As conductor of the Brown Band, I had the misfortune of attending Saturday
night's Big Red Freakout at RPI. I say this not merely because my team
got unfortunately trounced, which I've seen happen a few times in my
three years at Brown, but because Saturday night I witnessed perhaps the
most    despicable behavior by an opposing band during my "career". Although
yelling and cheering and taunting are things that all bands do in good
fun, there are two things that the Brown Band does not do and as conductor
I work very hard to enforce us not doing: We do not begin playing
once the other band has begun playing a song (with the sole
possible exceptions of our team scoring a goal or the opposing
penalty dragnet sting), and we do not play while the puck is in motion,
silencing as soon as possible once the puck has been dropped. Over the
last several games I have been trying as hard as possible to squelch
ALL random band noise during play even including the percussion
keeping tempo along with shouted cheers.
At the Freakout, myself and the president of the band went to talk
with the RPI conductor, as we usually do both home and away, to establish
an agreement for play for the game. The RPI conductor wanted to do two songs
for our every one during the period breaks, since this was the freakout and
RPI alumns had travelled hundred of miles to be there (as though ours
hadn't). I didn't really like that, and the matter wasn't settled very clearly
but the general upshot was that we'd play whenever we could come in after they
were done during these breaks. The other end of this "agreement" was that
the RPI and Brown Bands would alternate whistles fairly during the periods
of play.
With that in mind I now set forth that the RPI band was nothing but
malicious. They began playing songs once we had clearly begun them on
our alteration of the whistles, including playing over our hockey fight
song which we played upon scoring our lone goal. Our president returned to
chat with them and was treated solely with hostility. The rest of the game,
we were lucky to play anything at all without the RPI band interrupting us,
or if the entire band couldn't muster for a tune, they're percussion section
attempting to drown us out.
When it comes to professionalism, I find the RPI band to be the worst sort
of repugnant institution which gives the rest of the collegiate bands a
bad name.
To make matters worse, the RPI band continually played during game play.
Most notably, on RPI's first break-away, they made a number of loud noises,
both percussive and horn, while immediately behind our goalie, Mike
Parsons. Whether this was truly a distraction which led to the goal I don't
know, but it is none-the-less inappropriate, out of line, and should have
resulted IMHO in a disallowment of the goal and a penalty against RPI.
That sort of behavior continued throughout the game. I believe that the
NCAA does have sanctions against this. I don;'t know why they weren;'t
invoked, and the RPI band should damn well know better anyway. Although
apparently they don't  as evidenced by a previous post in which an RPI fan
(band member?) blatantly claimed that he would continue to do this.
All I can say is that the RPI team is going to be the organization that suffers
when a penalty is at long last rightfully assessed.
As far as our course of action:
Among the Ivies, there is something known as the Ivy League Band Agreement,
which is basically a statement of common courtesy among the Ivy bands.
And, as far as I know, is basically approved of (at least unofficially)
by the Ivy athletic directors. Of course this agreement doesn;t
include non-ivy ECAC teams, but if they keep it up, RPI may soon
find its band unwelcome in any of the Ivy arenas. I intend to write a
letter to my athletic director encouraging that the RPI band never be allowed
back at Brown. And I certinly hope that if they do come back they don;t think
that they can get away with this at Meehan.
 
As I said before, through all of the taunting and cheering, it's
professionalism and friendliness that earns a band respect amongst the
other bands, and we have very friendly relations with some other bands
across the league. But as of now, the RPI band churns my stomach.
And I pray that they stay out of our way if we meet at the final four.
 
Ever True to Brown,
Greg Friedman