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Friday Slide Show: Marching Bands
31 July 2026
As college football season approaches, our minds drift to thoughts of marching bands. As an alumnus of the University of California, Berkeley, we've always appreciated the Stanford band especially, but every year at Memorial Stadium the University hosts marching bands from high schools across California.
We happened to be at the California-Oregon game on Nov. 6, 2004, when the halftime show featured those high school marching bands. And we were seated at field level rather than our usual Section TT Row 77 or so seats. So we were able to get some good shots with the 3x zoom on our Nikon 990.
We know very little about marching bands. But we've long admired the precision and athleticism they require. Not to mention the imagination displayed in their halftime shows. Not only can they march in formation, but the formations are not always geometric. Cal, for example, spells out in script "Cal."
Stanford's band can't spell and never could write in script. But they're famous for turning chaotic transformations into geometric formations that reflect the non-band pop music they're familiar with.
Some of them dance, too. Not just high steps but dance steps. While they're playing their instruments. Someone once calculated they take as many as 180 steps a minute while playing instruments that weigh up to 40 pounds.
And to keep everyone on the same page, there are four conductors, one in each end zone and one on each sideline, keeping time.
Our slide show begins with the Cal band and ends with the high school bands.
But, you know, it's really the opposite. The high school bands become the college bands. Over and over.
Because the thing that really does the marching is Time. And it never misses a beat.
