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The history of the Westshoremen


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Nah, you guys are okay - when I came through yesterday there was two pages of PSU 'current events' that also had nothing to do with the other 777 pages, give or take. I just wanted to nudge it back on course, that's all.

well hell, I've been bugging W to get back to 82 before my kid is in college for months, good luck!

:devil:

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well hell, I've been bugging W to get back to 82 before my kid is in college for months, good luck!

:devil:

Got a feeling 1982 might get the thread closed... :devil::devil:

On my retirement to do list: Get all the WSM/WSM-BS info from this thread and massage it into yearly breakdowns. Also got my scattered (all that's left anymore) memories from 74-79 and 84-85 (partials). Currently working on yearly breakdown of all corps performance (parades, competititions, standstaills) from the web and printed material I have (what I have to cull thru is getting massive).

Edited by JimF-LowBari
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1982.... we were close but not QUITE ready to go the whole way with it. In the end, the drum line held back the rest of the corps..we had some good stuff, but we were no match for the elite lines...that's for sure! After playing in, and knowing what it takes to be in a top line a few years later, I was able to look back and go "yeah, ok, I GET it now" But at that point, we just thought we got screwed. :doh:

That was about the time when you noticed WHO was really really good when you were trying to break down what they were doing vs. what YOU were doing. I remember hanging out with a few of Sun's tenor players, (up in Canada) and we were trading licks, those guys were playing some SERIOUS notes and were clean, we were clean, played a lot of singles which SOUNDED difficult, but didn't match up to the stuff Denis was writing, and they were playing.

RM wrote some musical chit, but it wasn't overly difficult, sounded good with the rest of the corps (i.e. it was musical) but wasn't what we needed to run it over the top! Our hornline was EONS ahead of us...for once the drums were the weakest link.

(maybe that will inspire someone)

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That post above reminded me of a few other things...I may have already mentioned, but we're so far off course that it doesn't matter and still is relevant to our continuing story...

When I first joined, the drum line was the HYPED entity within the corps. Being a green newbie, I didn't know right from wrong, good from bad, etc. After playing in Hershey for a year, I knew that because WSM were competing, that they WERE a good line, and had some VERY talented players...I was surprised when I went to the first practice, and Ric read my "resume" sheet and said "go get a set of 'triples' and start learning the warm ups...I was expecting cymbals, MAYBE bass drum, but not toms...but OK.... that didn't last long, and Rickie Lee talked me into timpani...ok, I'll bite....but this just shows my "experience" level at the time...not much!

The corps really seemed to hype the drum line, though, whenever they walked into the room they were cheered, whenever we showed up at the practice field they cheered, so prior to 1982 we were the "hype".

All that said...looking back on things, we had a great snare line and a decent rest of the line those years... 1978 Flowers wrote the parts, and they were pretty good, the whole line had some good notes to play...when he left and RC took over in 1979, the songs that HE wrote....not so much, most of it was snare based, and the rest of the line suffered with weak parts. I remember the 50 revisions to the drum solo (Sing, sing sing) and lots of fluff for the rest of the music...some of the same in 80 and 81...we never really HAD a great overall drum line in those days, just a really good snare line! (and an awesome timp line in 1980 :thumbup: ) 1981, I remember getting the tom parts, and thinking that they were pretty easy for a drum corps, and not quite what I remember in 79 when I walked in and was handed Granada Smoothie to learn (yikes!) Yeah we had 6 toms, but we had some lame parts...1982 brought us a change in drum instructor (RM) and a change in parts...although it seemed that he wrote a lot of notes, then took the parts out when he couldn't get them clean...so by August, the THICK parts we had dwindled to next to nothing, and it (I feel) made the corps suffer in the long run.

RM was NOT the solution to the drum line's problems, but a stepping stone in the right direction.

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LOL, glad you explained... thought I was having a brain cramp... "why is my post at the top again......" :blink:

On topic... who's in charge of the WSM Sr guard? Saw another jacket last week but with everything that has been going on I forget where.... Latest mess is Kris dad is in HellSouth (oops HealthSouth) for rehab after a fall and he's not supposed to be home by himself. Real reality show of everyone "knowing" what he should do.....

I think we should get a group together and get out there and support the guard this year by going to a show together.

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I think we should get a group together and get out there and support the guard this year by going to a show together.

Toss some performance dates out....I can try to give it a shot.

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Toss some performance dates out....I can try to give it a shot.

two i can pretty much guarantee:

2/23 at LD

4/27, Chapters at CD East.

for more details, visit www.njatob.org/winter/events

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2/23 at LD, unless the boss has me out of town or busy that weekend, there's no reason not to get to that one (heck if I was really ambitious, I could WALK there, I live so stinking close)

Keep that one on top, Boom!

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2/23 at LD, unless the boss has me out of town or busy that weekend, there's no reason not to get to that one (heck if I was really ambitious, I could WALK there, I live so stinking close)

Keep that one on top, Boom!

LOL, and CD East is my old HS rival.....

LMAO, but have to remember my old high school is now one of the middle schools.

And the new HS (aka the Taj Mahal) is outside of Lower Paxton Twp. If there is a big problem, the school has to call the staties.

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LOL, and CD East is my old HS rival.....

LMAO, but have to remember my old high school is now one of the middle schools.

And the new HS (aka the Taj Mahal) is outside of Lower Paxton Twp. If there is a big problem, the school has to call the staties.

Have you seen the new McDevitt?

Nothing is like it was!

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