BigW

I slept on some of this yesterday and seeing some of the replies, I'll try and shoot back some various thoughts. Adjudicators at any level are pretty experienced, well educated, thoughtful, and diligent folks. Those who aren't generally get shown the door. I know my share of the DCI level people. They're people I try and ask questions to and share things so I can be more thoughtful and insightful when I have the chance. They're good people and more than willing to share ideas. They're people I feel better for having known. Another aspect that's kind of been touched on but not nailed has been the percussive arts. The weight of them in modern DCI adjudication has dramatically increased, and that's justifiable. A lot more of the difficulty in the musical scores now is inherent in the Percussion ensemble. Better writing to underpin everything, the quality of the musicians and their musicianship all play a role. Most of the more difficult content melodically and harmonically rest on the Front Ensemble, and one has to give credit when it's deserved as it is. I'll throw this out- could someone win percussion at Semis and not make finals nowadays!? (Oakland Crusaders....) Could someone end up with a seventh-place percussion section and win the championship? (80-something Cadets, the graffiti in the one practice room at WCU about that was priceless...) Here's a loaded question: How much of all of this is to deal with the acoustics of the Championship venue? I've discussed this with someone who has a handle on that subject and the arranging has changed to try and get things to sound 'right' in that stadium. Just some more thoughts. I need to rest, I'll try and add more things in when I'm better rested.

Touching on the comments here, I'm reminded of other thoughts from people that the musical design aspect has been accused of taking the final number out of the hands of the performers and into the hands of the design team. Everyone's insanely clean now, subatomic particles need to be split to separate in raw performance. It's more in the hands of content that cause separation between DCI competitors. In regard to this, there's been other threads and thoughtful comments touching on some aspects in BoA in particular regarding the degree of meshing of electronics into the ensemble sound so well no one's sure who's doing what at times and with what weight. I can say that since the OP started going back in time, a lot more of the difficulty/analysis numbers are generated through how challenging the book is to play while moving/field placement/use of body while playing the brass instruments rather than the raw musical content. This is something I've become painfully aware of over say, the past 5 to 10 years in the activity in general. This is even more prevalent at say, the base HS level (I'm not talking about the elite HS units out there), especially since COVID hit. Another aspect to touch on his BITD, visual design was predicated on what the musical book was. The designers were given the music and then they wrote in reaction to that. Over the past two decades, many teams will have a drill sequence written out and ask the music design team to create something to fit that instead. Which, might explain some of the comments about patchwork designs occurring. Would I like to see more coherent melodic thread in a lot of what I'm hearing? More resolved musical phrases and completed thoughts? Yeah. I was trained in Music School that music is a language, phrases are thoughts and sentences. And when. You break. Them up abruptly. and Change subjects without logical flow. It's not. A good. Thing.

Jim, you hit a nail on the head, old friend. The old building I worked in was pretty diverse, the new one is even more diverse, and I feel great about that. We're more multi-lingual than before, and I'm working with even more really nice folks. More people are getting a great opportunity to get pretty well-paying jobs now, and if they're nuts enough to go into supervision and management, even better. It might have been a low bar to hurdle, but my job is better in large part because of this. If I read a lot of the thoughtful posts here correctly, I'll try and slice this with Occam's Razor. The gist seems to be that the corps has identified that they have an issue they sincerely want to address. Admitting there's problems is always good. Denial in this activity has led to multiple disasters. The real problem is now, we have serious concepts we want to commit to getting better at and not just talk about it- but how can we effectively address this and do something concrete? My guess is this could be a long process of learning and evolution before they get to their eventual goals.

Malfeasance of management will figure in with a few. On the DCA side I can think of two readily. Losing sponsorship of the Church/CYO/WFW will also figure in as well. Rising budgets wiped out many in the 70's because they really couldn't afford the touring model. Corps poaching from corps not as well off or as capable factored in as per the one recent discussion on the Cadets thread. That pretty much imploded the Quebec scene. At the time, there were plenty of corps around. A corps going under meant others grabbed the equipment and preferably the more talented individuals, and no one cared. Now, we're kind of looking around at what remains and acting surprised.

You were a strapping young lad then! heck, I was under 30! 😎

"The Worst Band Parents Ever" Jeff was really young when a lot of this happened so I'm not sure how much he knows about. The HS no longer exists. It was merged into another school in Central Pennsylvania. in the late 70's it was arguably the finest small marching band in the country (under 50-60 musicians) with a really great Director- very kind, developed talent from his students. Never a problem then that anyone heard of. His son was also fantastic, ended up in the Crossmen HoF. He gets a job offer @1980 for a school that has a good program with three times the kids and offers him twice what he's currently paid. He leaves and turns that program into a Wrecking Ball in Pennsylvania for the next 15 or so years. That's when things go bad. They hire an individual right out of college, my guess was to save money. They weren't bad, they weren't a bad person, they weren't untalented but who could really replace this guy right out of college? The band came down to earth and other bands started to beat them. After about two years the Parents rioted and had the District get rid of them before they got tenure. They then managed to hire an experienced guy, who was also a really good and decent fellow, who already had led a pretty successful program. He manages to dig them out of the hole but after about two years, he ends up with stress related illnesses and runs to another program where he takes that program and makes it flourish. The word on the street was the parents drove him to near insanity. He was a lot happier when he got out of there. You could see the relief on his face. They then managed to find someone who had things figured out. They brought in a very good design team and their shows were very airtight and complimentary. The total packages were fantastic, and that's what kept them above everyone. Here's where things unravel. Sometime in the late 80's, the Circuit Championship had to be held indoors at Carlisle HS. Wind gusts in excess of 50 MPH, ice all over everything, and wind chill factors well below Zero. Their parents lose their minds. Standstill contest, no drill, they know that they're losing their major asset of having a total show. I'm working the floor entrance. They lose to someone who better handled the situation. Kids from this band are crying, The Band Parents are flipping out and outraged making all sorts of comments that this show should have been held outside. I glared at them and said, "Your children aren't gladiators." The loudest mouthed parent is obviously thinking of starting something, and I was ready to slug it out. This guy is older. Word on the street a lot of those Boosters hadn't had children in that band for years and pretty much ran the show anyway. The Circuit commissioner gets an "AxxHxxe Certificate" in the mail with no return address. It wasn't hard to figure out the likely culprits. I didn't hear any other complaints from the other competitors. This director leaves. Word on the street was they had enough of the Parents, especially after their obnoxious behavior in public, and the fit the kids had. The job comes open again. I need a job. Dad encourages me. I tell him what's going on. He helps me with a cover letter to the HS Principal stating basically that "The word on the street is that your Band Parents are out of control, and that they interfere with the director's ability to direct the program as they see fit to direct the program as professional educators. As the principal, you'd be my boss. If the Parents get out of line, will you have my back and get these parents under control?" Needless to say, I didn't get an interview. They find a decent guy but by now the program's a wreck and he's pulling every stunt in the book like having suspended cymbals "WOOOSH!" ing at the end of nearly very phrase to try and mask that they can't end a phrase together. They're down to 16 musicians (including percussion) trying to play 8 note chords. The same old big-mouthed clown who hadn't had a kid in the band for years and nearly beat on me over the gladiator comment nearly attacked me for pointing these things out quietly to someone within his earshot once. The whole mess died when they merged with their next-door rivals. Because of the hatred that both schools had for each other, and the parents had for each other, all their sports programs and extracurricular activities crapped out and haven't recovered 35 years later. So, that's the story of the Worst Band Parents Ever. Obsessed with winning over education taking place and wanting to send their kids on an icy field in 40+mph wind gusts and sub-zero Wind chill. And I frankly don't feel bad for them. I do feel bad for a generation of kids that need an activity like this to get them out of the depressed little town they live in and deserve better.

I need to go to work but I've got a whopper of a story involving out of control band parents in Central PA...

This happened in Quebec to effectively wipe nearly everyone out, and the Westshoremen were grabbing people from failing corps left and right when I was there. No surprise.

Many volunteers end up feeling used and taken advantage of if not managed carefully. I can think of family situations where I was appalled and upset with what I was observing.

He was a load of laughs to march with in '84, and an all-around good guy.

There was an article linked here a couple of years ago from the Casper, WY newspaper about what a big deal it was that a local person made it into the Troopers. Case in point.

Thank you. No need to apologize to me. The drift from contemporary Drum Corps World articles at the time about the corps stated what I stated. The point is still, overzealous corps administration still caused serious issues. Did they indirectly cause issues with retention, or was it simply that trying to keep kids from migrating to the Crossmen and Cadets was too much?

The first huge case study of this at the DCI level was the Circle K sponsorship of Suncoast Sound. They wanted the corps to so some performance for them and they felt rehearsal for the next contest was more important, so they blew them off and lost that sponsorship. That was their "jump the shark" moment. Another little-known incident was a small NJ corps back in the early 80's known as Fantasia III. They got a Burger King sponsorship and flew their flag as part of the Main Guard as part of the deal. the DCE competitors grumbled, whinged and forced them to stop that. The corps pretty much died after losing that money. And, it also discouraged anyone else from seeking those kinds of connections. Stick to Bingo and raffles... It's rare that you get a huge sponsor in any activity that throws out a lot of cash and expects nothing in return. In Formula One when cigarette money was being thrown around like drunken sailors on liberty to teams, one of them was approached by FedEx for a major sponsorship and part of the deal would have been some tie-ins and events. The team told them, "No thank you" because they could get the same out of Big Tobacco with no strings attached and the tie ins were too much work. Sounds familiar to this!

My perception was that they were nothing more them paying lip service to being "part of the community at large" from the get-go.

Another person familiar with the situation said they were the "least deserving" of the 70 applicants. It's been literally a lifelong frustration for me, Jeff. I might not have been the most charismatic or pretty candidate. But at least I have ethics, and it makes me bitter so see a lot of these folks who got hired over me getting arrested.

Community outreach has been a problem, even at the scholastic level. I interviewed for a HS job stating clearly that I thought the program had a serious issue with this and I planned to do more concerts and appearances in the district as an appreciation for the monetary support we continuously got from it. It was clear from the administration it was going over their heads. They ended up hiring a weak supposedly talented Alumni who wrecked the program and ended up getting arrested for throwing a great Alcohol and weed party with the kids. 😼

Music by Herrmann, Ginastera, DeFalla, Piazzola come to my mind quickly.

Common sense would have someone knowledgeable making safety checks on a structure, say weekly, in the case of a tour. Joints, fasteners, cracks in materials, etc. The thing then would be to make sure if this happens it can be quickly replaced or repaired. The other trick, Jim, is to overengineer the prop with a high safety factor so it can withstand 2-3 times the actual weight and stresses that it bears at any time in a performance. Dad (Engineer) and I built the DM Podium for my HS and told them it had a 5 year life- Dad smartly built it well enough it was used for about 10-15 years with no incident, thankfully. Props can be safely and smartly designed.

IIRC the main concern with YEA! was that there were some special deals cut to attract new bands where the fees were substantially discounted and they didn't want the long-term member bands finding out?

Late 70's/Early 80's Crossmen used to eat "Cookie Salad" for meals at times. Told this by college friends who marched there. They'd go to the Wal-Mart, grab several types of the large boxes of cookies, dump them in a huge bowl, mix it up, everyone got a handful. Stopping at a McDonalds for an out-of-pocket meal was a feast. there's a lot of "Good old days/Glory Days" stories out there.

I believe you'd need a full-time compliance officer for things like that, wouldn't you? Where I work, there's a lot of things like that that have to be looked after including my 18-Month re-certification for my specific job.

I read this, then took a shower, and my Baritone-honkin' brain went "DING!" whole in the shower stall. It's beyond 100% unsightly. It's a kickback/macing scheme under a very small legal fig leaf. If I got that after an assignment, it would make me think, "if I don't kick back a decent percentage of my pay, will I continue to get gigs in this circuit!?" Think about that. Not sure whether the term "Macing" is understood outside of NEPA, but it's synonymous with Kickback...

I still remember when you and I pointed out that the US Bands Online Rulebook conveniently left the pages out involving competition fees and getting pooh-poohed by people here when we called out the lack of transparency. I'd daggone well hope BD spells all of that out now to everyone.

I saw them live at East, and when I watched the TV feed, I was sitting with a friend and was like..."Whoa... wasn't there a tag after that!?" I thought they cut the down ending or that I was going even more nuts than I was at the time teaching at Harrisburg High....Being one of six Directors in five years at a dysfunctional HS was a load of laughs.

My Landlord's Dad used to work for WITF (Jeff's and my local PBS affiliate) before he moved on to far greener pastures in the TV Broadcasting industry. He calls them "Begging Breaks". 😸 Pertinent to this thread, many of us watched aghast when WITF screwed up the Cadets show ending (1987!?) and cut it off for a Begging Break, then had to apologize on air after tons of irate calls went into the phones.