Band to Boost Boston Morale with Musical March in Patriots' Parade

When Boston's ersatz Paul Revere gallops off with the cry "The Redcoats are coming!" at the Patriots Day celebration Saturday afternoon, the alarm will contain more truth than fiction for the first time since the Yorktown surrender.

Standing in for the British, dozens of crimson-coated members of the University Band will enter Paul Revere square in the vanguard of the Patriots Day parade, setting the charger off on its traditional race through Lexington and Concord.

Start at City Hall

From the gathering at City Hall in the morning, through the streets of Boston to the historic square--"if we live that long"--the band will treat the onlookers to old favorites by Sousa, Lithgow, Hall, and others, as well as some lesser-known marches. Prokoffief and Milhand will be conspicuous by their absence when the brass biares forth such martial strains as R. B. Hall's "S.I.B.A. March," which the band fondly dedicates to the Staten Island Boilermakers' Association.

"George Curley invited us," said manager Walter J. Skinner '48, "and when I called him at City Hall last week I was switched through half the family, including James Michael, before we got together." Curley expressed the eagerness of Boston's citizenry to see and hear the "finest," and offered the Band $200 for the day's work. When James Caeser Petrillo, President of the American Federation of Musicians and amateurs' nemesis extraordinary, vetoed the proposed payment, the band agreed to donate its services in a good-will gesture.

Skinner Fears for Arches

"The fact that we are appearing gratis is but one indication of the importance of the occasion," said manager Skinner. Ordinarily the band will not march at all unless provided with a motor-driven float to stand on; but community spirit has given new courage to our sagging arches."

If the parade should come to a half at some spacious intersection, the music-makers plan to exhibit some of their flashy drillwork a la Soldiers Field, breaking from block formation to a semicircle and striking up a service medley.