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Your First Show


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I probably did this a long time ago but since newer people have popped in to DCP....

Where was your first show that you competed in?

What was your corps?

You remember what place you took?

Other corps competing?

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1 Squires 67.350 2 Shoreliners 62.250 3 Mello-Dears 60.000 4 Mark Twain Cadets 56.200 5 Royal Coachmen 48.250 6 Barons of Steuben 43.750 7 Gauchos

41.200

This was in Endicott, NY 1971. I thought that White Knights (Baltimore) were there too. I think this was Squires first win but I also believe they did a show that afternoon that they found out they won later on because there may have been a tabulation error (correct me if I am wrong). We took 5th. Pretty good spread from corps to corps.

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I probably did this a long time ago but since newer people have popped in to DCP....

Where was your first show that you competed in?

What was your corps?

You remember what place you took?

Other corps competing?

1968 was the first year I competed in a corps show. Was in a parade corps before that from 1964-67. No idea what/where the first show was. Most likely a Garden State Circuit show, as that is where we competed, outside of NJ VFW and AL states in Wildwood.

Corps: Livingston, NJ Imperial Guardsmen

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"First Show";

Royal Lancers

1963 World Open Preliminaries, Roosevelt Stadium, Jersey City NJ. First field contest. Memorable for the fact that the corps, Connecticut Royal Lancers were originally bumped from Finals, placing 11th.

Our director made us stay together when we got back to Bridgeport to PRACTICE. It was a good thing he did, as a mistake was found in either ours or St Rocco's Cadets score which landed us in Finals. We re-boarded the busses, got back to Jersey just in time to take the field in Finals. We landed in 10th place.

Making the Finals of a National Championship, in our very first contest was pretty good.

St Anns:

1961 Stratford Connecticut Yankees show. This may or may not have been our first contest, but it's the first one I remember. We managed to outpoint one of our crosstown rivals, the old Bridgeport PAL Cadets, by almost two points.. I believe we took fourth place, behind the Garfield Cadets, St Kevins Emerald Knights and the Braintree Warriors.

To us this was HUGE, particularly so, as the very next day PAL Cadets slipped past THEIR crosstown arch rivals, St Raphaels Buccaneers by a couple tenths at the Yankee Circuit Championships.

By 1963 Bridgeport would have four competing junior drum corps, as well as another one just across the river in Milford the old Police Cadets.

Elphaba

WWW

Edited by elphaba01
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I was 14 years old and my first show was with the Boston Crusader's competing in the then annual standstill competition "Drumfest" performed inside Boston College's Walter Brown hockey Arena. It's rather bizarre that my first show was in an ice rink because a week or two earlier during a freshman hockey game my ankle was fractured when it was struck by a slap shot while I was "parked in front of the net." It didn't help much when I decided to keep playing as I wasn't sure as to the severity of the injury. It was painful but the skate was working like a make shift cast so I did continue to play because that's what hockey players do. In hindsight it was not the smartest thing I ever did as it did end up adding to the severity of the fracture.

So "Drumfest" began the same for every Corp, I believe, with each corp marching from one end of the arena to the other and then turning to face the audience. Since I couldn't march I was allowed to wait at the performing end of the arena for my fellow Crusader's to form into their standstill position and then I got to limp out there and join them. I suppose I could have stolen the Zamboni so as to make a more spectacular entrance but that probably would have been a bit dangerous as I did not yet have my license and I suppose it would have distracted from the performance as well.

For the sake of honesty this wasn't my first show ever as I marched in a class B corp the 2 previous years but in not being able to remember my truly first show I thought people would appreciate my first show in the big leagues.

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So "Drumfest" began the same for every Corp, I believe, with each corp marching from one end of the arena to the other and then turning to face the audience. Since I couldn't march I was allowed to wait at the performing end of the arena for my fellow Crusader's to form into their standstill position and then I got to limp out there and join them. I suppose I could have stolen the Zamboni so as to make a more spectacular entrance but that probably would have been a bit dangerous as I did not yet have my license and I suppose it would have distracted from the performance as well.

Not to mention you might have "Zambonied" the entire corps!

You could have made a grand entrance like this:

AFDFADSASDFF.jpg

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I was 14 years old and my first show was with the Boston Crusader's competing in the then annual standstill competition "Drumfest" performed inside Boston College's Walter Brown hockey Arena.

Oh, ohhhh. Walter Brown Arena is where BU's Women's ice hockey team plays and BC men play ice hockey in the Kelley Rink named after legendary coach "Snooks" Kelley.

Now, the Drumfest was held at the old Boston Arena off of Mass Ave. which is now owned by Northeastern U. Thirty push up's please.

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Ghost, I did a little research and you are right it wasn't Walter Brown arena, which is a part of B.U., but I was right in stating that Drumfest that year was held at Boston College but the name of the arena was McHugh Forum which was home of Boston College Eagles hockey. I don't know what year the Eagle's stopped playing there put the information I found stated that the Forum was 4,200 seat multi-function facility that shut down in 1983. I'm sure your right that the Boston Arena was home to earlier Drumfest's but the first one I attended ( '73 ) and the two that I participated in ( '74 & '75 ) were held at Boston College or to quote the information directly "Chestnut Hill."

I remember actually playing hockey at least once at B.U., not Collegiality but for my Town team, and it was probably at the Walter Brown arena which opened in 1971. The way I remember it was that we practiced there once and had a game there at another time. The reason I remember this is because this was not the typical arena for our team to find itself using. We were from the north of Boston so we were almost always using the Stoneham arena and before that Frost arena in Lawrence and the M.D.C. rink in Medford. The Stoneham arena was basically built for us by Bobby Orr and the big, bad Bruins.

Edited by Bsader
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I've told this story before, and it sort of wasn't really my first EVER show, but my first show with the Sunrisers, a year after returning from 3 years overseas with the US Air Force was at East Haven HS in East Haven CT - beginning of June, as that's when first shows happened back in 1975.

Despite playing for years with my junior corps, the Oceanside Legionnaires (you've heard of us! thank you, thank you - they named a disease after us some years later) I was nervous as a cat my first show with Sun. I had idolized the Sunrisers my whole young life, or at least since 1963, and grew up playing along with Fleetwood Records of Billy Hightower wailing on "Sing, Sing, Sing" (backed up by the immortal Billy Cobham on drums) and "It's a Pity To Say Good-Night When the Lights Go Out" and here I was heading out onto the field with the Orange & Blue a decade later.

To make things even more nervous, I had a number of solo and ensemble features in the show. I wasn't new to playing in front of people, but had spent most of the past 3 years either keeping my head down or flying in the back of Air Force Reconaissance planes - not the same.

The first solo - Hightower's old "Sing Sing Sing" solo was probably unspectacular (especially compared to Billy) but I got through it without soiling myself. After Screech's solo in "And the Angels Sing" and Tommy (Bunyon) McCarthy's (RIP) sweet sop solo in "Somewhere" we arrived in concert.

I was stepping out to play a solo of "My Man's Gone Now" when the front lights went out. But wait, there's more. The lights went out because of an electrical fire on the front sideline. I'm positioned about 10 yards from the sideline, playing and thinking "huh, this is not the way we practiced this. The middle of this piece involved the trumpets (whoops, excuse me - sopranos) picking up the melody for 8 measures, and then I came back in to wrap the piece up - only problem is that with the corps heading backfield in silhouette, the sopranos phased until they were now 2 counts out of synch - it sounded great - 2 counts sounds like an effect - could have been written that way and folks would have loved it, but I had to pick a side to come back in with. I chose side one.

Honest to god, I'm standing out front there looking up at a dark figure that I assumed to be Fred Rowan on the podium - he had no idea - I had no idea - and I'm wondering why I came home from overseas. It all evened out as my solo was ad lib time wise, and the corps came back in with the shadow on the front sideline, but I had serious misgivings about what the DCA had in store for me.

As it turned out, that wasn't even one of the worst nights I experienced in years to come, but that's a separate thread, isn't it?

My first show back in the world... sheesh...

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