April 1, 2014 Countdown to Riverside City College's 100th Anniversary 2014 will mark the 30 th anniversary of the formation of the Riverside City College Marching Tigers Band. If you attended any football games this past fall you would have heard the following halftime announcement: Ladies and gentlemen, we are pleased to present one of the truly elite college marching bands in the country! They have performed in Europe, Canada, Japan, Australia and throughout the United States and have appeared in virtually every major pageantry event from the Macy s Thanksgiving Day Parade to the Tournament of Roses Parade. From New Year s Day Parades in London and Paris, to the Bands of America Grand National Championships! They have performed at Disney Theme Parks on three continents, including Anaheim, Orlando, Paris and Tokyo! You ve seen this busy group in movies like Austin Powers, The Other Sister, and American Pie, as well as television shows like The Office, Monk, Parks and Recreation and Glee and in dozens of TV commercials! And the RCC band can be heard in the Academy Award-winning hit movie, The Blind Side! If you follow Winter Guard International, you might be interested to know that the 2008 WGI World Class Champion Color Guard, known as Fantasia and the 2012 WGI World Class Champion Winter Drum Line are both from this organization! The Associated Students and the Department of Performing Arts proudly present the official band of the city of Riverside; please welcome the Riverside City College Marching Tigers! But every story has its beginning, and the best person to speak of that first year of the RCC Marching Tigers is the educator who has been at the helm for the past 30 years, Gary Locke. In 2010 Locke was presented with the Faculty Award for Teaching Excellence and in an interview at the time, he spoke of the founding of the RCC Marching Tigers Band. (All of the following photos are from the first season.) Gary Locke: I was working as the band director at John North High School and in the fall of 83, I got summoned, I had a request Hey could you come over and talk to a guy named Mike Maas at RCC? Didn t really know what it was about, sort of heard through the grapevine they were thinking about starting a marching band. And they wanted me to give information. So I came to the meeting, it went real well, spent about a half hour with Dr. Maas and he made notes while I talked about uniforms and equipment and all the different things needed to start a marching band. And that was pretty much it. And then much later, (months went by) while getting ready for the fall of 1984, lo and behold there s a job opening at RCC for a marching band director and I got several calls from people saying Hey, you should apply. So I eventually did thinking it would be a 2-night a week gig and I d still be at the high school. I can t remember how many did apply but I was eventually offered the job. And that s kind of how it all got started. Later I heard that (then RCC President) Dr. Kane had, being a former coach and athletic director and player himself, thought that there was a gap. His quote was There was a gap at our functions. We had 18 or 19 athletic teams and lots of events and there wasn t a band at a basketball game or at a football game. He apparently, I was told later, started up some sort of a task force, maybe two or three years, four years before they called me for the little informational interview to say he wanted to start a band to investigate the possibility/viability of having a marching band at RCC. And I guess there were a lot of issues, a lot of bridges to cross. And things to figure out and all that so when I came on board a lot of that stuff I guess was already in place. So that s technically or officially how it started.
How it really started for me was getting excited and trying to get the word out. You have to remember this was back in the day, so there wasn t any internet, there was no tweeting, texting and e-mailing and all that. The main thing was that you just picked up the phone or through snail mail you would just mail out a flyer. So we hosted two open house kinds of events and there was nice weather so they were outside on the student patio. We gave out our propaganda along with some hot dogs and we had good turnouts at both of them, we had over 80 people each time. So I thought Yeah this is going to be pretty cool, I m at a college job and I m going to start this program and of course then when we actually had to have the first rehearsal, there wasn t a band room so somebody said Well, just have it in the stadium, yeah everyone knows where the stadium is.
So if you can imagine our football stadium on the first night of the first-ever rehearsal of the Marching Tigers (which we weren t even sure if we were going to call it that at the time), we had 16 people. So that was pretty much an eye opener, pretty shocking at the beginning. It s only 18 miles from here (RCC) to my house (in Redlands) but that was the longest drive home I ve ever had that night. (I said to myself) You stupid idiot, what have you done? I went from a very successful program at John North High School - we d been in the Rose Parade and the Macy s Parade, in fact that s where - I was told later - that s where Dr. Kane figured out that this was something that could help. If I came here, maybe it would draw kids because I already had high school people that knew about me. Only an 18 mile ride home, but it was the longest trip. I felt like pulling off the freeway and just being ill. I left 172 kids at John North and tons of boosters and all that and we had 16! No instruments, they hadn t arrived yet. No uniforms, literally no kids, no band room. There was literally nothing there. So what you do, you get lemons, you try to make lemonade.
I had a little portable room near the flood control canal down by Lovekin Field (now gone). There was a portable chalkboard in there, so along one side we put horns, drums, flags, dancers. And along the top we had Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday written. And each day we d put the total. And the first day, of course, was 16. And the kids were fine with it because they looked around and they thought Well this is probably the trumpet section or the drum line. And they started realizing as the night went on that this was it - this was everybody! So everybody was supposed to bring a friend and by the end of the first week we had 33 - and it was still pretty scary. We borrowed drums from a colleague of mine because I had had some workings with the Olympic organization with the John North Band. So they thought that they could trust us so they actually gave us the Olympic Drums, used in the opening and closing ceremonies of the 1984 Summer Olympics at the Coliseum - they were gold Yamaha drums - to help get us get started. But after four weeks we had to return them. So there were a lot of issues at the beginning. Those were probably the biggest stumbling blocks: no uniforms, no instruments and no kids! So I just kept on making phone calls and asking everyone to bring a friend. By the time school started we were up to about 50 or so. And by the time we performed for the first time we had 56 people in the band and that was it for the first year. The challenges were unbelievable. Just trying to get the word out that we existed or were trying to exist. Again, no texting and e-mailing and all that. So the challenges at the beginning were trying to get kids, trying to get uniforms, trying to get equipment, trying to act like you were something even though you weren t, because nobody wants to join something that s not good if they have a choice. So it s almost like you re stuck in a cycle of You didn t do anything yet so we don t want to join it until you do, do something. But We can t do something unless you join.
So we had that ongoing recruiting sort of an issue going at the beginning. What we tried to do is just keep going / keep moving forward. Dr. Kane charged me with creating what he called the visible classroom and I guess we ve been that ever since calling attention to the college in a positive way. Below is the performance schedule for the first-year RCC Marching Tigers: At the conclusion of the 1984-85 school year, the (one off) 1985 RCC yearbook devoted two pages to the Marching Tigers first season. The text read: A DREAM COME TRUE - Not once, in its sixty-nine years of history, has Riverside City College ever had a marching band. But in 1984, with the support of Dr. Kane, the Associated Student Body, and band director Gary Locke, a new tradition began. A marching band was an expensive endeavor to start. When you add up the cost of new uniforms and equipment, a financial stumbling block can easily get in your way. I have started something out of nothing, which has resulted in setting high goals and expectations, giving me an indescribable feeling, stated Locke. One of the major highlights for the band was representing the United States in the FET de Genève, the 100 th year independence celebration in Geneva, Switzerland. Other major events included a performance for Gil Oliverria, candidate for the State Assembly, a half-time show for the San Diego Charges, as well as home performances for the RCC football games. The band was composed of a group of students with a wide variety of backgrounds and experience. The backgrounds ranged from young high school teenagers to married, mature adults. Their experience spanned the whole scale from basic band performer to experienced marching troopers. With this mixture of students, I instilled a social and musical involving being on time, and dealing with life and people in general, stated Locke. With the advent of the marching band, a future was set for a musical unit that was truly on the move.
Below are eight photos that appeared in that yearbook: The following photos document an early parade appearance and their first performance at Disneyland. Gary Locke: It really was from nothin to somethin (as one student put it) summarizing the first few years. And, on January 1, 1994, the fledgling RCC Band appeared as the lead unit in the nationally televised Tournament of Roses Parade, showing our classroom to the entire country! In his letter of recommendation to the (Tournament of Roses) Music Committee, the band director at UCLA said: There s nothing junior about THIS junior college band!
It is 1 year and 50 weeks until RCC s 100 th Anniversary on March 13, 2016. The Riverside City College Instructional Media Center is bringing you this five year countdown to RCC s 100 th Anniversary. Our intention is to give everyone a weekly glance at the many people and events that have been a part of the college. Our thanks go to the RCC Digital Library Archives and the District s Office of Strategic Communications and Relations for allowing us to use their photo and newspaper collections. Thanks as well to all of the RCC students and Faculty Advisors that were a part of the yearbook and newspaper staffs. Thanks also to Tom Johnson and Gilbert Jimenez who wrote the book about RCC s history. Riverside City College 1916-1981- A 65 Year History is available in the RCC Digital Library. For copyright purposes, all images originating from Riverside City College publications and the District s Office of Strategic Communications and Relations are the property of the Riverside Community College District.