They wear Crimson jackets and play everything from "Under the Sea" to "10,000 Men of Harvard" at hockey games and football games.

They yell at goalies, make fun of other schools, and everyone lets them get away with it.

Who do they think they are, anyway?

They are, of course, members of the Harvard University band.

Harvard's band has long held the reputation as one of the most innovative college groups in the country.

"Our marching band was the first to use actual diagrams, to try to spell out names, and the first to involve humor in half-time shows," said Band Manager Victor Hwang '93.

Because of that tradition, Hwang said, the Harvard band tries to be more relaxed band than bands of other schools.

"We are anything but fascist, we don't wear Q-tip hats or march in formation," noted John A.E. Pottow '93, the student conductor.

Despite this emphasis on creativity, Pottow says the band has "a diversity of musical talent" noting that a number of band members also belong to the Harvard/Radcliffe Wind Ensemble. Potential members must audition with faculty director Tom Everett before being admitted to the band.

Although one of the organization's primary goals is to provide a good time for itself and the crowd, Hwang says that he and his fellow bandies strive for a "tasteful, clever, and intellectual" type of humor.

"We are stupid in a clever manner. We don't try to show as many phallic symbols as we can" said Michael E. Ronan '95.

During the 1991 football game versus Yale, for instance, they showed how the Yalies how they were responsible for many of the World's woes, including global warming, the latest Michael Jackson video, and the recession.

A Respectable Band

Harvard's band contrasts itself with its less-than-respectable Columbia University counterpart, which in a recent Wall Street Journal article was cited as a band that "refuses to clean up its shows."

Ronan recalls watching the Columbia band in action, playing kazoos, pans, and "everything but the kitchen sink."