Triple Forte

I agree. This has been the quietest pre-season on record. I honestly believe they forget (Or even care) there is a fanbase for the activity sometimes. Trust me, I don’t expect or want full show details and run throughs from every corps for us fans to see and hear but I think they (Mothership and individual corps) could do a lot more to get fans excited about the upcoming season. Think about it, they are going to have a premier opening night show from Muncie, Indiana and it won’t be broadcast and it will only feature 3 corps vs in the recent past a 5 - 6 corps lineup live you can watch from a movie theater. Not good sorry to be a stick in the mud…

In my opinion, if you have to explain what your show or what the props mean it’s like a comedian having to explain a joke they told…..

The black uniform from 1995 was my favorite of the black uniform years

>My apologies for coming across as condescending. That was not my intent It’s all good .👍 I think we actually agree on quite a bit and the biggest point that I am stressing is that every expense counts. How many corps have fallen due to mismanagement of their finances? I would say enough to make our stomach’s turn. If this activity expects to continue and be successful, they’re going to have to get bloody serious about they’re spending habits. 🙂

Thanks for being condescending always a good thing … 🧐 i’ll just leave it here which is I can’t understand why it would be so horrible to Skip a couple of seasons of props and build a little buffer financially, you know maybe to handle the costs that might come up you have no control over…like fuel etc.

Don’t remember the year was it 2010, 11 or 12 Madison had 20 😁

If you don’t think 130K line item for a drum corps budget is a big deal then fine,we’ll drop the concern about the cost of props and any other equipment that might need extra vehicles/staff …. call me crazy, but I think a six figure + expense is pretty significant

All you have to ask is some financial planners and analysts and they will tell you that people don’t get in trouble with many high dollar expenses , they do get in trouble with many lower dollar expenses. $50 here and $75 there and $25 there don’t seem like much but they add up quick. If you walk through the lot of corps buses and trucks, you will see the activity is stretching itself and the logistics to the absolute limits when it should be trying to restrain expenses and pull back in an effort to be more financially stable . so fuel was a huge unplanned expense this year. so in response corps should try to make adjustments by maybe sidelining some / all props this year. This will to save them one rig or more from hitting the road an extra driver or two insurance fuel for the rig, etc. and before you say, that was all done months ago, no problem , things happen and the big grandiose plans you had for your show have to be sidelined. Tough. proceed to sell them to other programs ie bands as they usually do…

All we need to do is review two big changes to the activity, the amount; and many times size of the props and all the logistics and costs associated with them and the huge sound systems design and costs. These things cost Mucho money. To design , build and transport props from a one top corps a few years (I heard this from a direct source in the org.) ago cost them 130k. The activity has been slowly bleeding for a long time now. The let’s hit the road and tour and perform across the country is going to go away. In my opinion, the future of DCI will be similar to the marching bands and drum corps in Asia. Indoor shows in a far smaller venue.

I think the activity would fair way better to the average person if it wasn’t so serious. How many shows be it WGI marching band or DCI have subliminal themes? How about just designing and performing stuff that is fun to watch and listen to? Yeah we need a few avant-garde things and a few abstract things but it shouldn’t be the majority.

When the weather is nicer and warmer people travel more i.e. use more fuel

I completely agree, and I’ve learned firsthand from someone last season who had a high level position for a top 15 DCI corps administration who said the admin staff , staff and designers focus most of their energy on competition results and practicing and have ignored many opportunities to perform publicly that would score a payday and would be able to promote the activity. That is a huge problem that I guess will never be solved… Getting more eyes and ears on our activity in an effort to find people with deep pockets should always be priority one and not just during the season but every single day of the year.

Well, there is a bit of a double whammy ? one because of the war and two because of the warmer weather the prices of fuel and gas go up . The way most corporations would handle this is if an expensive of one thing goes up you have to curtail expenses someplace else. Any chance in heck DCI corps would cot cut expenses somewhere else to compensate for the rising fuel cost? I wouldn’t hold my breath.

So we’re in the winter blues of off-season so I thought I would spice things up a bit 😁, with that I have ask , why is it you are always so excited about anything that changes the DCI activity from what it currently is? I mean, from a sound perspective do you dislike the unique brass choir and percussion sound that drum corps is ? Why is it that you always throw your excitable support behind each and every change and tweak to the DCI activity?

In my opinion, the front ensembles never get enough love….. and this is coming from a brass player 😀