Columbia University Marching Band

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The Columbia University Marching Band forming a pyramid

The Columbia University Marching Band (CUMB) has performed for Columbia University since 1904. The CUMB was one of the first bands in the United States to convert to a scramble band format in the early 1960s. Several notable universities now feature scramble bands. More concerned with witty halftime shows and clever formations than precise marching patterns and musicianship, the CUMB has a long history of being edgy and is arguably the most controversial scramble band. Major news media have covered this band's most infamous pranks. Since 1964, the band has billed itself as "The Cleverest Band in the World."

One innovation of the CUMB has been the introduction of the "miscie," which rhymes with "whiskey" and is short for miscellaneous. While many of the band members carry a musical instrument onto the field, the band's miscies carry whatever they choose. Some miscie instruments of the past have included a washboard, spoons, juggled balls, beer bottles, spare tires, steel mailboxes, condom harp, football stadium bench (no longer attached to the stadium), passenger handle from the interior of an MTA Redbird subway car, unicycle, and kitchen sink. Other, slightly more melodious, instruments have included the shofar, the E♭ contrabass sarrusophone, a didgeridoo (the didge), and the B♭ lenthopipe (an 8-foot length of electrical conduit, with rubber hose and horn mouthpiece at the bottom end, and funnel at the extreme end).

In addition to playing at every Columbia football game, the band also plays in the stands at Levien Gym for Columbia basketball games, and plays at various other events. These have included the New York City Marathon, the Walk Against AIDS, and at New York City's 34th Street post office on Tax Day.

The CUMB has appeared on many television programs including a very early The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson, The Late Show with David Letterman, The CBS Morning Show, MTV's Total Request Live, The Howard Stern TV Show (on WWOR), a Japanese morning news program, and Columbia's student run television station CTV. CUMB has also been featured in the films Turk 182 and Game Day.

Band members have a long history of raiding competitive Ivy League schools and other institutions for memorabilia, including flags of Princeton University, University of Pennsylvania and University of California, Berkeley and the outsized stick used to beat the Harvard University Band's iconic giant bass drum. In a guerrilla action, the band once surreptitiously switched its regular dress for the dark blue of Yale University and appeared in the Yale Bowl as the Yale Precision Marching Band.

1 Orgo Night
2 Controversies
3 See also
4 External links
5 Bibliography

[edit] Orgo Night

Lisa Birnbach's College Book named the CUMB's Orgo Night performances as the university's most popular campus tradition. Since 1984 the band has performed at 11:59 p.m. on the night before each Organic Chemistry final exam. The course is notorious as one of the most challenging undergraduate subjects. In an effort to relieve pre-exam jitters, the CUMB interrupts studies at the main reading room of Butler Library. Several hundred students gather for the show, often standing on desks and bookshelves. Orgo Night performances are presented in a style similar to their halftime shows, and have sometimes included comedy banned from those shows by the university's censors.

[edit] Controversies

Due to its irreverent humor, some of the band's halftime shows have caused controversy. The CUMB prides itself on evading university censorship:

In 1964, the band performed a "Salute to Moral Decay," featuring a formation of "the upper part of a topless bathing suit" (all marchers left the field except for two sousaphones, while the band played "My Favorite Things") and a typically heavy-handed reference to Walter Jenkins, an aide to President Lyndon Johnson, who had been caught in flagrante delicto in a men's room. Columbia's president had to fend off angry letters from several notables, including conductor Leonard Bernstein.
In 1966, the band was suspended for several games for the infamous "birth control" show where they formed a birth control pill, a calendar (for the Rhythm Method), and a chastity belt.
In 1968, at West Point, the band formed what it called a "burning Cambodian village" on the field. CUMB has yet to be invited back to West Point. The football team hasn't actually played any games at West Point in recent years, but the band feels it should be invited to perform at the occasional halftime show anyway.
In 1973, a brawl broke out between the CUMB and the Harvard University Band over the alleged attempted theft of the giant Harvard Bass Drum.
The band's theme for a 1981 halftime show at Holy Cross was "The Lions vs. The Christians". Holy Cross administrators subsequently dis-invited the band from any future games played in Worcester, much to the band's relief. Columbia's next road game against Holy Cross, in 1983, marked the beginning of what became an NCAA-record winless streak.
The band's script for the 1982 season-opening road game against Harvard mysteriously turned out to be identical to the script the Harvard band was set to use moments later. The Columbia band subsequently denied that this astonishing and inexplicable coincidence had anything to do with the fact that two of its members had spent the previous week posing as new freshmen at Harvard's undergraduate orientation. Faculty of Columbia's statistics department refused to support the band's claim.
In 1990, the band received a bomb threat over its symbolic formation of a burning American Flag accompanied by The Doors' "Light My Fire". This performance happened shortly after a controversial United States Supreme Court ruling that actual flag burnings are legal.
In 1992, at the Yale Bowl the band pantomimed the consummation of a same-sex marriage on the field. The occasion was Youth Day and hundreds of local children from community groups were in attendance.
In 1993, the band drew parallels between the Holocaust and policies for management of New York City's homeless population proposed by newly-elected mayor Rudolph Giuliani. The Anti-Defamation League demanded an apology.
In 1993, at Princeton, the band recreated the Magic Bullet Theory as put forth by the Warren Commission on the John F. Kennedy assassination, complete with band members as scattering skull fragments.
In 1998, at the Yale Bowl, the band performed a show featuring a homosexual, pot-smoking Jesus Christ in a homage to the Terrence McNally play Corpus Christi. Angry Yale fans demanded their money back.
During a game against Fordham University in 2002, soon after the Catholic church was rocked by disclosures about pedophile priests, the band claimed that Fordham tuition was "going down like an altar boy" in a joke improvised minutes before the start of the pre-game show. In the ensuing media frenzy, band Poet Laureate Andy Hao was featured on MSNBC's Phil Donahue Show in a debate with Catholic League President William Donohue. The New York Times profiled the CUMB. Columbia University President Lee Bollinger ended the controversy in one of his first official acts as University President when he apologized to Fordham president, the Reverend Joseph O'Hare.