RE: The MOB
I thought this show script was pretty good.
There were a couple of nice zingers in it.
Not sure if it's posted anywhere, and I never got access to the script writing page.
In the SWC era, from which The MOB sprung, both bands were allotted 8 minutes for their shows.
That gave us time for 4 formations and 5 songs (counting Bonnet, and later Louie, for the exit).
Having a visiting band provided contrast - the same old thing that they were doing, versus the very different thing The MOB was doing.
Now, what The MOB is doing is the same old thing, and we only occasionally see a visiting band, and that seems more entertaining because it is the different thing. Gone are the days of the students chanting "High school band! High school band!" at the other band (gone is not a bad thing, but it is a sign of our complacency).
Also, C-USA and Rice have been allotting 6 minutes each to the bands, and even 6 minutes to The MOB even when there is no visiting band. That chops one or two segments out of the show, giving us less to work with, to either develop the theme, or just squeeze in another joke.
This past week, we thought we would have 8 minutes (it's still an option, if the athletic department doesn't have something in addition to the bands for the 20 minutes of half time), but it was cut to 6. Instead of chopping each the three songs we were planning to do enough to fit the time constraint, Chuck chose to cut one entire segment, and its song. We got to play complete charts, something that is quite rare in this time-constrained-by-marketing era.
I'll readily admit that the scatter-form-script-music/action [repeat] format is tired. We've tried other things, but they proved even more confusing to the audience.
The modern stadium sound system helps us try to get the joke across, but we still haven't gotten anyone to explain why our announcing volume is much less than the regular game announcing. Everything seems to be the same, except the person. And it's not the person's voice - I used to sit next to J. Fred to do the announcing, and we were not different in projection (that was the old sound system) that I could tell.
We've got a similar thread running in the "I bet we can't get a million fans for Rice" FB page/group, BTW.
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