Banding Together

On a sun-drenched USC field, under orders, they stand in a torture drill like unflinching flamingos. Then comes the running of laps while toting pounds of polished brass.

Nearby, perched on a platform 20 feet above the lawn, their leader, Arthur Bartner, flies into overdrive, arms waving, hips boomeranging, voice exploding into a microphone:

We are in this thing together! We’ve got one or two guys out there who are not with the program! I’m just not going to accept that! Everyone, again! Torture drill!

Up come 250 dangling right legs, toes pointing south.

Down drips perspiration.

But this sweat, stamina and sacrifice isn’t flowing from the jersey-wearing monsters of USC’s football team. It’s the labor of the musical men and women of the Trojan Marching Band.

“This,” says Loretto Martinez--a hulking 24-year-old demonstrating his one-legged agility--”makes football practice seem mild.”

On the field, balancing tubas on shoulders and carrying drums strapped around necks, the musicians engage in hard work as part of a ritual that begins for them in August. They endure endless hours of practice to provide the oompah, the school spirit for a sport. They juggle classes, work graveyard shifts, pull all-nighters, spend weekends on the road and strut in turbo-oven uniforms in 110-degree temperatures.

But no matter the price, they pay it because they love making music. Big, pounding music. The kind that chokes up the alumni and swells the hearts of fans.

And though they’re on the field for seven minutes or less, the musicians’ halftime marches also lead them to travel and traditions, camaraderie and pranks, and, of course, their own measure of fame via parades, national TV and Super Bowl performances.

USC’s marching ensemble is known as “Hollywood’s band” because it has appeared in several movies, including “The Music Man” and “The Naked Gun.”

It’s also the only collegiate marching band with a Top 10 hit to its credit: the Trojans played backup on the title tune of Fleetwood Mac’s “Tusk” album a decade ago. (The song was recorded in Dodger Stadium. A few years later, a video was made that shows up occasionally on MTV.)

Martinez says he has to pinch himself sometimes “just to make sure I’m really in this band. Did you know Herb Alpert played in this band?”

For four years, Martinez has played trombone for the band while trying to maintain passing grades and working from midnight to 10 a.m. at a Ralphs supermarket. As soon as he gets off work, he heads to Rio Hondo College for classes, then USC for more classes and band practice.

A Lone Credit

For all his hustle on behalf of the band, he gets rewarded with one academic credit per semester.

“I’ve got my music on the steering wheel all the way,” he says of his 40-minute bumper-to-bumper drives to practice.

Woody Kane, 25, a Trojan trombonist and grad student, has been a band member for five years. Performing with the Trojan band is the next best thing to being on the football team, he says, adding, “It’s better because you don’t get tackled.”

But the band occasionally gets hit by other flying objects. Like frozen fruit. Apples and oranges are flung at the band out of rivalry and jealousy by students at one particular California college. “They hate us,” Kane says with pride.

Fruit Launchers

Chuy Martinez, a 29-year-old tuba section leader and senior, says the unbearable fans have fruit slinging down to a science: “They come armed with surgical tubing which they use as launchers so they can hit us midfield from the top of the stands.

“We’ve had grapefruit occasionally land inside tubas,” he says, though band members have mastered dodging--except for avocados that end up as guacamole on the field under the band’s fancy footwork.

The musicians agree moments like these make band membership memorable, though messy.

They also fondly remember their tradition of pulling pranks on each other, especially on road trips. Recently, for example, the tuba players boarded the percussionists’ bus and swiped some boxes of chocolate chip cookies. But the brass players didn’t know the cookies had been laced with a laxative by other band members. “When we got to Arizona we found out they had been touched-up with Ex-Lax. We played really quiet that night, if you know what I mean,” says Chuy Martinez.

Serious Traditions

Besides the kidding, the band does hold to more serious traditions, such as playing USC’s victory march, “Conquest,” whenever the Trojan football team heads past their rehearsals. The band also plays “Happy Birthday” to Trojan coaches.

But the musicians’ favorite custom occurs every Halloween at the stroke of midnight, when they roust band director Arthur Bartner--and his whole Palos Verdes neighborhood--out of their beds.

“One particular neighbor doesn’t like it very much,” Bartner says, “Every Oct. 31 he says to me, ‘It’s tonight, isn’t it?’ All I can do is nod. It’s a tradition, and actually, I love it.”

Like Bartner, Gordon Henderson, UCLA’s Bruin marching band director, is a good sport when it comes to crazy customs.

A favorite with the 250-member UCLA band occurs on the last day of rehearsal at band camp, a week of basic training before school begins.

“The band brings out this dilapidated exercise bicycle that hardly works and I’ve got to ride it. I run every morning, so I’m in pretty good shape, but this thing makes me look like a complete fool,” Henderson says. “It’s the only time I give them an opportunity to get back at me for all the grueling training I put them through.”

Mark Sasson, the Bruins’ head animal--a title given to the boss of the band’s equipment crew--looks forward to the traditional Band Bowl, which pits the Bruin band’s football team against that of the Trojan marching band. While their band colleagues make music at the game, the dueling trombonists and saxophonists try to score touchdowns.

An Emotional Match

Sasson, 21, a senior trumpet player majoring in psychology, will play wide receiver in the Nov. 12 match. “It’s a real emotional game because we want to win. We want to hold onto the trophy,” he says of the prize, which the Bruins have won the last two years.

Such activities encourage the band friendships that the musicians say they prize. Many couples meet in the USC and UCLA bands, then marry. Because of the time crunch they share, many band members study together in groups; on road trips, their heads often are buried in books on the buses.

“Road games (with travel) take three days--Friday, Saturday and Sunday,” explains Michelle Hee, a 21-year-old UCLA piccolo player for three years. “Then, bam! On Monday you’ve got an exam. You study every minute you can . . . even if it’s on the bus.”

But, most band members wouldn’t have it any other way.

“This is all part of the college experience,” says Kane of USC. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m missing out on something by not being in a fraternity, and then I turn around and think, ‘I’m in the biggest and the most popular fraternity on campus.’ ”

But it’s when they’re away from the band that the musicians really must put on a juggling act.

Hee finds herself darting from class to band practice, from part-time secretarial job to practice and from an occasional date to practice. “You just have to stretch your time as much as you can,” she says.

That just about means sacrificing her junior year--including this past summer--to the dictates of learning medleys and mastering marching. “It takes dedication. That’s the glue that pulls us through it all,” she says.

Chuy Martinez of USC is committed to giving his best, though he often struggles to do so. A music major, he balances a 25-hour-a-week job at Cerritos College as a part-time counselor with morning classes at USC. He tops that with band rehearsals and playing at least five gigs a week with jazz ensembles. On most nights, he gets three hours of sleep after hitting the books.

“But being in the Trojan band is worth it all,” he says. “It’s a natural high when you’re out there on the field with your uniform on. There would be an emptiness inside me if I wasn’t in the band.”

Full Class Load

Bruin drum major Tim Close, 21, manages a 30-hour-a-week job with band rehearsals and a full class load that keeps him on campus till past 7 p.m. “Sometimes the only time to study is in the morning. I’ve gone for two to three days without sleep because of the quantity of reading I get as an English major,” he says. “Sometimes I’m zombie-eyed.”

But band practice to him is “like a vacation, a hobby from everything else I have going on.”

And he likes the challenge. “Life would be boring if I wasn’t in the band. I can’t imagine not doing this. The hectic schedule makes life interesting.”

So does the rivalry UCLA has with USC, says Bruin Sasson. “That’s what keeps being in the band interesting for me. I like the competition to out-do the USC band.”

At UCLA and USC, the competition is intense just to get into the bands, whose members then must rehearse an average of at least 12 hours a week.

Musicians must memorize countless numbers of songs and their drill charts.

On the field, they must not only display musical skills, performing everything from super-hero movie sound tracks to TV-show theme songs, as well as favorites from Andrew Lloyd Webber, John Philip Sousa and the Top 40. They also must show off the bands’ trademark, synchronized hoofing styles, which are detailed in the drill charts that the band directors guard with their lives.

The charts show every cadence count, every knee lift, every leg halt, spin, whirl, design and geometric pattern.

Stylish Strutting

“Our style is very physically demanding,” says USC’s Maria Engelhardt, a senior and the band’s manager. “Today, most bands march landing on their heels first. Heel-toe, heel-toe. We drive it out. When we march, we’ve got style.”

Says fellow band member, Loretto Martinez: “We’re a little more arrogant than you-know-who. “

UCLA?

“Who else,” he says.

UCLA’s senior Greg Klee, a Bruin trombonist, replies: “We’re not a clone band like they are.”

USC?

“Of course,” he says. “Besides, they prance. We’re smooth. We glide on the field. We’ve got finesse.”

But even better, Klee says, UCLA for its Oct. 28 game against Washington’s Huskies will have the Batmobile, a coup in this-- Holy Battle of the Marching Bands! --the season of the Batman half-time show.

Says UCLA’s Sasson: “We’re talking major prop here!”

Not to be outdone, the USC marching band says, it, too, has a few caped surprises. “Man, we’re going to blow them out of California with our (Bartner-choreographed) Batman show!” Kane says.

“That’s what I like about you,” fellow band member Chuy Martinez tells his friend. “You’ve got spirit!”