By Jamie Rogers
Doc Nix and the Green Machine perform at Mason Madness. Photo by Alexis Glenn.
The ear-catching sounds of Doc Nix and the Green Machine, George Mason University’s pep band, have landed it at the very top of the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s Best Pep Bands list.
The NCAA published its rankings this week, naming five bands in the land to the list.
The Green Machine’s affinity for adding rappers, singers and electronic violins to the pieces it performs were just some of the reasons the association cited for naming the band number one.
“It comes from wanting to include anyone who wants to be included,” said Michael Nickens, better known as “Doc Nix,” the director of Athletic Bands at George Mason.
The band started including string instrumentalists after a viola player said he wanted to play, Nickens says.
Since then, as many as 30 string players have played with the Green Machine at one time.
The band has the technical know-how to make the musical arrangements work and make all those who want to play strong contributing members, he says.
The Green Machine marches to its own beat (Ok, it isn’t technically a marching band, but we liked the pun) by sporting wild wigs, sunglasses, face paint and basketball jerseys for performances instead the go-to polyester uniforms of many other bands.
The band is a diverse group of passionate performers—Nickens says scholarship students and students enrolled in the pep band course are mainstays the group, but he also has alumni and faculty who pop in for a performance here or there.
Their distinctive repertoire includes pop songs like Michael Jackson’s “Beat It,” Kanye West’s “All of the Lights,” and even Pharrell’s hit
“Happy,” which was played during the graduate recessional at Mason’s Winter Graduation in December—a departure from the pomp of traditional pieces usually played at college graduations. Nickens says the Green Machine’s set list is made up of suggestions from students and fans.
“And sometimes it’s me just driving, and I hear something on the radio,” he says. “But the best thing is when people who haven’t talked to each other all come to me and say, ‘We should play this.’ Then I know it’s something we should play.”
Coming in second to Mason was Virginia Commonwealth University’s The Peppas, the only other Virginia pep band to make the list.
Nickens says he’s formed a great relationship with the Peppas director Ryan Kopacsi over the years, and is able to learn a lot from the band, which always gets a great response from their fans.
Both the Mason and VCU basketball teams are in the Atlantic 10 Conference. Nickens says he enjoys it when the Green Machine plays across the court from any band, but loves it when that band is the VCU Peppas. That chance normally comes during basketball tournaments played on neutral ground.
“Sometimes it feels like a battle and sometimes it feels like a concert,” he says. “But with VCU, sometimes it feels like a battle, and sometimes it feels like a collaboration.”
Leland-Stanford Junior University, the University of Memphis and Indiana University, in that order, rounded out the NCAA’s Best Pep Bands list.