Songs I learned from USC Marching Band

This weekend is Alumni Band weekend, and to kick it off, I have several posts about my time in the USC Marching Band.

Tonight’s topic – Song Lyrics that have been stuck in my head for twenty years. Not a complete list, but hopefully, fairly clean.

Wild Thing…You make my heart sing…you in the red shirt…wild thing.

At some point, the lyrics of any song will inadvertently get changed. Case in point, while playing the song Wild Thing, a young, attractive student was dancing in the stands along with the song. She was wearing a red shirt, and well, she got worked into the song.

Hummala bebhuhla zeebuhla boobuhla
hummala bebhuhla zeebuhla bop

I think this was from my freshman year (1986) and is from the (then) popular song “Just a Gigolo” as sung by David Lee Roth. We played the song, but, when we came to the scat, we put our horns down and sung the words. Of course, to really sell this, we had to all pronounce it the same way. There was a great TA who was assigned to teach us. I am not sure if his heart was in it, but, to this day, I can still sing along with David.

She was a…

Riding to a from the games on the Trombone bus, there were tons of bawdy songs. I want to say that someone complained once and we were asked to stop.

We all love, the old one

Ok, not sure if those are the lyrics, but it is from the Wizard of Oz show. At some point, we put our horns down while marching in a circle singing these lyrics.

We hail thee Carolina

The singing of the Alma Mater by the USC Marching Band always signified the end of either a practice or a performance. We practiced three times a week and finished with the Alma Mater. When all of the fans had filed out of Williams Brice Stadium, we sung the Alma Mater. In good weather, and foul, hot or warm we never left the field without paying our tribute to USC.