Northern Thunder

I have all of Jodeen's books (I contributed material for them also). None of this information is in any of her books.

According to December, 2025 world rankings, the top US brass bands are ranked 81st (Fountain City Brass) and 90th (Five Lakes Silver Band).

You'll see quite a bit about Brassmen if you go to this DCP thread from 2007:

It seems like the American Legion rarely did the same thing in consecutive years. For those years at the Legion Nationals, it was the senior corps that were the big draw with the audiences, so their appearance was crucial to the "bottom line" of filling the stadium. Let's remember that they even advertised alcoholic beverages in the middle of VFW/American Legion shows back then. Thus they needed to put a greater percentage of seniors in finals than the number of junior corps. Most of the convention attendees wanted to see their fellow "old guys", rather than the "kiddies".

This will be the fewest wins EVER for Blue Devils.... Their previous lowest win totals were 3 in both 1972 and 1973. They had 5 in 1974 and 2005, and 7 in 1989.

I found those 1972 recaps at the American Legion headquarters in Indy, back in 1992. I went there the week after I had been at the DCI Championships in Madison. I had made arrangements ahead of time to see their drum corps archive, and they allowed me to photocopy all their recaps going back to the 1920s. And to think that the VFW allowed Tony Schlechta to dump their entire archive into the dumpster. Thank goodness the Legion kept theirs.

I remember the 1979 edition quite well, when they made finals at DCI Midwest in Whitewater.

As a trombone player, whose daughter, father, brother and three nephews were also trombone players.....I agree on the overdone style of trombone performance in DCi .

Mankato is where I got to have one final visit with SCV director Gail Royer in his final year with Vanguard, in 1992. As we stood in the end zone after the show, he told me he didn't know what he was going to do with himself after his retirement from drum corps. Unfortunately, he passed away just 11 months later.

No spoilers, but she talks about when they played the "1812 Overture" with the Boston Pops.

Great story...never knew about that!

One of the "scariest" repertoires in DCI history came in 1972, when the Wayne (NJ) Monarchs played: Witches Call, March to the Scaffold, Soul Sacrifice, Evil Ways, Evil of Eternity and Lullaby From Rosemary's Baby.

You'll see some of it here: https://www.facebook.com/groups/13841612354/posts/10163046504517355/

You can see them here: http://www.dcxmuseum.org/assets/06 - 80 Years of Drum and Bugle Corps Sores.pdf

Yes....I was just going to say 1988 Blue Devils won everything prior to DCI Championship weekend.