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KOA just east of town. We stayed there is a 40' Class-A, towing 4-down. Drive to the stadium in about 20 minutes and pay $10 to park all day at a surface lot just east of the stadium. The KOA is is typical and nice although, during a hard storm, it flooded 3 years ago and was unusable for a lot of the summer (I think they fixed the creek that runs through the campground after that). There are two or three private campgrounds east and northeast of town we tried, but the KOA is right off Rt. 70 and easy on/off with full hookups. The last time we stayed there 3 years ago there were four others there for drum corps, too. We wandered down to their site when we heard them blasting past videos over the campfire, accepted an adult beverage, and relived the shows. Fun.

I refuse to join any club that would have me as a member. -Groucho Marx

Someone needs to do the Opening from Mishima again.

I marched the first three years of Spirit of Atlanta, but my favorite year was our second year, 1978. We had finished in 23rd place at 1977 finals in Denver, so no one was expecting much out of our sophomore effort, despite having a lot of returnees from a year of almost all rookies. Jim Ott began telling us in the spring of 1978 that we had something special, but his words really didn't click with us until we got to the second show of tour, in Cedarburg, Wisc. That night, the crowd was electric, and we began to feed off the crowd's reaction to our still very-new corps from the South. The audience shot to their feet when we hit the company front in Let It Be Me, and remained standing for the rest of the show. It was pretty much like that the rest of the season, which was so much fun because NO one was expecting the sound that Jim Ott coaxed from us. We ended up the year in 6th place, missing the high horns trophy (which would later be named for Jim) by a mere .05. Not too shabby considering that only two of the horn players had ever even held a bugle before our first rehearsal for the previous season.

Marching - 1971 in Garfield. That was an amazing year of drum corps, as a bunch of us broke the old mold and created very radical shows for the era. We were very young, but actually pretty decent, placing 6th at the World Open and 7th at VFW Nats. Just a magical year all around.

For those of you in the DC area, you will have an opportunity to see the Blue Devils at a live rehearsal in Northern VA again this year. More info to follow as we finalize our school as the host facility prior to the competition at Navy-Marine Corps stadium in Annapolis, MD on July 31.

1981 Madison Scouts. We were undefeated until we saw 27th Lancers about 5 weeks into the season. We shocked everyone, including ourselves when we won DCI Midwest finals in Whitewater, WI. Warhawk stadium went absolutely berserk when Blue Devils were announced in 2nd place. Every top drum corps was in this show, which will always be my single most favorite contest that I marched. This is the Madison show that is on the DCI Championship CD's because DCI finals in Montreal was not televised. We beat the eventual champion SCV in either our last or 2nd to last show before DCI Finals, I believe by more than 1 point. We went into Montreal championship week with a good shot to win it all. but fell short finishing in 3rd place. Fun fact... I can still play the entire Snare Drum book. I'll never forget it.

For those of you in the DC area, you will have an opportunity to see Crown at a live rehearsal in Northern VA again this year. More info to follow as we finalize our school as the stop-over host facility between the Clifton, NJ show and the CrownBEAT show in Lexington, SC on July 6.

You guys must've decided awhile back not to take this lying down anymore, so you turned the tables on them.

Everytime I saw Crown perform this opener I had flashbacks of SCV doing Young Person's Guide under G. Royer.