1973-10-13 - Harvard
{Ed, May, 2004 - This looks like just a thorough rewrite of the show from the previous year, but if its good material, why write something new?}
Pregame
Ladies and gentlemen, the Cleverest Band in the World, the Columbia University Marching Band
[fanfare]
J. Joel Amquist, Head Manager
J. Steven Lidofsky, Drum Major
[fanfare]
welcomes itself to Beantown, where the bass drum will not be the only Harvard institution to take a beating today.
[The Band forms the initals NY]
For the benefit of Harvard men traveling to New York in the near future, the band notes that Rocky's making it more dangerous to get stoned there. In Boston, on the other hand, getting stoned can have its own hazards. Getting to the Hub of the matter, the band tips its caps to this unique New England pasttime, but hopes that the custom does not catch fire elsewhere. We can only say Boston's a nice place to visit, but...
[Play Give My Regards to Broadway]
Halftime
Ladies and gentlemen, the Columbia University Marching Trots, featuring the Marks brothers, Monarch and Cliff, reading from their notes and the masters of western literature on the shelf, takes an existential leap into the paperback shack of Harvard Classics.
[March out to School Days]
Dante, that infernal Florentine, has been the scourge of Classics Scholars for years. Like many Italians, Dante had a burning desire to make his way into the underworld, but he found it too hot to handle alone. Vergil, however, in order to cement their national ties and get Dante's feet on the ground, made him an offer he could not refuse, and took him on a Circle Line tour of Pre-Columban or post-mortem New York. In fact Dante took three tours, so he could be-a-thrice
(Beatrice) blest tourist.
[Form Circle, Play Magical Mystery Tour]
Not soon before that, in the town of Thebes, the town of Ali Baba's forte, Oedipus Rexx, the King, lacked the foresight to keep an eye out for his mother. Blind to Teiresias's prophesies, Oedipus did not realize what was at stake until it was too late. The Band takes a poke at Oedipus for his new interpretation of the fifth commandment, and forms the first of the red-hot mamas.
[Form Mother, Play I want a girl]
In this day of prison robellions, we would do well to remember Socrates, one of the least revolting of political prisoners. Faced with exile to Attica by a joint committee, Socrates found the grass greener on his own side of the fence. His peers had to watch hemlock himself away, for there was no heroine to come to the rescue; which causes us to wonder whether things might not have been better with Coke. Incensed at the speed with which Socrates stashed away his philosophy and shuffled off this more fiendish mortality, the Band finds itself decodiene Scorates' dreams as they go up in smoke.
[Plays A Spoonful of Sugar]
First and last in a short line of Harvard contributions to American Literature, the National Lampoon rooked Lampy's Castle of Harvard's only Home-grown culture. Rejecting the cultural Wasteland of Cambridge, the Lampoon said T.S. to Eliot House and moved on to the more intellectually fertile wasteland of Madison Avenue; which they have since turned into a crimson light district. The Band would like to thank the Lampoon for leaving behind in Cambridge the largest undergraduate joke in the country.
[Form H, Play Harvard Fight Song]