Outfitting a pipe band

[OC Richard]

With everyone following the lead of the grade one bands for uniforming, aren't we then falling back into the 'cookie cutter band' look, just with a different color shirt and hose?

It is for sure! All serious competition bands are always going to look more or less alike. All serious competiton Highland dancers are always going to look more or less alike. All serious competition Irish dancers are always going to look more or less alike.

There's a pattern here... all of these people want to win! And it was discovered a long time ago that "the nail that sticks up gets hammered down".

Or to put it another way, there's always going to be a "look" which is perceived by the judges as marking a competitor as "being in the loop" or being up-to-date with current trends. A dancer wearing an outmoded costume is going to do outmoded steps, a pipe band wearing an outmoded uniform is going to play stale music.

These things aren't necessarily or inherently true in theory, I admit... but in practice judges know that they're true 99.99% of the time.

A band (whether competing or not) can then appear professional and still have their own look.

Sure a competing band have have pride in cooking up a strange or outmoded costume and bask in the feel-good factor they get by taking a heroic stand against the dreaded cookie cutter look. Most competing bands, however, are more interested in winning than in making social statements.

At a Highland Games recently I noticed a band wearing a very outmoded costume, the costume that was all the rage in the 1970s: Balmoral, Prince Charlie, offwhite Aran knit hose. I made some comment about it to a guy beside me. This guy knew something about that band and said "they're very traditional, and they're not interested in following current trends. They've been wearing that uniform for a long time."

He didn't realise that when that band adopted that uniform it WAS the current trend! The only difference was that the band back in the 70s was aware of current trends and dressed accordingly, and the band today is clueless and out of the loop.

On another forum I was challenged when I stated that any experienced pipe band person could accurately predict a band's playing level simply by seeing a photo of the band. To prove my point I posted three photos 1) of a grade two competition band 2) of a grade four competion band 3) of a noncompeting street band and asked people to guess which band was which. EVERYONE who guessed got all three correctly. (Funny how pipers in Australia and New Zealand and Northern Ireland could accurately tell the level of three California bands they'd never seen or heard of.)