(06-15-2016 02:35 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  the less support they get from others, the more likely they are to want to simply entertain themselves. It's a chicken/egg thing as far as I can see

They aren't going to get any more support until others feel they deserve it.

It might be chicken and egg, but only one side can break that cycle.

(06-15-2016 02:30 PM)Antarius Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 02:19 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 02:11 PM)Antarius Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 01:27 PM)Tiki Owl Wrote:  OK so I will ask the question I thought would have come up by now....why is Stanford's band so popular with the students and some alums/fans? Do they get members because they pay or get a percentage of a scholarship? Are they more like the rest of the student body than the MOB is? For the most part they are way more controversial than the MOB and yet they still get a good amount of exposure during games (even if the announcers have to search for what to say about them). What is the relationship between the band and the music department? There are several other scatter bands...do they have the same issues as the MOB?

IMO, its the same issue as Rice Football.

One prides itself on finding ways to be excellent despite being different while the other makes excuses.

And interestingly enough the both lack (or have I guess, due to recent changes in football) significant university support.

Well, I've not got two data points, which means I'm pretty close to forming a trend. If we wait long enough to start supporting Rice baseball with scholarships and financial aid, I think I might have a third.

And I wonder where that line will trend?

Mwahaha.

KTRU had a massive broadcast radius; not sucking was well supported by that antenna and frequency. yet they managed to pile drive themselves into the ground.

Money and support aren't always the excuse that hinders excellence. The MOB has not shown any indication (that I can see and did not when I was there) that they were interested in anything except a circle jerk of inside jokes. No amount of money can fix that.

But when you talk to anyone involved with playing in the music with the MOB, the first thing they talk about generally is how awful the performance space is. The MOB is first and foremost a band and should be provided appropriate space to practice. If they want to attract anyone with decent musical talent, which they do, they have a very hard time doing that when they cannot provide accommodations of the quality of most people's high schools.

The MOB sketches aren't great and were often very weird, but the majority of performers only spell things out and don't actually do any of the ridiculous "acting" that occurs during the sketches.

The avoid only keeping the most hardcore MOB kids, who likely are driving the bus towards irrelevance, you have to attract the fringer players, and to do that, they need to be enticed to join the MOB, and the best place to start is a decent place to practice.

(06-15-2016 02:46 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 02:30 PM)Antarius Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 02:19 PM)RiceLad15 Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 02:11 PM)Antarius Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 01:27 PM)Tiki Owl Wrote:  OK so I will ask the question I thought would have come up by now....why is Stanford's band so popular with the students and some alums/fans? Do they get members because they pay or get a percentage of a scholarship? Are they more like the rest of the student body than the MOB is? For the most part they are way more controversial than the MOB and yet they still get a good amount of exposure during games (even if the announcers have to search for what to say about them). What is the relationship between the band and the music department? There are several other scatter bands...do they have the same issues as the MOB?

IMO, its the same issue as Rice Football.

One prides itself on finding ways to be excellent despite being different while the other makes excuses.

And interestingly enough the both lack (or have I guess, due to recent changes in football) significant university support.

Well, I've not got two data points, which means I'm pretty close to forming a trend. If we wait long enough to start supporting Rice baseball with scholarships and financial aid, I think I might have a third.

And I wonder where that line will trend?

Mwahaha.

KTRU had a massive broadcast radius; not sucking was well supported by that antenna and frequency. yet they managed to pile drive themselves into the ground.

Money and support aren't always the excuse that hinders excellence. The MOB has not shown any indication (that I can see and did not when I was there) that they were interested in anything except a circle jerk of inside jokes. No amount of money can fix that.

But when you talk to anyone involved with playing in the music with the MOB, the first thing they talk about generally is how awful the performance space is. The MOB is first and foremost a band and should be provided appropriate space to practice. If they want to attract anyone with decent musical talent, which they do, they have a very hard time doing that when they cannot provide accommodations of the quality of most people's high schools.

The MOB sketches aren't great and were often very weird, but the majority of performers only spell things out and don't actually do any of the ridiculous "acting" that occurs during the sketches.

The avoid only keeping the most hardcore MOB kids, who likely are driving the bus towards irrelevance, you have to attract the fringer players, and to do that, they need to be enticed to join the MOB, and the best place to start is a decent place to practice.

I think the only way the MOB gets any of that is for them to approach the student body, the athletics department and admit that they are done with the irrelevance-for-the-sake-of-difference attitude and are ready to produce quality.

Then they need to demonstrate that. It needs leadership, someone in the MOB needs to step up.

Unless someone steps up and steers the rudderless ship, no one is going to give it a fresh coat of paint.

Duck instead of deer for LT since the patriarch of Duck Commander was the QB for LT before Terry Bradshaw.

The MOB format was devised about 1970 when the traditional band did not have very many members. It was popular with the students the first few years because it was something different. The popularity has fallen off because the novelty is not there anymore and it is now too hard to figure out what they are doing because the announcement system is not that good.

(06-15-2016 11:16 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 11:03 AM)baker-13 Wrote:  I...probably shouldn't be getting into this, as a MOBster of relatively recent vintage who experienced both the highs of the last eight years (throwing in a comment during an interview with the DMs for an article in the New York Times after "$EC", getting booed off the field at SMU, getting a standing ovation at UH, the KTRU Inception show) and the lows (seriously, have you ever tried to hear coherent music in a gym before?).

But I have a relevant point that ties in nicely to conversations we've had elsewhere on the board.

Yes, you'd like us to "stick it" to the other team. But apart from a few specific circumstances...what opponents do we have to stick things to that anyone would understand? Anyone have any particularly good Middle Tennessee jokes lying around? How about Louisiana Tech jokes? Anyone have anything good to stick a resurrected UAB with?

Summary: it's hard to stick it to the other team when no one knows anything about the other team.

Honestly, I'm more interested to see what they do with the election this year. My generation's election show went particularly absurdist (Obama and Romney fuse to form a kinder, gentler candidate: Cthulhu; Cthulhu's opponent becomes Leebron; Leebron fixes the deficit by selling PBS to UH [which actually got laughs, to the shock of everyone involved in putting a KTRU joke in the show two years after the sale]). This election, on the other hand, is going fairly absurdist on its own, so...it'll be interesting to see what happens.

I guess you could do something on the way LT increased their average attendance by pushing deer season back two weeks.

Something on Lazarus for UAB, I guess, or zombies.

MT? I think the name says it all. Maybe a show on why they are never the best, or the worst, always in the middle.

Fort Bend Willowridge HS was brought in homecoming and they were about the only worthwhile thing in the game. They are better than many of the traditional university bands we have seen (UH etc.)

(06-14-2016 06:44 PM)RiceFootball2K5 Wrote:  I remember last year Rice brought in a high school band (I think they were from a high school) for one of the games, and a few people remarked to me what a difference it made in the overall atmosphere to actually have lively, audible music.

The MOB has been great at times over the years, but if they can't even get enough members these days to play loud enough so that you can hear it on the West side of the stadium, then we need to rethink things.

(06-15-2016 02:54 PM)Antarius Wrote:  I think the only way the MOB gets any of that is for them to approach the student body, the athletics department and admit that they are done with the irrelevance-for-the-sake-of-difference attitude and are ready to produce quality.

Unless someone steps up and steers the rudderless ship, no one is going to give it a fresh coat of paint.

This is what frustrates the heck out of me. How is it that for so many, many years now --- nobody.....the band, band alumni, the administration, nor the Athletic Dept, has observed this embarrassing situation and determined to do ANYTHING about it?

(06-15-2016 06:08 PM)Barney Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 02:54 PM)Antarius Wrote:  I think the only way the MOB gets any of that is for them to approach the student body, the athletics department and admit that they are done with the irrelevance-for-the-sake-of-difference attitude and are ready to produce quality.

Unless someone steps up and steers the rudderless ship, no one is going to give it a fresh coat of paint.

This is what frustrates the heck out of me. How is it that for so many, many years now --- nobody.....the band, band alumni, the administration, nor the Athletic Dept, has observed this embarrassing situation and determined to do ANYTHING about it?

What's to say they haven't tried? I certainly don't stay up to date with what the MOB does outside of their shows.

(06-15-2016 02:43 PM)Antarius Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 02:35 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  the less support they get from others, the more likely they are to want to simply entertain themselves. It's a chicken/egg thing as far as I can see

They aren't going to get any more support until others feel they deserve it.

It might be chicken and egg, but only one side can break that cycle.

I get that to a great degree... but the University could also come in and provide resources and set SOME expectations. This is, afterall, one of our larger outreaches to both student AND alumni life. I'm not saying they should dictate the shows... of course not... but just as they can decide that 'sparky' or the rally club is inappropriate, they can encourage, foster and even fund more appropriate expressions.

Or former Mobsters can do the same.

I just don't think asking 21 year olds to do something FOR FREE other than to entertain THEMSELVES is reasonable. Yes, they COULD do that, but I don't think I would have at 21.

Ah, like clockwork, the post-baseball season lets-complain-about-The-MOB thread.

For those who aren't aware (which seems like a lot of us), The MOB has taken many concrete steps in recent years to try to help recruiting and retention.

Does your mental image of a MOBster involve crazy things on top of their fedora? Then your mental image is out of date. The MOB no longer allows that, because the non-MOBsters thought it was weird. That was a super unpopular change for the kids who are used to being able to do whatever they wanted, but hey, for the good of the band, that practice was ended.

Does your mental image of a MOBster involve a 3 piece black suit, even in sunny afternoon games? Then your mental image is out of date. We love our uniforms, but we had a serious problem with people suffering from heat exhaustion due to our increasingly terrible start times for games. Now the MOB has breathable Hawaiian shirts to wear to sunny hot games, and the full MOB uniform only comes out when we think it'll be cooler out.

I could go on, but a lot of the other changes are less visible to alumni. Believe you me, The MOB has no intention of going the way of KTRU. The MOB is by the students, for the students, and if the students don't like us, then we've failed.

As Grungy and a couple of others have alluded to, we are absolutely hamstrung by the current band hall. Acoustically, on a scale from 1 to 10, it is about a negative 57. It is appalling. I've played in dozens of places over the past 15 years, and nothing else comes close to how spectacularly terrible it is. I'd take my middle school band room over it in a heartbeat. It wasn't much bigger than a broom closet, but at least it had ****ing air conditioning, and we weren't regularly interrupted by amateur badminton players.

Trying to run a band out of an active gym is like trying to run a football team without buying them cleats. Yes, it theoretically is possible, but the results are going to be disappointing, and good luck convincing new people to play for you.

I noticed that we've gone five pages into complaining about The MOB without anyone asking a MOBster what could be done to help. So allow me to interject a couple of perfectly reasonable ideas here:

1. Give The MOB a halfway decent band hall that is theirs and theirs alone. The MOB is being given the old locker rooms. Spend the (reasonable and moderate amount of) money to make it a good space for The MOB. Don't just remove the weightlifting stuff and expect that empty room to work acoustically.

2. Send The BOB to the conference basketball tournament. Historically, if you were an active and involved member of The MOB through all of football and basketball season, you were rewarded by getting to hop on a plane and cheer on our basketball teams at the conference tournament. CDC cut that in 2007, so now if you go to all the games for a year, you get a tee shirt and a pat on the back.

3. Don't mess with the volume levels on the PA for halftime. How do you convince people to spend the time and effort to write excellent scripts if they know nobody's gonna be able to hear them? Somehow the speakers always work perfectly during the game, and suddenly go quiet when The MOB is on. Cut that out.

(06-15-2016 06:47 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  I just don't think asking 21 year olds to do something FOR FREE other than to entertain THEMSELVES is reasonable. Yes, they COULD do that, but I don't think I would have at 21.

I believe back in the late 80's there was a small stipend for MOB members. Does that no longer exist? Having a non-trivial stipend tied to attendance seems like a good way to try to boost the band size. The biggest problem is how small the band is now compared to the 80's. I was a member then..I doubt I would be now with only a couple of other people playing my instrument instead of maybe 25 or 30.

(06-15-2016 07:23 PM)DFW Owl Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 06:47 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  I just don't think asking 21 year olds to do something FOR FREE other than to entertain THEMSELVES is reasonable. Yes, they COULD do that, but I don't think I would have at 21.

I believe back in the late 80's there was a small stipend for MOB members. Does that no longer exist? Having a non-trivial stipend tied to attendance seems like a good way to try to boost the band size. The biggest problem is how small the band is now compared to the 80's. I was a member then..I doubt I would be now with only a couple of other people playing my instrument instead of maybe 25 or 30.

If you come to all the football games, two thirds of the rehearsals, and half of the basketball games, The MOB will give you the princely sum of $20.

I for one would like to thank the MOB and BOB for their time and effort. Anyone who is slighting that is falling into the Rice culture of saying NO first. It's nothing short of shameful that the level of support from Rice is not better. However, it reflects my view of the Institute as it exists - an Endowment driven to perpetuate an Endowment rather than actually meaningfully support any facet of undergraduate life. Organize your alumni base and organize your own resources and endowment funds. Rice will still not support you, but you can exist and travel and play as you please. I will write the first check.

I'm truly sorry if the former MOBsters on the board see this thread as a knock on them. I absolutely do not blame the band members -- quite the contrary, I applaud them and thank them for their commitment and school spirit, despite having no support.
However, I think the suggested remedies by Klobasnek and others are far short of what I'm thinking. There is macro-change needed, not micro-changes.

(06-15-2016 07:18 PM)Klobasnek Wrote:  Ah, like clockwork, the post-baseball season lets-complain-about-The-MOB thread.

For those who aren't aware (which seems like a lot of us), The MOB has taken many concrete steps in recent years to try to help recruiting and retention.

Does your mental image of a MOBster involve crazy things on top of their fedora? Then your mental image is out of date. The MOB no longer allows that, because the non-MOBsters thought it was weird. That was a super unpopular change for the kids who are used to being able to do whatever they wanted, but hey, for the good of the band, that practice was ended.

Does your mental image of a MOBster involve a 3 piece black suit, even in sunny afternoon games? Then your mental image is out of date. We love our uniforms, but we had a serious problem with people suffering from heat exhaustion due to our increasingly terrible start times for games. Now the MOB has breathable Hawaiian shirts to wear to sunny hot games, and the full MOB uniform only comes out when we think it'll be cooler out.

I could go on, but a lot of the other changes are less visible to alumni. Believe you me, The MOB has no intention of going the way of KTRU. The MOB is by the students, for the students, and if the students don't like us, then we've failed.

As Grungy and a couple of others have alluded to, we are absolutely hamstrung by the current band hall. Acoustically, on a scale from 1 to 10, it is about a negative 57. It is appalling. I've played in dozens of places over the past 15 years, and nothing else comes close to how spectacularly terrible it is. I'd take my middle school band room over it in a heartbeat. It wasn't much bigger than a broom closet, but at least it had ****ing air conditioning, and we weren't regularly interrupted by amateur badminton players.

Trying to run a band out of an active gym is like trying to run a football team without buying them cleats. Yes, it theoretically is possible, but the results are going to be disappointing, and good luck convincing new people to play for you.

I noticed that we've gone five pages into complaining about The MOB without anyone asking a MOBster what could be done to help. So allow me to interject a couple of perfectly reasonable ideas here:

1. Give The MOB a halfway decent band hall that is theirs and theirs alone. The MOB is being given the old locker rooms. Spend the (reasonable and moderate amount of) money to make it a good space for The MOB. Don't just remove the weightlifting stuff and expect that empty room to work acoustically.

2. Send The BOB to the conference basketball tournament. Historically, if you were an active and involved member of The MOB through all of football and basketball season, you were rewarded by getting to hop on a plane and cheer on our basketball teams at the conference tournament. CDC cut that in 2007, so now if you go to all the games for a year, you get a tee shirt and a pat on the back.

3. Don't mess with the volume levels on the PA for halftime. How do you convince people to spend the time and effort to write excellent scripts if they know nobody's gonna be able to hear them? Somehow the speakers always work perfectly during the game, and suddenly go quiet when The MOB is on. Cut that out.

Thanks for the reply - I'm glad you were able to easily prove that MOB students are also Rice students, and they are generally very motivated and looking to try and fix they problems they encounter if it is within their means. And I definitely think that doing some of the small changes, like getting rid of the decorations on the fedoras helps make the MOB way less, um, weird.

Has the MOB done anything recently to try and convince the admin to change the location of your practices? If so, can you provide any insight into the types of reasoning provided that keeps you from having an air-conditioned practice location?

(06-15-2016 08:32 PM)Barney Wrote:  I'm truly sorry if the former MOBsters on the board see this thread as a knock on them. I absolutely do not blame the band members -- quite the contrary, I applaud them and thank them for their commitment and school spirit, despite having no support.
However, I think the suggested remedies by Klobasnek and others are far short of what I'm thinking. There is macro-change needed, not micro-changes.

What sort of macro changes would you suggest, outside of completely altering the scatter band gig?

(06-15-2016 07:23 PM)DFW Owl Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 06:47 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  I just don't think asking 21 year olds to do something FOR FREE other than to entertain THEMSELVES is reasonable. Yes, they COULD do that, but I don't think I would have at 21.

I believe back in the late 80's there was a small stipend for MOB members. Does that no longer exist? Having a non-trivial stipend tied to attendance seems like a good way to try to boost the band size. The biggest problem is how small the band is now compared to the 80's. I was a member then..I doubt I would be now with only a couple of other people playing my instrument instead of maybe 25 or 30.

I'm pretty sure we didn't get stipends in the late 80s (trombone player - fall 87 through spring 91). If we were supposedly given one, then it never made it to my pocket. Maybe my parents got it on the university account and helped pay my way. What I did get every year was some sort of token/gift if I attended enough practices and games. Junior and senior year, you got a wool MOB stadium blanket or a wool MOB jacket (like a high school varsity player) - I can't remember which year got you which one. And yes, I still have both of them.

One thing we did have were not just the home games, but decent road trips for football. 1988, in particular, included overnight road trips to New Orleans and South Bend (starting Thursday evening), as well as the band going to A&M for the day. 1989, I got to play at the NBA All-Star game. 1990, we marched in the Galveston Mardi Gras parade.

But it takes money to do these things. Not saying it's the answer, but it was fun.

And honestly, just like now, the scripts were just as much hit and miss. Some were cutting edge humor, others were straight-ahead/easy consumption. Complaining that that somehow is a key part in making them irrelevant misses the history and the never-ending hit-or-miss nature of amateurs writing them.

The size is a self-reinforcing loop for the MOB. It's not popular, so more people don't do it. When I was in the MOB, and over 10% of the student body was a member, people wanted to join. (I've told the story before, but I had 2 friends with no musical instrument training join my sophomore year, on the drum line (one on bass, one on cymbals), because their friends were in it and it was a fun way to experience games.) But getting from here to anywhere in that direction isn't easy, or it likely would have already been done.

I don't claim to have any answers. And I'm probably just an old fogey remembering the good ole times as a MOBster. But it does make me sad to see it fall to the condition that it's in, when other scatter bands still continue to do their thing at Stanford, and probably a few other places. (Virginia's has died, due to "offensiveness" causing the athletic department to ban them.)

(06-15-2016 09:28 PM)gsloth Wrote:  I'm pretty sure we didn't get stipends in the late 80s (trombone player - fall 87 through spring 91). If we were supposedly given one, then it never made it to my pocket. Maybe my parents got it on the university account and helped pay my way. Wh

I may be wrong but I thought there was something like $100 (in 80's dollars!) given of you had perfect or maybe near-perfect attendance to football games.

(06-15-2016 10:24 PM)DFW Owl Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 09:28 PM)gsloth Wrote:  I'm pretty sure we didn't get stipends in the late 80s (trombone player - fall 87 through spring 91). If we were supposedly given one, then it never made it to my pocket. Maybe my parents got it on the university account and helped pay my way. Wh

I may be wrong but I thought there was something like $100 (in 80's dollars!) given of you had perfect or maybe near-perfect attendance to football games.

By the mid-'90s, not only was there not this, but we had to write a check for a trip deposit if we went on the "big trip" of the year (Army, Michigan, etc.). The check was returned uncashed only if attendance over the course of the season met some standard. We did still get the service awards (T-shirt/windbreaker/letter jacket/briefcase) for 1/2/3/4 years in the band, though.

I don't have that much affection for the MOB, but if a t-shirt is considered a reward for a year of work, then they aren't doing something right.

I could go out into the academic quad right now and scream "Give me a free t-shirt" and someone would come within 10 minutes with a shirt that their club or organization is giving out.

Well, maybe not right now, but in the Fall!

(06-15-2016 07:27 PM)Klobasnek Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 07:23 PM)DFW Owl Wrote:  

(06-15-2016 06:47 PM)Hambone10 Wrote:  I just don't think asking 21 year olds to do something FOR FREE other than to entertain THEMSELVES is reasonable. Yes, they COULD do that, but I don't think I would have at 21.

I believe back in the late 80's there was a small stipend for MOB members. Does that no longer exist? Having a non-trivial stipend tied to attendance seems like a good way to try to boost the band size. The biggest problem is how small the band is now compared to the 80's. I was a member then..I doubt I would be now with only a couple of other people playing my instrument instead of maybe 25 or 30.

If you come to all the football games, two thirds of the rehearsals, and half of the basketball games, The MOB will give you the princely sum of $20.

20 bucks more than I got attending that, MLB, soccer etc.