So what's a scatter band?

Or, Is it really that hard to march in a straight line?

That a man can take pleasure in marching in formation to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; a backbone was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. --Albert Einstein

If you've seen the move "Drumline," then you have a very clear and detailed picture of what exactly we're NOT. The traditional notion of a marching band involves a regiment of musicians, clad in pseudo-military uniforms, stepping in formation around a football field, often in abstract geometric patterns. The band will play a series of songs with a theme of some sort, like Disney's "The Lion King," while a nondescript announcer vaguely clues in the audience to the band's strange intentions. After the band leaves the field, most often you're left wondering, "Wow, that looked and sounded like...like it was really hard...I guess..."

Scatter bands, on the other hand, can the charade of military lockstep, and run onto the field in a screaming frenzy. This is known as scattering (or, if you're from the east coast, "scrambling"). We'll run into one formation while our announcer performs part of a monologue, which will be followed by us playing a song. Then we'll scatter into another formation and repeat the process until our show is finished, after which point we run off the field.

The difference between our shows and the shows put on by traditional marching bands is that while the music and marching are the focus of other bands' shows, our shows have a humorous theme, which is presented by the announcer and elaborated upon by the announcer and the band together. Some past themes: "What if David Duke became president of Stanford?" (1991), "Things your daddy's money can't buy" (USC, 1993), and of course, the infamous Spotted Owl show (Oregon, 1990), which got us into a bit of trouble with the University of Oregon and our own athletic department...

The music we play is also not usual marching band music. We arrange all of our own music, which is usually rock, pop, soul, funk, R&B, and the like. Twice a year our drum major will choose a folder from our 1000+ song library, limiting the selection usually to 69 songs.

Other Scatter/Scramble Bands

There aren't too many scatter bands around. We know of 10 Division 1 schools with scatter bands, including all the Ivy League schools, except Cornell. The bands are:

Differences between Us and Them

Some scatter/scramble bands have people called "miscies" who don't actually play an instrument and just run around on the field with mailboxes or random objects to bang on. We don't. Everybody in the LSJUMB carries an instrument on the field. Of course, that instrument sometimes happens to be a large aluminum string bass or an accordion, and the person doesn't necessarily know how to play it, but that's not the point...

Some scatter/scramble bands tend to theme their shows around making fun of the other school. That's more common in the Ivy League where they're all scatter bands and it's reciprocal; out here we're all by ourselves, and usually stick to lampooning current events or other things that seem funny. Unless the other school happens to be U$C or Cal.