Kaboom

Saw them at Stanford at 2016 DCI West and Rose Bowl. They are playing old Blue Devils charts- Happy Days, Ya Gotta Try, Pegasus, and One More Time. While kind of weird hearing BD music coming from "Freelancers" horns, they represented well. Some early season dirtiness. I'm sure they will clean that up and contend at DCA Minicorps. I was just great to feel the air pressure generated by those "G" bugles.... Kaboom

Freelancers 1979 Entire guard wore costumes that looked like Coca-cola cans. Actually the whole corps wore costumes. You cannot call what the drums and bugles wore uniforms, except fot the hat. Kaboom!

Jealous? Yes, because in North Nevada, we do not see the glitz that Vegas gets. Jealous? Yes, because we do not have or get to see "drum corps legends" like Pero and Chez out here either. I am looking forward to be slapped in the face by the minicorps and Viva. As I said originally, this is a great move. And Pero and Chez...... HEADLINERS! Kaboom

Forget the warm up acts. DCA's serious headline promotion of Viva is indicating their new entertainment direction. Looks exciting! I can't wait to see it. Kaboom

Sorry to admit it but I am a Freelancers junkie. I've always loved this corps especally the drumlines they have put out over the years. I was fortunate to get into DCI West Stanford show early (The ticket booth was horrible; more people standing in line than in the stadium). I am glad because the Freelancers Alumni did standstill preshow entertainment. AND THEY WERE AWESOME. 40 horns strong. Unfortunately, all they had was a set drummer, not the full battery that I have been familiar with. Nice sound with playing their old charts, including Bellavia, my favorite. The big buzz is their trip to DCA championships this year as a minicorps and alumni corps. I think they will be a strong contender. Looking forward to the day when I can see them suit up on the field and bring even more competetion on the west coast with Renegades and SoCal Dream; maybe reincarnate a dci world class corps. Congratulations to them and hoping to a bright future. Kaboom!

Yamaha did dabble with the 2 valve G Horn. This was at the same time when Yamaha was introducing their marching percussion to the market. I remember USC's drumline sporting the prototype set. I do recall the tenor cutaway design was different than the final distributed product. Anyway about the bugles, there was a prototype set of Yamaha sops and baritones made for the LA Chinese (or maybe it was the LA japanese) drum corps in 82-84 time frame. I knew their horn guy (a former BD'r or Freelancer) who had the connection with Nippon Gakkin Co, the parent company of Yahama. They were brass finish and not very sturdy. They were small bore 2 valves but still in R&D stage with large bore on the horizon. Design was based off their student trumpets and baritones made horizontal with valves reconfigured. Development was put on hold because of legitimate talk of DCI heading for 3 valve horns and decision to focus in that direction. Kaboom!

1978 - Note snare drum straps. In 1979, snares used a harness. Kaboom!

Up to about 1980, every March there was a standstill competition at the National Orange Show in San Bernardino in the old Swing Auditorium. It kicked off drum corps season in Southern California. First there was a parade in the morning and then the drum corp standstill. BTW, the Princemen was a SoCal corps from Redlands just east of San Bernardino. Back in the day, there was a very nice group of corps in Southern California providing competition all summer long. And when combined with Northern California, it was a fairly strong circuit. It just did not have the publicity that help east coast thrive. Kaboom

OUCH!!!!! The horn survived..... And the player bounced! Kaboom

In my opinion, corps, DCI, whoever, do not do enough to reach out to communities to noticed. That is why no one knows about our activity. Even if the perception is considered "marching band" the mere fact that an organization can be noticed is a major step. Outreach for example: Parades. Corps hate doing them because they feel they above that type of activity. But they lose the opportunity to be noticed by mainstream population by not partaking. I was on my cities annual festival that included parades and an evening concert. Turned down by three corps because they said they do not do them. Be as it may, pulling away from Al and VFW, etc to privatize to DCI took a lot of fans away (granted that most AL and VFW post are shrinking as their membership dwindles). BUT they used to have local competitions, state competitions, and national competitions with sponsored corps that created interest for competitive aspect of their Post, in general, for bragging rights even if they didn't personally care for the activity. It was a lot more than going to watch a family member perform. It was all about supporting the Post and the affiliated corps to move to the next level, local to state to nationals. My dad's friend who belonged to a neighboring AL Post could not give a crap about their corps. However, when it came to convention time, his bragging about their superiority over my corps got their name out to the community with money following. Couldn't shut him up. Flag raising, SPB at community events. When is the last time (or first time) you heard a corps being consistently present for the colors? Participate in community functions that are unrelated to corps performances, such as clean-ups, human resources or other services and asked media to follow them in tow? It would be wonderful to hear from corps who do this. I see so little mentioned on DCP Just saying, that I feel groups have created no motivation for population to notice them or become mainstream. They only cater to their inner circle. I guess this is a function of the national recruitment process. Just my opinion.

Are you talking marching surfaces or corps? DCI is full of artificial corps.... Kaboom!

Dream, Gade, Bridgemen, Minne Brass and Freelancers should get together in the lot and blow the Doubletree down! What would it be, over 100 G bugles? Kaboom!

Because you need 80 multi key Bb horns to equal the sound of 58 G bugles Kaboom!

If I recall, they are the Carson Caballeros. They had a bunch of ex-Kingsmen instructors. They always had a decent drumline taught by a guy named Bob Bonnie (or something like that). I remember them playing Mambo like the Kingsmen in 74 AT Vfw Nationals in Los Angeles in the band division.

Because of instrumentation...... This is more a DCI type corps name.... From Beantown B Flat-ulent Kaboom