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George Hopkins


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Again -- it's about driving more dollars into the income stream not about fans.

Marching is a niche activity.

Drum corps is a niche in a niche activity.

If your out pitching for corporate donations, you're odds of getting support for marching band are an order of magnitude better than getting support for drum corps.

I'm gonna stop arguing his points -- listen to the #### podcast. he makes the points perfectly clear.

you don't have to agree with his POV (I don't) but it makes sense.

I listened to it. he contradictd himself talking about recruiting is cutting people off, then talking about how he wants to recruit like the old days...which cut people off.

Edited by Jeff Ream
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But we have lost fans.

I'm sorry but where's the evidence for this? It seems to be such a commonly held view, but is there truly any solid evidence that drum corps has lost a lot of fans recently? Even if fans have been lost, might there not have been one or two new fans that have come to the activity in the past few years? ;-) Then there's the related canard that attendance is down. Again, where's the evidence?

Edited by ecamburn
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I'm sorry but where's the evidence for this? It seems to be such a commonly held view, but is there truly any solid evidence that drum corps has lost a lot of fans recently? Even if fans have been lost, might there not have been one or two new fans that have come to the activity in the past few years? ;-) Then there's the related canard that attendance is down. Again, where's the evidence?

Total attendance is unquestionably down compared to the 70s-80s. We have a small fraction of the number of corps and shows today compared to BITD.

I have never seen good data for full DCI tour attendance. Finals attendance is occasionally released by DCI, but in recent years mostly shows that Indy is not attended as well as venues like Pasadena & Denver were. IIRC, the DCI financials released in 2011 showed DCI ticket revenues growing at a slow pace.

To your point, there's no strong evidence that Bb and A&E have dramatically shrunk the audience. There is also no evidence showing that they've significantly grown it, contrary to what their boosters predicted at the time.

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hard to make that argument when your activity -- by design -- limits participation to brass players only.

(And drums. And guard)

/Says the guy who learned tuba since they didn't have clarinets in Suncoast

//Who marched with 4 other woodwind friends who learned brass/guard so they could march corps

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I know it's not your opinion, but it doesn't make sense unless he is trying to get everyone tied to schools.

and guess what schools are cutting first? funding for the arts.

and public school systems will want groups that will appear at their events. So, you think Crown will start doing football games?

gee...and here baseball doesnt take people who only want to play football. Symphonies don't take (except for maybe a special performance) drummers with a set or that want to rock out with a marching snare.

Hell Nascar doesnt take drivers that can turn right.

NOPE. Said I wasn't gonna argue his points anymore.

But you're way off the mark.

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(And drums. And guard)

/Says the guy who learned tuba since they didn't have clarinets in Suncoast

//Who marched with 4 other woodwind friends who learned brass/guard so they could march corps

In any given community, which activity do you think has more recognition: marching band or drum corps?

Yeah I learned baritone on a V/R.

But just like Jeff, you're missing the point.

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In any given community, which activity do you think has more recognition: marching band or drum corps?

Yeah I learned baritone on a V/R.

But just like Jeff, you're missing the point.

Nah, I get the point. I really don't care, as I don't see WWs in DCI any time soon. Just felt like pointing out that I, as a former WW player, learned brass to do corps. I never, not once, felt that membership in a drum corps was outside my reach.

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Nah, I get the point. I really don't care, as I don't see WWs in DCI any time soon. Just felt like pointing out that I, as a former WW player, learned brass to do corps. I never, not once, felt that membership in a drum corps was outside my reach.

Again -- the fact that WW players can participate by learning a brass instrument is irrelevant to his arguments.

And I don't expect it to happen either.

I'll just add -- your experience is somewhat different than marchers today. There are not a lot of woodwind players who walk into a top X corps and make the corps. They all learned that brass instrument during HS MB (which in my mind makes them a brass player who happened to start on WW).

Edited by corpsband
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In any given community, which activity do you think has more recognition: marching band or drum corps?

Yeah I learned baritone on a V/R.

But just like Jeff, you're missing the point.

I'm not missing the point. The problem is his argument is flawed. Very flawed. And in the eyes of potential sponsors, having flutes when you didn't before isn't going to mean a ###### thing except to flute makers.

it will probably lead to more "and one time, at band camp..." jokes if anything

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