This site is entirely the work of a volunteer, me, Jim Wallace. I am in no way affiliated with Purdue University, and there is no connection between the University and myself. This site is the labor of love, as I thoroughly enjoy watching and listening to the All American Marching Band from Purdue University. And, I find the students to be very refreshing and fun to be around.  They work very hard, and long hours, when other students are either off studying or playing. It takes true devolution to the band, and to their instrument, and I'm constantly at awe of them. As a retired banker, web design and photography are an interest of mine that allows me room to expressed my creative side, not exactly something you get to do often in banking.

My interest in Purdue began on September 13, 1997. I live in California, but had always wanted to see a big ten game, and the Purdue vs. Notre Dame game was high on my list. At the time, I was dating a Purdue Alum, Shirlee Stevens (who interestingly enough decided to attend Purdue when, as a 12 year old, saw the BBD in the Rose Bowl Parade in 1967 and, thinking that was cool, later decided to attend Purdue) So, Shirlee and I talked and decided to spend my birthday going to a game and following the band around that day. That morning on 9/13, I met Dr. David Leppla in his office (since retired, he was then the director of University Bands, and the director of the All American Marching Band) , with the intent of following the band around before and after the game (I am not a Purdue Grad, but did play in the marching band while attending college at Sacramento State University). That interest mushroomed over the years, highlighted in 2001 when Dave and I traveled around the country in my motor home. Dave's mission was to learn and study what other great marching bands throughout the country were doing both in preparation for their game day performance, as well as observing that performance on Saturday. During his sabbatical we visited 12 different universities, starting with Penn State and concluding with UCLA. We saw many in between, to include Georgia, Florida State, LSU, Alabama, Texas Tech, John Madison, Michigan State, Texas, Texas A & M, and Arizona State. It truly was the trip of a lifetime.

During that trip, I started a web site, since defunct. You can see a sample here: Marchingbandtour

I wanted to have a place on the web to chronicle our journey.   (by the way, you can always see long gone web sites by going to http://www.archive.org and typing in the name of the site). It was from that experience, where I published many photos of the marching bands of the Universities that we visited that I got the idea to start this site in the summer of 2003.There have been over 500,000 visitors to this site, and if you google the words band fan you will find this is listed first of all band fan web sites on the world wide web. (Edit: in the month of August 09 alone, visitors to this site have come from Moscow, Shanghai, Alaska and Japan. The most number of visitors come from Chicago, Lafayette; no surprise there....probably students and surprisingly, Bloomington. )

What you are seeing here today is new as of July, 2009. I've used both Mocrosoft FrontPage and Microsoft Expressions Web in the past, and now use the software Dreamweaver.

The goal of this site is to establish a home for all of the thousands of photos I've taken since 2001; a permanent place where current and past students and their families and friends can go and see photos of them in the band. It is not the intent of this site to replace the official band web site, which is very valuable in the information it provides. One should be a frequent visitors to both sites in my opinion.

A word should be mentioned here about photo selection. Virtually no time goes into that process. I take the pictures, then post them here. If there are more of one instrument section than another, I apologize. I strive for balance, but I don't keep statistics to insure that everyone is getting their fair recognition. Some groups, or individuals might be closer to my camera when I'm shooting. This is particularly true during pre-game and halftime. If the flags (golden silks) are on the other side of the field from me, then they are probably not going to find photos of their section. I also strive for balance with gender, but again, its impossible to achieve this.

I can be reached on email at jim@purduebandfan.com  I don't check that email address daily, but you won't have to wait too long for a response, and I do respond to every email. Let me say I do appreciate your feedback about this site, not only what you like (so I can continue doing so) but any suggestions you may have to improve things here.

Lastly, at times when you do a web site such as this, you wonder if "anyone is out there". Well, the statistics I receive from google tell me you are out there. But, those are only statistics. So, please feel free to email me your thoughts and comments. That makes this site a bit more human.

................Jim