Eric Appel is a writer/director in Los Angeles, California. He has an awesome wife and an awesome dog and is friends with a bunch of cool people. He loves to show his friends funny things that he finds on the internet, and he also loves talking about himself in the third person.
Back in 2007 I discovered that the show calendar on the UCB website goes back all the way to November 2000 and lists every team that performed on every Harold Night since, I’m assuming, the theatre’s opening. I have, of course, used this to make an excel spreadsheet for all 459 Harold Nights that have been documented on that calendar. Here are the stats!
Note that I’ve only been around for 149 of those Harold Nights, so most all of this is going strictly by what it said on the website. I don’t know if the Swarm was ever officially considered a Harold Team, but they did perform on Harold Night 13 times over the course of 77 weeks, pretty steadily. I also don’t know what the deal is with Muscle, Arizona Shot Glass or Code Orange, all of which only had two shows. And apparently Monkeydick had two runs on Harold Night, according to the calendar, so they are in the spreadsheet as Monkeydick and Monkeydick II. I also counted every team name change as a different team, just to keep things simple. I know Mailer Daemon essentially became fwand, and I think the same happened with Gigawatt and Arsenal, but still…keeping it simple.And those are the notes. Here are the stats.
MOST SHOWS PERFORMED ON HAROLD NIGHT
1. Creep - 88 (1 show performed after end of original run)
2. Bastian - 87
3. 1985 - 81
4. Optimist International - 71
5. Ice-9 - 69
6. fwand - 66 (1 show performed after end of original run)
7. Tantrum - 56
8. DeCoster - 54
Mailer Daemon - 54
10. Dillinger - 51 (1 show performed after end of original run)
The Shoves - 51
LONGEST RUN ON HAROLD NIGHT
1. Ice-9 - 143 weeks (11/16/00 to 8/5/03)
2. Creep - 138 weeks (11/16/04 to 7/3/07)
3. Optimist International - 137 weeks (2/14/02 to 9/21/04)
Neutrino - 137 weeks (11/2/00 to 6/10/03)
5. Bastian - 131 weeks (2/13/07 to current)
6. Dr. Awesome - 123 weeks (11/9/00 to 3/13/03)
7. Monkeydick II - 114 weeks (8/15/02 to 10/12/04)
8. Police Chief Rumble - 109 weeks (9/26/02 to 10/19/04)
9. 1985 - 108 weeks (4/11/06 to 4/29/08)
10. DeCoster - 105 weeks (8/14/07 to current)
I also figured I could calculate what I’m calling a residency percentage by dividing these numbers together. This shows how many weeks during a team’s run they actually performed. In theory this shows how successful the teams were during their run, as I’ve always assumed/understood that the more popular teams perform more often. Is this statement controversial? Eep. Don’t mean it to be! You’ll notice that all four teams from last night’s show are in the top ten.
RESIDENCY PERCENTAGE
1. Reuben Williams - 88% (43 shows over 49 weeks)
2. fwand - 76% (66 shows over 87 weeks)
3. 1985 - 75% (81 shows over 108 weeks)
4. The Shoves - 70% (51 shows over 73 weeks)
5. Bastian - 66% (87 shows over 131 weeks)
6. The Scam - 65% (42 shows over 65 weeks)
7. Arsenal - 64% (41 shows over 64 weeks)
8. Creep 64% (88 shows over 138 weeks)
9. Mailer Daemon - 63% (54 shows over 86 weeks)
10. Dillinger - 62% (51 shows over 82 weeks)
So it looks like we’re coming up on a big Harold Night milestone. On August 18th, Bastian will tie Creep for the most shows performing on Harold Night and, as early as September 1st, they will have performed the most shows on Harold Night. Also, unless some huge shake up happens, Bastian will become the longest running Harold Team of all time on November 10th.That’s all for now.
Okay, but if you want to be a REAL nerd about this, you’ll have to figure in all the team line-up changes. While some teams went untouched for their entire run, others had several performer changes before hitting their stride.
