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TRacer

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Everything posted by TRacer

  1. I’m just astounded my age-out corps made this list at all; usually SCV ‘87 overshadows SCV ‘85. Then again, SCV had a lot of 2nds to choose from back then (82, 85-88). 😶‍🌫️
  2. Bob C marched ‘81 and was on our visual staff in ‘84; great guy.
  3. I the honor of marching with some 78-82 GM hornline vets in SCV ‘84 (their age out year); they got to do “one more time with Salzman” and get him his first Ott Trophy. Andy (our head DM) was incredible at vocal commands.
  4. I hope I’m not detecting a dry sense of “oh that wasn’t real”….I lost a friend of mine to C19 at the very front end of it; 5 days from hospital admission to his passing (his son went on to march Pacific Crest.) My son and I could not be in the same hospital room as my grandmother due to C19 protocols in place as she passed from a head injury she incurred when she fell; we had to get her through the triage hospital tents set up in the parking lot just to get her in there.
  5. “Ceramophone…now with rrrich Corrrinthian leatherrr…..” Wouldn’t you rather drive a Ceramophone? Ozempic presents…“A Ceramophone Christmas” 🎄
  6. I read the title of this thread and before I opened it I thought, “In other words, hornline vs. color guard.”
  7. Fellow brass alum / SCV senior citizen (or “Uncle”, as locals call us elders here in Hawaii) from the GR era as well here…I will respectfully disagree as I did not see it that way at all. I heard of one brass performer who marched Nirvana 2022 (and hence, is an alum) but was affected by the 2023 inactivity after being contracted; this was not via some “seedy search” done in the wee hours of the night but via their former band director (with whom I marched) who posted it on their FB page * with the performer’s approval *. Since my son (also an alum) had already aged out in 2021 I opted to sponsor that performer for Crown ‘23 not for “SCV family sake” but for the chance they might win the Ott as I did, and they were very successful. Not everything has nefarious overtones.
  8. What you’re seeing is a dramatically watered down version of Dave Owens’ (RIP) original vision that had the hornline doing an intricate dance routine with the (at the time) all-female guard. At one of our Spring ‘84 camps we cleared out the rehearsal hall until just the wall-mounted mirrors remained and a professional dance choreographer from San Francisco came in and had us remove our shoes. We were complete dance & movement noobies, and for the next few hours we got a crash course. Toward the end a number of us with better body control were beginning to grasp the choreographer’s teachings but some of the physically larger individuals had challenges. In retrospect I wish we had stuck with the idea perhaps with a smaller dedicated “dancing hornline troupe”, as those with the body control showed real promise. Whatever the case, what Dave had in mind would have far exceeded what Star ‘93 did. This was also a huge change for Gail too as previously his hornlines had been all-male and very macho, and ‘84 saw a half dozen ladies (including a monster FH player from ‘79 Guardsmen) join the brass for the first time.
  9. I remember thr first time we (the hornline) saw our snare soloist perform this and he pulled out what looked like chopsticks….
  10. My kid did; he started at 13 and aged out in ‘21.
  11. Corps Director after the show: ”I just wanna thank everybody that the Franzia Box Wine drumline meshed so well with the Scrubbin’ Bubbles Color Guard and Old Spice Deodorant Hornline; it was a lot of work but the Cookie Cornucopia Dr Beat and Bob’s Plywood Emporium PA systems came together at the right time to put us over the top!”
  12. A friend of mine who started a drum corps in the 90’s that is still in existence (and whose mission is dedicated to being community-centric) and I have been texting back & forth this evening….his take is, “There will always be a drum corps whose leadership has their head up their financial ###.” A frank assessment. That is two corps with 17 championships between them going inactive within two years.
  13. Sounds reminiscent of when you & I got our brass start at SCV in ‘84; that worked out well.
  14. I would hope this is the direction they eventually go, because at present the VC website says, “With an average age of 17, Vanguard Cadets is the *primary training ground* for membership in our World Class ensemble,” which is utter bunk. It’s the primary training ground for people who go elsewhere for WC….and win. SCVC & the A-corps have the same number of championships banners in the rehearsal room (7), which doesn’t sit well with a faction of alumni. That same faction then has to look at the championship scoreboard and see that BD is crushing SCV by two touchdowns; the sun will burn out before SCV ever catches up.
  15. Everyone should just put their trombones in storage, lock the doors and leave them there. Despite it being my primary instrument there was far too much “nasty t-bone” in 2023.
  16. For sale: 20,740 square feet of prime industrial space; building is of concrete tilt-up construction split into three sections, one with wooden floor and mirrors. Year built 1975. 😒😶
  17. I just wanted to touch on something SGhost discussed about 10 pages back; that being “denialism”. A couple of months back on another SM platform a prospective marcher asked for feedback about which corps they should pursue and expressed particular concern about abuse. I kicked in my two bits from my and my son’s experience. Not long thereafter I got a response from a Cadets alum that was full of snark, and mentioned their instructors by name. “MS would send you to the gym, and GZ would send you to the nearest bus station if you didn’t want to rehearse.” They added that “…if you couldn’t handle intense rehearsals maybe you were on the wrong team.” [Cue SGhost’s feedback from her meeting: “We all had mean instructors.”] My reply was that I’d marched for years but to my knowledge the instructors he named had never hit kids to motivate them like one of ours did. I also referenced our season so that the Cadets person realized it was a year in which our respective corps traded victories with one another. Their reply was to massively backpedal when it became clear I’d marched with a top contender instead of somewhere else (so a top contender adds more credibility??), and to confirm their instructors hadn’t gone to such extremes. In other news, I had no idea DV was serving in this capacity; he was one of my first instructors way back in the day.
  18. I could not agree with this more; in fact, I suggested something similar— starting small as a local community parade corps only, then working up—- in the “other” long thread on this very forum that discussed SCV’s challenges and contained responses from some of the same authors in this very thread. Result: I got 4 or 5 “Confused/WTF” emoji responses where the little Thanks trophies & hearts go. I marched SCV and my last/age out year simply stunk; to this day I still hate that instructor who had no business at all being involved with teaching, and he was eventually run out of the activity. I thought that overall the culture would have changed by the time my son spent 2016-2018 (and earned two rings) there—- it hadn’t, and he told me so. That lack of cultural change falls on existing leadership; therefore, I also support the “everyone on this side of the veranda is fired” approach.
  19. Meanwhile, at the one theater in Hawaii… 😆 it was actually in Maui as well last year but not this year. 🫤
  20. — SA still in DCI — Physical abuse still in DCI — Mental & verbal abuse still in DCI. Time to close it all down as the “adults” cannot behave themselves. Let the corps get back to their community roots, march parades, and establish local circuits.
  21. I once heard Swedish Chef in a critique define General Effect as “Bluh herdy snurrbl devestehoodt jkeverda floon a ver— Bork Bork Bork!” It made so much sense after that.👨‍🍳
  22. My understanding is that a half dozen or so SCV ‘23 brass went to Crown this year; I’m helping sponsor one of them who also marched SCV 2022. On the influx of SCVC vets into Mandarins, I wonder how many were cut during A-corps ‘23 auditions before the SHTF.
  23. Ah yes, the “let’s give away the title” memorial run because someone failed at their ONE job— keeping track of time. The ‘82 vets around me definitely swore in uniform when GR’s voice shrieked over the walkie-talkie. Hilarious times…not.
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