review Board agreed to come and have a roundtable with the whole Band, at a Monday night rehearsal. They spoke, answered questions, and took a lot of flack. (Two Pep Banders came busting in 15 minutes late carrying a keg, shouting "Never fear, the beer is here!" They then pretended to notice the Review Board people (including Deans Todd and Canevari), exclaimed "Oh shit! is that tonight?!", looked horrified, and went running back out with keg, which was empty, by the way.) The upshot was, Band members expressed dissatisfaction with the Review process, and demanded some more leeway. They got it. The show that got approved that week for the Clemson game was dicier than anything we had done in a long time.
It included a take-off on a beer commercial which denigrated various Clemson institutions ("Wouldn't it be great if Clemson students were known as 2nd, 3rd, and 4th Years, instead of 5th, 6th, and 7th years? Wouldn't it be great if Clemson football players had something other than a rock to rub? And wouldn't it be great if Clemson had a band - a really great band ? Like - the Award-Winning Virginia Fighting Cavalier Etc...."). It included two heavily armed gunmen murdering the Clemson Band. But most of all it included a 20 foot by 30 foot monster flaming sign.
This sign was to be the focus of the entire pregame show. There was to be chanting, and a slow ominous drum cadence. The Monolith (i.e. the sign, on a rolling platform, and covered with curtains) was to be wheeled slowly onto the field, preceded by dozens of figures in long black robes swinging censers that bubbled over with dry ice. As the Monolith took center stage on the 50, the monks and the Band were to take the shape of a pyramid directly up front. Our conductor was to take the podium, and grimly lead the Band through a single dramatic and powerful chord progression, ala 2001. At the climax, he would stiffly raise his arm and fire the starter pistol.
And there would be utter silence.
And the curtains would fall.
And then the crowd would go completely fucking wild.
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We got to work. There were only several major construction projects between us and the greatest pre-game show in history. Starting Friday afternoon, 30 or so Pep Band people worked in shifts for 18 hours, overnight and into the misty Saturday morning dawn. They sewed black robes. They constructed censers, and procured dry ice. They bought hundreds of dollars of lumber, house siding, nails, staples, and paint. And they built that fucking sign.
You may think you know how big 20 by 30 feet is but you don't. Neither did we, until we stood that monster up. It was an absolute unbelievable collosus. It belonged in Times Square. But it was all ours. There was only one problem, and it took the form of a midnight phone call from AD-Pep Band Liaison Kim Record to then-Pep Band Director James Breen: We couldn't use the sign.
You can imagine the reaction of the Construction Crew. We were pissed, and we would have been more pissed if we hadn't been under such heavy sedation. We demanded an explanation, and it was this: After the officially-sanctioned Review Board explicity approved this part of the show, certain AD officials spent a few days agonizing. Eventually they decided they couldn't let it go through, and the reason they gave was that it would violate an obscure Atlantic Coast Conference rule against "Bad Sportsmanship." So, no "Clemson Sucks." We would have to put something else on the sign.
Of course, this news came after we had spent over $300 and hundreds of man-hours in preparation. It came less than seven hours before we were to put the show on the field at our Saturday morning practice. It came out of the blue, and it was pretty weak. We had known from the very inception of the idea, that if we allowed the message on the sign to get transmogrified into anything other than "Clemson Sucks" the whole gag would be irretrievably ruined. And it was too late then to come up with another pre-game show. We were in a bind. And we were displeased that we had been put in it by those gun-shy politicking bozos in the Athletic Department. What were we going to do?
Well, we painted "Beat Clemson" on that sign, and signed the name of the Pep Band. Then a dozen people carried it down the middle of Emmet Street (luckily there was no traffic at 6:00 AM) to the Stadium, and left it in the parking lot for the edification of tailgating alums. Then we had another stiff drink, and showed up for morning field practice, where Director Breen mapped out our options. These included doing the show with the modified sign, as well as skipping pre-game and just playing in the stands for an hour before the game. However, the consensus amongst the group was that we had just been robbed, and the AD had done it by breaking their own rules. The Pep Band abides by the decisions of the Review Board, but apparently the AD did not feel the same obligation. We voted with our feet, and didn't show up to that football game until the opening kickoff was airborne.
We didn't want to do it, and we hated listening to the attrocious taped fight song music they piped in. But we felt it was the only means we had of defending our interests. Also, we found out who our friends were. One of them was not head football coach George Welsh, who wrote the AD demanding to know why there wasn't a band, and requesting that the AD take control of the situation and/or replace us with a marching band. Ouch.
But the worst part, of course, is having to think about The Pre-Game Show That Might Have Been: the grand ceremonial unveiling of the biggest insult in scramble band history.