PRINTI'm with the band
The Missouri Band Bunch shows us how to rally
Photographs by KATLYN KELLER
The Missouri Band Bunch revs up the crowd at The Penguin Dueling Piano Bar in September 2008. The music, much like the tiger-striped sousaphone, is hard to miss. And forget.
October 22, 2009 | 12:00 a.m. CST
It’s a crisp autumn Friday night on Broadway. Outside The Penguin Dueling Piano Bar, the Missouri Band Bunch waits to begin rallying before the Mizzou home game against Furman University. Young women walk by in short dresses and high heels while college-aged men follow in button-down shirts and khakis. Trumpets, flutes, trombones, drums and even a sousaphone painted black and gold line the sidewalk and wait to be played. The crowd stops and stares, but the Missouri Band Bunch isn’t phased. This is a regular pre-home game activity for them; rally nights have been a tradition for 36 years — unbeknownst to many Tiger fans.
The Missouri Band Bunch has wandered around downtown the night before every home game since 1973. About 50 members rally for Mizzou spirit and play tunes at bars such as Déjà Vu. Rally nights might be less publicized today, but in the ’70s, there also weren’t as many bars downtown. Norm Ruebling, whom you might recognize from those corny MO-X commercials, started the weekly band celebration as the president of Marching Mizzou. Although the Band Bunch is not affliated with MU, this tradition of blues-ing and barhopping has survived.
Percussions are a crucial part of the band; they set the dance beat.
- Score! Who won it, 2002 to 2008
- Game Day Guide
- The visor
- The tailgating zoo
- Hey buddy, you're in my seat
- The Price of Playing
- Know your enemy
- Letting 'em out of their cages and corrals
- Stat Showdown
- Game Day Whereabouts
- Remember the Tigers
- Studying the stereotype
- Censorship Uncensored
- And the winner is...
- Endzone ensembles
- Supporting Cast
- Prep and pride off the field
- An Obituary for the beloved Reactor
- The Lost, the Found and the Confiscated
- Columbia's Hangover
- Play by play
- Mo' Money
- Makin' Bank
- Tiger Watch Party
- Uniformology
Nowadays, the Missouri Band Bunch makes its usual round from The Penguin to Bengals Pub & Grill and then ends at Déjà Vu. James Sherman, MU senior and trombone player for the Bunch, says that the band has been playing at Déjà Vu and The Penguin for as long as he can remember but only started going to Bengals this year.
“It’s a very long-standing tradition here,” says Matt Istwan, managing partner of Déjà Vu. “And the most fun is the one before Homecoming because we will get band members who did this literally from when Norm first started it over 30 years ago.”
As the herd of musicians march into The Penguin, they are welcomed with cheers and a few confused stares. But as they begin playing the MU Fight Song, they are quickly accepted as normal bar aficionados, except with instruments. The leaders of the band (Spirit Chairs), Alex Williams and Nathan Underwood, conduct from the balcony above the stage while the color guard and flute players dance along with the set. The trumpets and trombones carry the tune of “Every True Son” while swinging horns evoke cheers and claps from the packed bar. The band breezes through a few songs, including Bruce Channel’s “Hey! Baby,” before leaving with a standing ovation after a short 10 minutes.
The musicians make the 15-minute walk to Bengals with their horns at their sides. About a dozen stragglers from the band join in for the only outdoor performance. They make it there around 11 p.m. and are greeted by a boozed-up crowd on the patio. A woman wearing a pink tiara jumps in front of Williams while he conducts — she almost falls in her ungodly high heels and micro-mini dress while gripping a plastic cup of an unknown, yet colorful, concoction. The crowd goes berserk: They sing along with the band as more people pour out of the bar to watch. Melanie Allen, a junior at MU and observer of the Band Bunch for three years, says that she loves the energy and spirit the band brings to their events.
Most of the band is fairly coherent, but the rambunctious group produces a few stumbles and rowdy yells of their own as they walk through the streets of downtown. Underwood recounts how the pub crawlers of Columbia sometimes ask them to play as they walk from bar to bar, to which the band usually obliges.
At 11:30 the band ventures to Déjà Vu for the last and most dynamic stop on this journey. The bar’s security is strict and requires all minors to receive big X’s on their hands if they want to make it through the door. The band trickles in, and its members dance and drink until midnight when they begin their last performance. Most of the crowd is hammered and awkwardly bumps and grinds against one another to the traditional band music.
Ruebling says the disco craze of the late ’70s combined with the Tiger spirit of Déjà Vu’s former owner, Fred DiMarco, enticed the band to conclude its nights at the Vu. Sometimes the band is joined by Marching Mizzou alums, members of the color guard, the cheerleading squad and even some of the Trumans — all out of uniform, of course.
At the end of the night, the band separates and wanders home after the performance — not exactly the traditional definition of a band geek.
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