Each Saturday of home games, the Band congregates behind the Freshman Union in the Hulbut Parking Lot at 10 a.m. They then march down Mass Ave. and through the Square to the Stadium, where they rehearse the show. By the time the fans begin to arrive for the game, the Band is munching away on box lunches in their midfield seats.

While the Harvard cheerleaders loll about on the sidelines doing push-ups when the Crimson scores, and the Harvard fans leisurely sip on their Scotch-and-waters, the Band vehemently eggs the Harvard charges onward with traditional cheers like "Shove that Ball" and "E to the x! dy! dx!/E to the y! dy!/cosine, secant, tangent, sine/three point one four one five nine/come on Harvard, give 'em the digit!" The latter cheer is called "Engineers."

Whenever an official makes the mistake of offending the Band with a bad call, chants of "The ref beats his wife" and "Elevator, elevator, we got the shaft" inevitably drift onto the field from the Band's direction.

After the game, win or lose, the Band serenades the Crimson gridders outside of Dillon Field House with their football game repetoire of "Ten Thousand," "Harvardiana," "Gridiron King," and so on. Then they "march" up Boylston Street to the Square leading any stragglers that care to join them. The major consequence of these post-game parades is a quasi-massive traffic jam in the middle of Saturday afternoon. No one seems to mind, though.

The Band's routines may appear scatterbrain at times, but they always work out in the end. The Band disclaims any semblance to the hordes of uniformed, ultra-high precision bandsmen who blanket the field from one end of the other at halftime in Ohio State's nationally televised spectacles.

"Other bands exist for themselves only and they're not at the game in support of anyone," Walker said. "I sometimes wonder if the Band (Harvard's) is not too egocentrically oriented itself-they have such a good time that they almost forget that they are supposed to be at the game in support of the football team," he continued.

"The Band is the best sounding of the Ivy League Bands because it does not have a harsh drum and bugle corps. Also, it is staffed with good people," Walker said when asked to compare the Band to other Ivy schools.

The Band no longer pursues rivalries with other Ivy bands (the last Band riot was at the Dartmouth game in 1956), but they do have definite opinions of their counterparts. Cornell is purportedly a frustrated Big Ten band, Brown and Princeton are traditionally the filthiest bands, and Dartmouth is the scum of the Ivy League.

When Fred Reynolds organized the Band in 1919, its main function was to support the Harvard football team. As the Band celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year, it has expanded to include a 60-piece Concert Band and a select Woodwind Ensemble. Its members are talented musicians; "hacks" no longer infiltrate the Band's rank and file.

"People coming into the Band over the last ten years have been much better musicians," Walker said this week. "When I came here, the Band was principally a light concert band. That pretty much changed in 1960; since then, the Band has played every major piece originally written for winds," he continued.

To commemorate the Band's fiftieth anniversary, the Concert Band performed a specially commissioned piece by Virgil Thompson entitled "Suite" for the annual Dartmouth Weekend Concert in Sanders Theatre. The Band also released an anniversary album that includes music from each era of its 50-year history, and published a ten-page booklet that recounts the Band's history.

The Band membership now totals about 140, and it is divided into three groups. The Football Band is the largest, and best known, of the three. The Concert Band consists of the Band's more serious-minded musicians, and the Wind Ensemble is made up of the 30 best Wind players in the Harvard community.

A certain transformation has occurred in the Band's priorities since Walker became director in 1960. Feige said of Walker, "He's got to be the best thing that could possibly happen to the Band. He knows what he's doing musically-he's a very good conductor-and administratively, he's sufficiently quiet so that the undergraduates run the organization. He's exactly what the Band needs."

About the change in the Band's direction, Feige said, "I hate to think that the Band's main function is playing at football games, yet football games give us the most exposure. Everyone around here thinks our main function is playing at football games. but it isn't. People come up band ask us what we do after football season. I really don't know whose fault it is that people don't know about our concert season."

The Wind Ensemble originally developed as a separate group, but the Band management has now taken the responsibility for it. The Ensemble began its season on November 2 in a joint concert with the Radclifle Choral Society, and its next engagement is on December 14.