1971 BAC

[flammaster]

Awww man! Video is gone!

BD drumline wore BAC shirts under their uniforms back in the early days like 71.

[Bsader]

The '77 and '78 Crusader lead lines were a very talented group of guys who also happened to be clear out of our minds and certainly one of our most insane members of our little group had to be Peter Cassidy. He was just such an intellectual madman spewing out the most perverse and hyperbolic inanity one moment and then the next he would be diving too deep and beyond where you were capable of going. Too often I had to pretend that I had a clue as to what he was rattling on about. Stack was one of the reasons why the Crusader's use to park on the dark side of the parking lot. We were insular for a reason as we knew that we were just too far gone and we also knew that we didn't care enough to try to explain ourselves to anyone. To this day I can't understand why we had so many intelligent, talented, beautiful young women who continued to want to be a part of our madness. I suppose we did make them laugh, often in disbelief. I have read about how tough people thought the Crusader's were back in my day and I suppose we were, especially compared to other bugle bands, but we were much more loony than tough.

So the Crusader lead line back then pretty much didn't care about anything except drinking our beer, playing loud, fast and high and being just the most obnoxious bunch of guys. How obnoxious were we? Even our snare line thought we were obnoxious and everyone knows how obnoxious the members of the snare line can be. At the end of '78 we were living the life and then the accident happened and I'm not going to write about that. Today Stack is travelling the world involved in Computer Security. He's tried to explain it to me a few times and I do my best to convince him that I have a clue as to what he's rattling on about. We've played together a few times in the Legend's of Drum Corp a name that I would consider to be a joke if it didn't count Peter as one of it's members. Stack definitively would have scoffed at that last line. He's doing well and thanks for asking.

[rayfallon]

"Vikings" is actually one of my favorite pieces of music that the Crusader's performed. It was an intense piece and a piece that helped teach me to be one of those Sopranos and one half. You had to be with such a small brass line. The Crusader's played it in 1973 and I think '69 before that . In 73 they had only 17 Brass players one of them being my older brother. He marched with me in a "B" corp the year before but now he was a Crusader sitting in our shared bedroom trying his best to burn through "Vikings." I had a year to wait and then joined at the end of '73 at age 14. Anyways, I never performed the piece in a show but did play it a few times during the transition from '73 to '74. The Crusader's had a ritual in the years I marched of 3 Soprano's putting the Corp to bed by playing the "Calls" to Vikings. I should actually point out that this was an attempt to put the Crusader's to bed. No one could really get us to do what we didn't want to do, even members of our own corp, but the calls did at least have a somewhat soothing effect and got us to at least start thinking of putting the beers down and make our way towards our musty old sleeping bags. I had the honor a few times of being a member of this Vikings trio but for the most part it was Mike Coulson, Larry Lacey and Bill Vallee who got the honors. Peter "Stack" Cassidy replaced Coulson when he aged out. I mention the names because I assume your familiar with them Mr. Fallon. I believe all 4 of those guys marched in '77 along with myself and 5 other lead's who were equally as good or pretty #### close to being as good as those 5. The problem was, and we knew it, was that a style of arrangement had been handed down from the sixties and this style featured the Crusader lead line playing beyond even our capabilities and with 40 brass. The saying that "God created heaven and earth out of nothing and sometimes that nothing shows through" comes to mind. But in our case It wasn't the nothing showing through it was definitely something and that something wasn't good. The show was beyond us and we just didn't have enough brass to cover up what was going to be the inevitable somethings. We were great in the "arc formation" but when you add a visual show that in '77 came in 2nd place in content (degree of difficulty) in the D.C.I. prelims just behind SCV, and ahead of the Blue Devils and Phantom. We were fried at the end of the year. We weren't about to admit it and even now I find it difficult but we were fried. How brutal were those shows in '77 and '78. I didn't march in 1976 but instead took my senior year in High School off and played sports. Hockey and football. High school football practices actually start the summer before the school year. These practices are referred to as double sessions in that you have a morning practice then go home for lunch and then your back for the afternoon practice. These practices are almost exclusively about running and running and running while wearing your "full" football gear. At the end of that summer and just before the school year they had whats called a weigh in which they record your height and weight for the football program. I was 5'-9" and weighed 149 lbs. When I got back from the Crusader's tour in 1978 my sister, who marched from '68 to '70, took one look at me and exclaimed "What did they do to you." I immediately went to the scale to weigh myself. I weighed 142 lbs. I had lost 7 lbs that I really couldn't afford to lose playing bugle band with the Boston Crusader's. I had the time of my life but it was tough. I suppose if they fed us it would have helped somewhat.

Yeah - I know those boys - ridiculously strong players and good guys, with just a little edge. While you were doing that I was working with Bayonne's brass line and didn't get up to Boston until my son and daughter joined in '92. Even then I worked with the kids for 3 years and only sat in with the Senior folks a couple of times until Ed (a Giant in so many ways) passed on and Richie asked me to come down and help. Stayed until about 2000.

I agree with you completely about the higher, faster, louder. It's so hard to know what would have happened if Ed had adapted his writing at the end of the first dynasty, or if Eric had more horns to work with in the late 70s.

I prefer to think of it as what it was - one of the great corps in history that to this day has more than a little edge.

[Bsader]

I do find my self delving too often in the what if's. It's almost like wanting to have your cake and eating it to. If we made the finals then we would have been too much in the spot light and then under a magnifying glass and then in the straight jackets.

[rayfallon]

I do find my self delving too often in the what if's. It's almost like wanting to have your cake and eating it to. If we made the finals then we would have been too much in the spot light and then under a magnifying glass and then in the straight jackets.

It's a point talked about by BAC folks everywhere.

My toughest one was '94 in Foxboro - in on Wednesday, out on Friday.

Brutal. We lost all but 2 sopranos going into '95, and one of the two that stayed was my son Dan.

You get that close and pfft.

I don't think being a Crusader was ever supposed to be about placement, or doing it like the others, or scoring, or maybe even parodying the others a la "Animal House"

It was always about being a Crusader, and trying to discover (as an individual) what that actually meant.

Not an easy lesson at times.

Edited September 3, 2014 by rayfallon

[Fran Haring]

Awww man! Video is gone!

BD drumline wore BAC shirts under their uniforms back in the early days like 71.

I noticed that, too. I wonder where that video went, and if it is still available somewhere.

[Bsader]

For me it was about the Crusader's making the finals on our own terms. Terms that were and should have been unacceptable by any youth organization. As I've said before it's a shame we kept getting in our own way but we played it so fast and loose it was inevitable that we would. Would we have been a breath of fresh air? On the field? Absolutely! Off the field? Certainly not! I still say everyone loved what we were about even the ones who said they hated us. I think their was a little jealousy going on there. They had to behave and we didn't. To be honest their were times that even we weren't exactly sure what we were all about but in a way maybe that's what we were all about. The we part as in, for better or worse, we ran our own Drum Corp. We had to as no one else did. We let some people pretend they ran the Corp. We even let them put titles in front of their names but for the most part we ignored them and when we didn't ignore them we should have. We drank way too much and we ran wild. But we also practiced our ##### off and strove to put on the best Crusader show we could. We stepped onto the field like we owned it and we didn't care how small our Brass line was because we knew we were always capable of blowing the doors down. We put on shows that were fierce and always on the edge of careening out of control. Off the field it still amazes me that we could have been that out of control, virtually rudderless, and still survive. Their certainly were members who went above and beyond. G Watts, Tony Smith, Eric Rosen, Paul Bush, Danny and Paul Pitts, Patty Marshall. But the problem in listing names is that you inevitably fail to name others you should have and it gets away from the point that the Crusader's were running the Crusader's.

So why did the Blue Devils snare line wear Crusader T-Shirts under their uniforms? Well for one thing they were far from the only ones doing it. So the question should be why were members of other Drum corps wearing the T-shirt of a Drum Corp that for the most part wasn't coming close to making the finals? It's a question we would never have asked and something we would never have made a big deal about. We took it for granted. Why wouldn't they? If I had been marching in another drum corp back then I probably would have been wearing a Crusader T-shirt under my uniform as well. I have no disrespect for the judges of my day but maybe the better judges for the Boston Crusader's of my time were not the ones on the field but were the ones wearing the other uniforms.