That style includes forming words and objects on the field and spelling out the punch lines to the announcer's jokes with their field formations.

The band has performed a number of now-leg-endary routines, including showing Sputnik in orbit (on the very same day the real satellite was launched), champagne pouring into a glass (complete with bubbles and a "hic") and a pen writing the word "Crimson" across the field. In 1953, for one performance only, the band did a drill on ice skates at Boston Garden.

Even the then-director, G. Wright Briggs, agreed to lace 'em up.

Throughout its history, the band has been a place where conventionally polished musicians could play alongside students with more unusual abilities.

In 1925, for example, George Thow '29, a classical trumpeter who would later play with the likes of Jimmy Dorsey and Lawrence Welk, marched alongside Scott Burbank '29. Burbank had the rare ability to play two trumpets at once.

That sort of diversity has won the band critical plaudits over the years. In the 1950s, Bill Cunningham of the Boston Herald wrote: "The immortal Sousa himself would be proud of this cultured collection of blowers and beaters."

The people at Playboy Magazine, in fact, were so smitten with the band that on two separate occasions, in 1961 and 1968, they were featured in the magazine making a formation in the shape of the Playboy bunny.

But Harvard's blowers and beaters have also handled serious gigs.

In the summer of 1968, at the request of the Kennedy family, members of the band flew to Washington D.C. to perform at the final graveside services in Arlington National Cemetery for Robert F. Kennedy '48.

Big Drum

The six-foot drum, nearly stolen in 1973, has long been the band's signature. It is the largest playable bass drum in the world, band officials say.

The drum first came to Harvard in 1927, when finding heads--the parts the drummer hits--was difficult. The hides of two exceptionally large cows are needed for the heads, according to the University archives.

Caring for and pulling the drum is one of the most important tasks a band member can perform. It is an almost sacred job.

"Both my grandfather and great-uncle, Robert Barrett Lawson '31 and Wilbur L. Lawson '31, were on the prop crew and pulled the original Big Drum," says K.T. Lawson '97. "Today, I'm the Assistant Manager of the prop crew, and in that capacity, I pull the Big Drum."

Yale