OU Band Alumni Association » Pride of Oklahoma

No, The Pride is not playing at the Olympics

Webmaster — Tue, 01 May 2012 04:22:15 +0000

Scammers are what they are, but I’d love to make sure they know they messed with the wrong people this time:

Charitable donors beware: a door-to-door fundraising effort claiming to benefit the university’s marching band is not affiliated with OU, the band director said.

[…] A south Oklahoma City woman has filed a police report after giving a donation to a solicitor who told her the “Sooner Marching Band” was headed to the Olympics to play on behalf of OU, according to a press release.

The woman said she was asked to write her check to the Rick Allen Fulfilment Agency.

If you see or hear of such contemptible behavior, please do as this woman did and alert the police. Believe me, if The Pride were going to London to play, you’d have heard about it here many, many months ago!

Join us on April 14!

Webmaster — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 08:21:47 +0000

If you subscribe to the OUBAA Mailing List, you already received a copy of the brand new OU Band Alumni Association Spring 2012 Newsletter. If not, do not fear—just click here to get it!

In there, you’ll find an invitation for all dues-paying members to participate in the Red and White Game on Saturday, April 14. How would you like to play your horn at an OU Football game from the Pride’s seats in the stands again? Both current Pride members and OUBAA members will sit together in Section 29 to cheer on both squads for this annual scrimmage, which shall not be televised. We have lunch if you want it, we have guest tickets for just $5, so make it a family outing!

To pay all your fees for this online (dues are per calendar year, so paying your 2012 dues now means they’re not due again for Homecoming 2012, which we currently expect to be sometime in the fall of 2012, conference alignment permitting), just click over to our online payment page. (Or download the newsletter, write a check, and mail it in for a small discount—the choice, as always, is yours—but we think the online payment system via PayPal is pretty nifty so far.)

We’ll unlock the rah-rah music for registered attendees in a week or two if you need a copy. But food, football, section 29, inexpensive—what’s not to like? Register today!

Pay your 2012 dues now!

Webmaster — Sun, 26 Feb 2012 22:03:16 +0000

Did you know that OUBAA dues are for each calendar year? You’re ahead of me. I really should pay more attention to those things, but I think we all know that ship has sailed.

Anyway, you can now pay your 2012 dues online. Members who are paid up in their 2012 dues can, this year, for the first time, participate in the annual Oklahoma Football Spring Game, better known to all of us as The Red and White Game. Dues-paying members will have an opportunity to bring their instruments back to Owen Field and play with current Pride of Oklahoma members to cheer on the student athletes, meet up with former players, and have lots of fun!

Details when they’re available, but the payment page is now open again for 2012 dues (that’s the only item on there, as that’s all we’re accepting right now), so take a few moments to get the opportunity to cheer on spring football! The game will not be televised, so if you want to see it, you’ll want to be in the stands—and if you’re in the stands, shouldn’t you be playing Boomer? Of course you should!

Rah-rahs and iTunes Match

Webmaster — Sat, 11 Feb 2012 07:03:01 +0000

If you own the 2004 Rah-Rah CD, use iTunes, and have signed up for the $25/year iTunes Match service, there’s a hidden surprise for The Pride in there: extra royalties! Part of that $25 fee goes to pay artists a very small royalty every time you play a song covered by iTunes Match even if you owned the physical CD and didn’t buy the music from iTunes.

I’m not suggesting that you spend the money on iTunes Match if you weren’t going to, but if you have, be sure to add the Rah-Rah CD to your iTunes library so that when you play it, even on your iPhone or iPod or whatever, The Pride gets a tiny extra royalty. And if you don’t have it, you can buy it from iTunes or other fine purveyors of legitimate online music. Rah-rah!

Things people want to know, part 3

Webmaster — Sun, 08 Jan 2012 22:15:15 +0000

I know I was going to share search engine queries more often—terms that people enter in Google or Bing or Yahoo or whatever that leads them to our side—but then people stopped asking interesting things. The vast majority of search engine queries revolve around three topics:

OU Alumni Band information (hey, that’s us!)
Information on present and past twirlers
People looking for rah-rah sheet music (sorry, folks, but the arrangements used by The Pride of Oklahoma are their own, protected by copyright, and not freely available. Contact University Bands for licensing information.)

Nonetheless, looking back 30 days, I find a few interesting things, with the caveat that my definition of “interesting” is perhaps wider than a normal person’s. Here’s a few:

Dig in and fight for the Red and White of Oklahoma

We march down the field with our heads held high, determined to win every battle we’re in

O.K. Oklahoma fight song lyrics

Most of you know that the first two requests are partially an answer to the third: those are the lyrics to O.K. Oklahoma, the 1939 spirit song written by Fred Waring for OU. You can find the lyrics and more of the story on the page I wrote in 2004 for the song’s 65th anniversary, O.K. Oklahoma at 65.

Pride of Oklahoma Insight Bowl performances

[several other similar ones]

Some queries correctly looked for “Horton Productions” for this, run by fellow Pride alums Matt and Pat Horton (or perhaps the other way around). They segregate their several business ventures into many different URLs, and this is the one you want for 2011 Pride of Oklahoma performances on video. That includes the Insight Bowl, homecoming pregame and halftime (including OUBAA pregame), and all the rest of the 2011 season’s halftime performances. You also get instructions on how to buy the DVD, which you should do to conserve the Internet for everyone else.

Kyle Wiemar on Wheel of Fortune

Someone was really looking for this last month, as people were led to our site under several similar queries. On March 17, 2006, outgoing Pride drum major Kyle Wiemar appeared on the syndicated TV game show Wheel of Fortune and won, going to the bonus round and winning again. In addition to the above link from us, there was a story in the Norman Transcript about it (a page I’ve edited because I had Kyle’s name misspelled—sorry, Kyle!)

Trivia: Kyle’s friend in the audience for the bonus round was incoming Pride drum major Eric Shannon, who created (I believe) the “Boomer 5″ arrangement the Pride still uses on first downs! I have video of this on an old disconnected DVR in a room somewhere, but if it’s already on YouTube somewhere, I’d be happy to link to it.

Where can I purchase a rain poncho like the OU Band wears?

A nice lady asked me this in E-mail because she couldn’t find an answer anywhere, and I didn’t have on either. After asking Mr. Britt, I’ve learned that the band’s current ponchos, the ones carried on the back in poncho packs, are a custom-made band uniform item and are not for sale to the general public. Sorry—they are cool, so maybe the manufacturers will make them available someday.

That’s about it for the search engines. What’s been on your mind?

What did you think of “Band Bedlam?”

Webmaster — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 01:52:01 +0000

Update 28 December: Be sure to click through and read comments from OETA’s Bill Perry about Band Bedlam DVDs, rebroadcasts, and the use of previously unbroadcast footage in OETA’s Gallery in January 2012!

Consider this an open thread for your thoughts on the OETA show or other issues of this BEDLAM week. Comment away! (No registration required.)

Merry Christmas from OUBAA!

Webmaster — Sun, 25 Dec 2011 18:21:13 +0000

The timing of the season usually doesn’t give The Pride opportunity to play Christmas (or even holiday) tunes, but a rare 1989 concert in Tulsa late in the season provided just such a chance. From that concert, introduced by none other than George Ryan, here’s Leroy Anderson’s classic. Please enjoy with the warmest wishes of the season from all your friends at OUBAA—we’ll be back tomorrow with news of the Insight Bowl trip and where to see the 2011 Pride of Oklahoma!

Pride Sleigh Ride (1989)

“Band Bedlam”

Webmaster — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 08:19:02 +0000

OETA, The Oklahoma Network, presents an original 30-minute production about the marching bands at the state’s two largest universities: The Pride of Oklahoma, and the OSU Cowboy Marching Band.

Band Bedlam premieres Thursday, December 1, at 7:00 PM (CST) on the stations of OETA. It will be rebroadcast Saturday, December 3 (Bedlam Day!) at 6:30 AM. If you get OETA’s digital sub channels (like KETA-DT 13-2 in Oklahoma City, available over Cox Cable HD service and via antenna), you can also see it on Friday, December 2 at 8:30 AM or 4:00 PM, or Saturday, December 3 at 1:00 PM or 4:30 PM. Dish Network and DirecTV subscribers without antennas do not receive the subchannels, plus you really want to watch it Thursday night anyway.

Don’t believe me? Look at the embedded video below, which is the first minute of the program. If you donated to OETA, you should have received December’s Odyssey program guide by now, which includes a cover story about the program, too. A lot of the scenes in this video should look verrrrry familiar to you, and now the rest of the state gets a chance to see what you saw. Here’s a preview:

“Band Bedlam” Preview Clip

Calendar updated

Webmaster — Wed, 16 Nov 2011 09:04:16 +0000

Our events calendar has been updated with the times of the final three games of the season. Games at Baylor and at OSU kickoff at 7:00 PM CST; the final home game (against Iowa State) kicks off at 11:00 AM CDT. The gameday schedule for Iowa State is also online, including the 5:30 AM rehearsal—yikes!

All three games will be telecast by ESPN on ABC. I’m sure the OSU game will be nationally televised, given the BCS implications, but you can check here after Thursday of each week to see how ESPN/ABC plan to handle national and regional coverage in your area.

Coming later this week: more on “Band Bedlam,” notes about Monday’s final symphonic wind concert of the semester, and whatever else comes up that we find and you might want to know. BCS expert Jerry Palm now predicts, on his subscription site CollegeBCS.com, that the BCS National Championship game will be LSU vs. Oklahoma. In New Orleans. Talk about a classic case of good news-bad news!

That deserves more good news, so here’s another poster for “Band Bedlam:”

Coming soon…

Webmaster — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 03:12:13 +0000