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Palo Alto Online

The Id of Stanford

by Bill D'Agostino

Last Monday night, six tuba-players slept in a life-sized gerbil cage.

If that's surprising, then you haven't met the Leland Stanford Junior University Marching Band -- "Stanford Band" for short.

The cage -- with wire walls, wooden posts extending to the ceiling, and several inches of woodchips on the floor -- was a "Big Game" project. During the week prior to the Stanford/California football game, every section of the Band builds something abstract, like a 10-ft wooden helicopter or large plastic pork roast. Afterward they sleep in the Band's ramshackle home, the Shak.

But two days after the slumber party, which included plenty of "Woo-Woo" (the tuba-players' enigmatic, alcoholic drink of choice) in a blue bucket, the gerbil cage was removed -- a victim of the Band's ongoing give-and-take with Stanford administrators.

It's easy to come up with adjectives to describe the Band: Wild. Witty. Zany. Loony. Goofy. Atypical. Enthusiastic. Raucous. Irreverent. Incomparable. Unconventional. Bacchanalian.

But that verbiage doesn't go very far in understanding the Band's complex place in the university. Sure, it's the school's most visible booster -- often playing at alumni and community events -- but it is also the manifestation of students' subconscious desires to act out, be needlessly random, and push the lines of acceptable behavior.

In short, the Band is the university's Id.

Last week, it was the fire marshal who had to play Superego. Seeing a budding fire hazard inside the Shak, the marshal enforced an impromptu clean-up -- no small task with the various bottles, cans, cloth and other junk strewn about the oversized trailer, never mind the giant gerbil cage and large plastic pork roast taking up temporary residency.

Two days later, though, the Shak was again a pig sty. Assembled on the floor were crumbled beer cans, a Twix candy wrapper, empty Kripsy Kreme boxes, a grocery store shopping cart, Gatorade bottles and a lonely green flip-flop.

The battlefronts for the Band's fights with the administration (and other self-appointed arbiters of decent behavior) are often the skits performed during halftime at football games. Each one gets reviewed by the athletic department, and every game the writers try to sneak some crude reference past their censors, said senior Dan Bentley, a tuba player and one of the Band's writers this season.

"It's a particularly difficult genre to work in because you have 15 seconds to tell the joke," Bentley said. The athletic department doesn't allow the Band to mention minorities, he noted.

"Which presumably means we can make all the WASP jokes we want," he quipped last Tuesday, while sitting on a couch inside the gerbil cage and sipping from a canteen of scotch.

Surrounding Bentley, hanging on the walls of the Shak, were dozens of road signs, often containing veiled references to sex or drugs, such as "Beaver Creek" or "Weed Airport Road."

After it was suggested that the signs were stolen, Bentley quickly drawled: "I'm not quite sure 'stolen' is the right word. There's no evidence the signs didn't want to come." If they had hands they'd have signed consent forms, he added. "I really think this is a better life for them" to be around their fellow signs.

Games against Notre Dame, this coming Saturday's opponent, have traditionally been some of the most controversial. In 1991, the Band was banned from the Fighting Irish's stadium after the drum major dressed up in a nun's habit. In 1997, the Band caught flack from Ann Landers, among numerous others, after it re-enacted the Irish potato famine.

One show this season spoofed "The Matrix." In the movie, actor Keanu Reeves uses special effects to dodge bullets. In the skit, the Band successfully dodged alcohol probation, which it had been on for more than a year. (The probation was lifted on June 30. Midnight on July 1, the Band threw a celebratory bash inside the Shak.)

Last month, the Band got in trouble again when it wrecked a tour bus on its way home from a game in Los Angeles. Someone vomited in the sink, and a few armrests were broken.

"Band members need to take on an increased sense of individual responsibility," the Stanford Daily editorialized after the incident. "No one wants the Band to stop having fun, but all Band members must realize that there is a clear line between good old-fashioned fun and harmful recklessness."

Although they grumbled about the article, Band representatives admitted its members' rowdiness can sometimes step over the line.

"The challenge is how do you balance having fun and letting loose with making sure at the end of the day things are cleaned up and no one's seriously hurt," said Moses Pounds, a senior and a trombonist. "We've been struggling with that for 40 years."

The Band has not always been the crazy group of kids it is today. Prior to the 1960s, in fact, it was a straight-laced traditional marching band. Former director Arthur Barnes threw the old rulebook away, transforming the group into a hyperactive "scatter band."

"We move from formation to formation by running and sort of weaving around, rather than marching," Pounds explained.

(The Stanford Daily seems to have a problem with the Band no matter how it behaves. In a 1947 editorial, the paper wrote that half-time shows should be reduced. "The customer pays to see football, not to hear music and watch sprightly young bandsmen prove that it isn't easy to march and make noise at the same time.")

With the shedding of traditional garb, formations and music, the Band's sense of decorum seemed to fly away as well.

After a early performance of a Beach Boys song, the then-all male group dropped their pants, revealing swim trunks underneath. "From the very beginning, we defined ourselves by being Californian and being a little bit nutty, a little bit more free-spirited than the rest of the nation," Pounds said.

In 1971, then-manager Dave Ruiz was asked by a reporter for the Stanford Daily, "Why is the Band so gross?"

"Our grossness stems from the frustrated libidos common to Stanford males," Ruiz responded. "The Band offers a chance to bring this frustration into the open so it no longer becomes a force in the bandsman's personal life."

Often alumni (known as the "Old Fart") return to play in the Band. One who is back today performing with some regularity, Steve Blasberg, was also present for one of the Band's most infamous games: the Rose Bowl of 1972. The theme for that game's halftime show was the Presidential Commission on Pornography. On the field, in front of a national television audience, Band formations spelled out "$EX," "PILL" and other sexually explicit terms.

Angry letters flooded into the university. "Spelling out HORNY may be comic to some, but to us it was evidence of bad taste," Fred A. Tice wrote.

In typical wry fashion, then-manager Kenneth Peterson responded, in a letter explaining the group's modus operandi. "The Stanford Band has refused to succumb to the bland and antiquated styles of traditional marching bands," he wrote.

Today, the Band is even less structured than it was in the '60s and '70s, according to Blasberg. He attributes that to the stress of today's undergrads. His daughter, Amy, a junior, also performs in the Band. Both play the trombone.

Other schools may not understand the appeal to scattering -- during one recent away game, the opposing team chanted "High School Band!" -- but Pounds said the Band couldn't imagine being a traditional stuffy marching band.

"When we see them, they don't look like they're having fun," he said. "We like to do what makes us happy. And what makes us happy is letting loose and kicking back a bit."

The Band's music is also unique, made up of a selection of pop, power punk, and swing songs, as well as the occasional video game theme. The music is whatever the Band wants, essentially.

"Those John Phillips Souza marches get kind of dull after the fifth or sixth time," Pounds said.

The Band also differentiates itself by letting anyone who wants to be a member join, even those with no experience. Sophomore Elizabeth Majors had sung classical music before joining the Band this year, but never before played a tuba.

"I feel I am learning fairly quickly," Majors said.

Majors initially went to practices along with her younger brother, hopeful he would also join.

"He got scared off by the dirty limerick," she said. The limerick -- basically all of the English language's curse words strung together and chanted loudly -- is one of the things that makes the band, the "Band."

Running wildly around the field, her long red hair blowing behind her, it's clear Majors feels a sense of liberation being a part of the zaniness.

Arguably the most outlandish member of the Band is the drum major, senior Rojo Rodger. Perched in front of the other performers, counting off the music's beats with a long stick of some variety, the gangly Rodger leaps higher, gesticulates larger and sticks his tongue out further than other members.

During an event last week, Rodger glued dozens of nails on his head for one rally. During the Big Game, he donned a giant barrel. He has to go above and beyond, he said.

"You really can't ask the Band to push themselves if you don't push yourself," Rodger said as his long, narrow body laid flat on the group's practice field. That day, his newly-shaved head was covered in white paint, his clothing completely lime green in color.

Even before coming to Stanford, Rodger knew he wanted to join. He had played the clarinet "hard core" in high school, but was somewhat burned out by the time college rolled around.

"I wanted to be playing but I wanted to have fun doing it," he said. Seeing the Band's Web site (the "Web of Sin"), he knew it was a perfect fit. When he entered Stanford, he attended the first practice and hasn't missed one since.

"You may look like you're having fun," Rodger said, "but you're really just trying to help other people have much as fun as you can."

E-mail Bill D'Agostino at bdagostino@paweekly.com