Ohio’s marching band is the pride and joy of our school. People go to football games just to see them perform. They’ve gone viral on YouTube at least twice, and Korean pop star Psy personally stated that he loves them. Psy! The only way for the Marching 110 to receive a better seal of approval is if Jesus has his second coming just to tell us how much he liked our “Party Rock Anthem” performance.
Therefore, it is with great shame that I say I don’t know much about the Marching 110. I had to Google those facts just so I could pretend I knew what I was talking about.
Though I do like football, I rarely go to football games because I feel obligated to stay the entire three hours, and my iPhone has pretty poor battery life. The only thing I can stand to do for more than three hours at a time is sleep, and even then I am reluctant.
When the band comes out at halftime to perform, I don’t pay them that much attention because I recognized them only as a distraction while the football players get some water and wash their opponent’s blood from their jerseys.
I had the opportunity to see a live performance by the Marching 110 at Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium, and I was initially confused. How can a marching band perform on stage? I was confused about what I was going to witness, but I wanted to go, because it would be the first time I could give the Marching 110 my full and undivided attention.
While I waited for the performance to begin, I was again impressed by how popular the Marching 110 was. The entire auditorium was filled, and the crowd was boisterous. The audience was very energetic and honestly seemed happy to be there. It was nothing at all like the audience of reluctant parents at my eighth-grade orchestra recital.
As I sat waiting for the band to go on stage, I assumed that the performance would be a lot different from the band’s regular football performances. There probably wouldn’t be any marching or dancing and they would play boring music pieces such as Beethoven or Bach.
How naive I was to think that the Marching 110 would be anything less than a crowd-pleaser.
Instead of the millionth symphony of Mozart, I was instead treated to the band’s adaptations of current pop sensations like LMFAO.
As expected, the limited space meant the band members couldn’t do their usual amazing marching feats and were instead forced to restrict their dancing to certain pieces and only a limited amount of performers.
Despite the downgrade from their usual football performances, it didn’t bother the audience, who treated the whole performance as if it were Woodstock. They had a consistent level of enthusiasm that was equal to the time I visited the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, which could only be described as a riot.
The marching band once again proved they deserve their sterling reputation, but the true showstopper was the pop phenomenon “Gangnam Style” by Psy.
I swear that song is the real-life equivalent of Jafar’s hypnotizing cobra staff. The second the band played that song, everyone lost control of their minds and had the irresistible urge to ride imaginary horses. That song could be tweaked and used as a military weapon.
Anything that can transform respectable-looking elderly men into K-Pop impersonators should be classified as a WMD.
Dennis Fulton is a senior studying journalism at Ohio University and a columnist for The Post. Tell him what’s going on at df342709@ohiou.edu.
