About The Big Red Drumline

Interested in joining us?

You'll find all you need to know right here.

Traditions

  • Wearing black instead of red (unless the band is wearing black, in which case we wear red)
  • Being the opposite of the band
  • Food after Tuesday night rehearsals, either Louies or Nasties
  • Pissing off the band
  • Mad Tough pictures(right over left...NO SMILING)
  • Tenors yelling at all times they possibly can
  • Leaning right while the rest of the band leans left
  • Anti-sociality, or more accurately, intra-sociality
  • "Oh we are percussion ____ ___"
  • Acapella cadences and water cadences
  • Being Awesome
  • The back line (usually tenors and basses) lunging and pulling everyone down during Chimes
  • BADASS THURSDAY
  • Freaky Bus on NSQ for away games
  • Drowling (Drumline Bowling)
  • Asking drum major candidates to supply our captain with a baked good.
  • Freshmen stealing snacks from dining halls before football games
  • LAKE! (Evening Song)
  • Penn _____!
  • Mad Tough Tenor glasses are always worn in some way
  • Dancing for Everytime We Touch
  • Playing "Hey Song" after JCS
  • Throwing hats at the drum major for Alma
  • Singing angeically during the first verse of Alma then yelling the second verse
  • Clean breathe, clean beats
  • Basses stay as a family to walk down to rehearsal
  • Bass order, always
  • Cymbal CRASH
  • Prom photos

Old Traditions

  • Chinese buffet before the first and last Tuesday rehearsals.
  • Throwing broken sticks on top of Barton
  • NOT breaking things with broken sticks on top of Barton
  • Sticking broken sticks into the arts quad
  • Trying to get Angelleigh DeTroy elected as drum major
  • Unanimously electing Chair 63 as Drum Captain.
  • Crab Raving (RLRR)
  • Family-sized box of Lucky Charms for away trips (and Capri Suns)
  • Lunch at the famous Italian, Greek restaurant marrakech during Spring Concert
  • Fire pokémon for all tenor freshies

    • Stories

    • Well, there's the time drumline tackled the Princeton mascot and bruised the tiger's trachea. (The newspaper clipping is posted in the band room closet.) See definition of "tiger" under the Princetonian Dictionary.
    • At Columbia in 2004, Steve ("Fights Dirty") got punched by a drunk alum before Salerno forcibly took him off the bus.
    • As dictated by tradition, (and by "tradition," I mean it's happened twice), a percussion-sax happy hour was held in March 2006, where we watched movies...about (ahem) Pirates!...
    • In 2006, MTV called us up and wanted to know if we wanted to be part of a music video. No, really, we're just that good. You can see 6 of us playing snare (and dressed up as skeletons, no less) at the beginning of the video for My Chemical Romance's "Black Parade," which was broadcasted for the 2006 MTV Video Music Awards.
    • In the 2017 trip, freshman bell-player Bekah pulled a fire alarm within ten minutes of entering the Penn(SUCKS!) bandhouse, having mistaken it for a lightswitch (???). This moment was immortalized in Penn(SUCKS)'s show the next day, where they advised that "If it's Big and Red, it's probably a fire alarm, so you shouldn't pull it."
    • While at many – if not all – social gatherings, Maxwell made the mistake of falling asleep. While he was peacefully snoozing, his glasses were stolen and placed in a cup of water. Fully submerged, they were then moved to the freezer. Maxwell would wake, blind, only to find he would need to thaw his glasses to regain his sight. He never learned his lesson and continued his mid-party nap sessions.
    • In 2019 on yet another Penn trip, yet another freshman bell-player (I sense a trend), Nick Vanden Berk, left all of his belongings (including his wallet / ID / laptop) in the hotel room after leaving Philly. After the band cleared out the hotel to go to the football game and even after the game ended when the entire band was on buses heading back to Ithaca, Nick asked “when are we going back to the hotel?” to which the answer was “we aren’t”. They had to ship his belongings to him.
    • In the 2021 season (with our very own Oliver serving as Drum Major) at the very start of Protect the President, disaster struck. During this long standing tradition in which the band tries to get to the Drum Major while the Basses (AKA secret Service) protect them, Griffin (a sophomore cymbal) was jokingly told to tackle our fearless Drum Major. In a moment he was off, sprinting across the field at top speeds to reach the front of the field. Within a few seconds, Oliver was on the ground, wind knocked out of him. Where were his protectors you may ask? They hadn’t even made it to the field. Since then, they are better equipped to protect our President, with silly string.

    Percussion-L

    For all the latest drumline news, random emails, and flame wars, send our section leader Kamili Fernandez an email and they'll add you to the drumline listserve: percussion-l@cornell.edu