Talk:United States Marine Band

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is the talk page for discussing improvements to the United States Marine Band article.
Article policies
This article is supported by the District of Columbia WikiProject.

This project provides a central approach to District of Columbia-related subjects on Wikipedia. Please participate by editing the article, and help us assess and improve articles to good and 1.0 standards, or visit the wikiproject page for more details.
??? This article has not yet received a rating on the Project's quality scale. Please rate the article and then leave a short summary here to explain the ratings and/or to identify the strengths and weaknesses of the article.
MILHIST This article is within the scope of the Military history WikiProject. If you would like to participate, please visit the project page, where you can join the project and see lists of open tasks and regional and topical task forces. To use this banner, please see the full instructions.
Start This article has been rated as Start-Class on the quality scale.

United States Marine Band was featured on the United States Marine Corps portal as the Selected article. (26 May 2006 - 03 July 2006)


This article looks like it was copied from somewhere, due to the text half-way through the last section ("Marine Band Drum Majors"):

For a complete history of the Marine Band Director, click here.

—Preceding unsigned comment added by MrDrBob (talk • contribs) 15:20 UTC, December 30, 2005

Are the marine band members technically memebrs of the Marines? Are they recruited from the Marines? --Lucifer(sc) 17:53, 13 August 2006 (UTC)

Yes, they are Marines. However they do not go to boot camp are are restricted to duty with the Marine Corps Band only. They do not go to combat, or do anything else other than duty with the band. Another thing when they enlist for duty with the band, they are given the rank of SSgt. Bunns USMC 14:01, 13 October 2006 (UTC)

Contents

[edit] Marine in pictures wearing a bearskin

It appears that in the pictures the conducter of the band is wearing a bearskin. I thought this was only a custon in Britain as foot regiments had won the right to wear thier russian opponents bearskins after the korean war. Also why is the Marine corps band dressed in red- I seem to remember in the Tom Cruise movie that the marine band playing outside the campus buildings where Demi Moore walks across are dressed in regular service blues. I find this quite odd- Americans could have thier own version of the guards outside buckingham palace at some special American place of ceremony-odd —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.97.137.56 (talk) 15:35, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Correction

Not the Korean war- THE CRIMEAN WAR- consequences of typing fast —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.97.137.56 (talk) 15:37, 8 March 2007 (UTC).

[edit] Tom Cruise movie

What was it - a few good men or somthing. Also i seem to remember seeing the marine corps silent drill band dressed in blue and not red- somone explain —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 81.97.137.56 (talk) 15:38, 8 March 2007 (UTC).


[edit] Answers

The Marine Corps has several bands in it's entirety. The Marine Corps Band (the President's Own), the USMC Drum and Bugle Corps (The Commandant's Own), and one for each major base (I think 8 in total of these). They are all full Marines, they go to boot camp and MCT, they start as E1s and earn each additional rank (although the scores required for them to pick up E4 and E5 are notorious for being lower than for other MOSs month after month, 55xx field), and they are all fully combat-capable Marines (I've heard that they often pull security for the Commandant when he travels to combat areas, but that is a rumor). The confusion could be that they don't recieve any training in thier respective instruments, they must pass an audition before they enlist so that the Corps doesn't have to train them, but they do recieve the same military training as everyone else (I remember recruits in my boot camp platoon getting a tough time for admitting they held a band MOS). My apologies, I was thinking the D&BC, the band members do indeed skip boot camp and get E6, though they are technically enlisted and subject to UCMJ. How weak.[1]
The Band wears the same Dress uniform as other Marines... but the colors are reversed (red with blue trim instead of blue with red trim); this was done because in colonial times, the band had to stand out from the infantry so they wouldn't get shot at (assuming the enemy followed the convention of not undermining commanders). The drum major is the only one to wear the tall bearskin cap. As far as I've seen, it's not too unusual for drum majors in the US to wear a unique headpiece like that. I've only ever seen the MCBand and the Drum&Bugle Corps wearing the red uniforms, however (when I have seen the base bands play, it's been in service or utility uniforms).
The band is indeed featured in the opening credits of A Few Good Men. You can also see the Texas A&M University Fish Drill Team depicting the Silent Drill Platoon. They wore dress blues in the movie, but the real drill team wears dress blue-whites mostly (they do wear the normal blues occasionally in winter months). Hope that answered everyone's questions. If you feel that I'm wrong, ask and I'll try to find references for you. Bahamut0013 18:55, 6 August 2007 (UTC)