By Mark Sullivan

Chelmsford- At the start of the annual Independence Day parade in Chelmsford, amid homemade float, Cub Scouts, and kilted bagpipers, the Roma Band of Medford was preparing to bring a bit of the North End to suburbia.

"We'll play anything the crowd asks for", said clarinetist Anthony DeCiccio, 80, of Charlestown, who was 11 in 1931 when he first played with the Roma Band in a religious processing through the winding streets of Boston's Italian neighborhoods. "I’ll bet there is no other band that can play as many songs as we know by heart."

It is a point of pride for the marching band members that they can play hundreds of songs without having to read sheet music, a necessity since their "Capo bando", or band leader, Salvatore "Salvi" Pugliese of South Medford, and Montefalcione, Italy, makes up the play list as he goes along.

"I don’t need to say anything said Pugliese, 65, who also plays trumpet for this Italian version of a New Orleans street band. "Just, ‘Follow me!"

Positioned in the Chelmsford parade on July 5 behind young tumblers from a local gymnastic school and ahead of a pack of antique cars, the band set out with rousing renditions of the Marine and Army anthems as it passed the town’s war memorial on Route 4.

On a given day, band members say, their repertoire can range from the Italian royal march to the Beatles’ "Yellow Submarine", and from "Ave Maria" to "Anchors Aweigh ", depending on the audience and landmarks along the route. Passing a wedding party outside a church, Pugliese has been know to swing into "Here Comes the Bride," while drunks in a seaport crowd have inspired "Beer Barrel Polka."

The sight of a pooch on a sill along the procession route has unfailingly been met with "How Much is the Doggie in the Window?" as happened during a solemn parade for St. Joseph in the North End last year.

The band has played for popes and presidents and has been invited to perform at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington. It has played at political rallies for James Michael Curley and John F. Kennedy, and out in Hudson for Paul Cellucci on election eve last November.

While the Roma Band based its business operations in Medford, where general manager and baritone horn played Richard Bamberg lives, it plays engagements from Gloucester to Hingham on its crowed summer calendar. It even boasts a Web site, in cyberspace (www.romaband.com), where you can hear it play several tunes. But the band’s heart remains in Boston’s North End, where it has provided music for Italian religious feasts since 1893.

The band is schedule to play in the North End at 1 p.m. today for the Feast of St. Rocco, next Sunday at 1 and 8 p.m. at the Feast of St. Joseph procession, and on Aug. 1, also at 1 p.m. the St Agrippina procession.

During the Feast of St. Agrippina (July 30-Aug 1), a statue of the patron saint is carried though the streets by 20 men from the sponsoring religious society. The Fisherman’s Feast (Aug. 12-15) is highlighted by the lowering of a girl dressed as an angel from a window to deliver an Italian prayer, at the large of the North End festivals, St. Anthony’s Feast (Aug. 27-29), thousand of dollars will be pinned to the statue of the saint as it is paraded through the neighborhood.

Among the most widely requested songs at the feasts are traditional favorites now forbidden in Italy, amoung them the Fascist marches such as "Giovinezza" and "Facetta Nera" from the days of Mussolini’s Blackshirts, as well as the tune Roma Band members refer to as "the Number One," the monarchist royal march "Marcia Reale."

The latter is struck up every time a donation for the saint is lowered from a window or pinned to the statue of St. Anthony.

"We play it 50, 60, 70 times during the first tow hours of the procession," said snare-drummer, Marc Letizia.

"Once you see a wallet dome out of a pocket, we play it," added cymbal player Louis Strazullo, 16.

Playing for hours while parading through crowed city streets on a hot summer afternoon can be hard on a musician’s lips and feet, band members say, but the experience has its attractions.

The band strolls from restaurant to restaurant serenading diners, while accepting refreshments and delicious Italian meals in return.

Playing in the drum section offers its own sport in the increasingly gentrified North End.

"A lot of the parked cars have motions sensors," Letizia said, "As we go down Hanover Street, we’ll set off 10 to 12 a day, easy, and 100 to 150 over the course of a summer."

The biggest reward, many band members say, is a sense of carrying on a precious musical and cultural legacy.

"I feel like it’s tradition," said Strazzullo, a senior at St. Clement’s High School on the South Medford-Somerville line who is the band’s youngest member. "I used to stand at the Old North Church and see them coming down the hill and wish I was in the band. Now I am."

Letizia, a native of the North End who now lives in East Boston, works as a cook and is a member of several religious societies in his old neighborhood. He has been a member of the Roma Band for 20 of his 30 years.

"I used to follow the drummer around a bug him, bug him, bug him to let me play," Letizia said. "Now I’ve got the little kids following me."

DiCiccio, an East Boston native, recalled having to learn Italian to converse with other members of the band when he joined 68 year ago.

Today, you don’t have to speak or even be, Italian to play in the Roma Band. Members have included a State Police captain, an appellate court judge, and more than one millionaire. Of the 50 or so players on the band’s current roster, a number are college or conservatory students looking to pick up a few dollars while honing the perform skills.

Saxophonist, Eugene Suboh hails from the island of Borneo. "Music is a universal language," said the 24 year-old student at Berklee College of Music, who plays part time for the band "just for fun."

What binds members of the Roma Band is unmatched enjoyment of their art and an old-fashion trouper’s approach to performing, said trumpeter Jeanne Pocius of Danvers, a classically trained concert veteran. She plays principal trumpet for the Cape Ann Symphony in Gloucester and performed at Presidents Clinton’s 1993 inaugural with the Winiker Orchestra of Boston.

"You’ve got to have the chops," she said. "If you can’t make it through a four-hour festival with this band, you don’t have what it takes to be a pro. This is the infantry of musical performance, the blood and guts of the music business."

At the close of his seventh decade with the band, DiCiccio, who frequently invites fellow musicians to his apartment in the old Charlestown Navy Year for spaghetti and opera, continues to show the endurance, that allowed him to run the Boston Marathon in street shoes in the ‘40s.

Someday soon I will have to retire," DiCiccio said. "It will probably be the saddest day of my life."