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Agreed. The timing, tone, message, would likely have been criticized no matter what. Nobody is perfect. I'd like to share my personal experience as my son was one of those left without a home after the Vanguard announcement. My son was very much looking forward to his rookie season with Vanguard and was devastated by the news. Our family will always be thankful to the several corps that reached out to him personally within 24 hours of the biggest disappointment in his young life to offer even a chance at still participating this coming summer. He made the decision to give it a go so we scrambled to learn/prepare new music, record endless amounts of videos and submit them to those corps that reached out. To his credit, he was welcomed with open arms to several corps, which added to the difficulty of making a decision on what to do and where to go. My wife and I left this decision up to him, only asking him to make sure he considered everything from organization history, connection with staff that reached out, geography, potential friends who might join him, etc. Living in CA and for selfish reasons, we wanted him to stay in the West so that we could attend as many shows as possible. To our surprise, my son chose to be a Cadet so I will only be able to see him perform in San Antonio and possible Indy for finals week. We support his decision 100% and he is over the moon at the opportunity to be a part of such a storied program. We have a box delivering this Saturday filled with over $250 worth of Cadets merch, ready to support the corp from way out West! The travel to NJ from CA for the next 4 months will not be easy (or cheap) but the connection my son made with the staff literally overnight and since then has been nothing but positive. I only hope that the other displaced SCV members who chose to find another home have/had as great of an experience as my son did in finding The Cadets.

Open Class is nearly 90% member due driven, hence its volatility. And then the board has to "find the rest" of the season budget. Should an open class corps only be able to find 70 students before tour, they need to make up the rest of the budget they didn't get when they planned for 110 students.

Can confirm. Mike

The only POV I care about hearing regarding any of this is that of the SCV performers who got shafted. If they were outraged by the timing of it, then fine. I'm not seeing that. And I couldn't possibly care less if it hurt the feelings of the SCV admin who acted like morons and let this happen in this way in the first place. Same with their alum who might have problems with it. Grow up.

it's all about tone and timing, neither was good JMO

On paper they are one thing, in actuality they are another. However, the further down the line you go, you replace teaching the show, with teaching of fundamentals.

Because, as I have said before, DCI is world class at burying their head in the sand. And sand doesn't become transparent until 3200F. And it isn't that hot. Yet.

Yes. But because of math someone had to be first.

NOTE: This article originally appeared on my old website as part of a series of 2010 show reviews. I've updated the article with photos, but the text is almost completely untouched. Enjoy! https://medi-nerd.com/2022/12/26/marching-monday-2010-bluecoats/

I lived in Mission Valley when I was stationed there (2002 - 2009).

That would be correct. Ron Burgundy land. 😃

This. This is the entire point right here. Nothing for me to add... ...although, I presume, from your name, that you're from San Diego?

Maybe I am old. However this many drum majors is probably the only thing I do not understand about modern drum corps.

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All that proves is that you and Tim Hinton, like Slingerland, are focusing on the top corps and not considering how the rest of them operate - dare I say, the majority of them. (Although at this rate, it might not be the majority for much longer... )

teaching the next generation to do it when you become a teacher

Not drum corps, but a very similar thing happened with my neighborhood HOA before and after we moved in. A guy with no financial background or training was the board treasurer. He filed the HOA taxes for 7 years... as a FOR PROFIT ENTITY. He paid himself between $100 and $350 each year to cost the HOA upwards of $50,000. It wasn't until someone else took over as treasurer and she asked me to look at the paperwork for the HOA. I solved the issue in 10 minutes over lunch with the Director of Tax for my company. It cost the HOA a 1 pound cheeseburger from Fuddruckers to file amended taxes for the last 3 yeas and get over $20,000 back. NP's have a lot of rules to follow and deadlines to meet, but the benefits of being tax-exempt are worth spending $300/hr on a CPA or tax attorney to handle it.

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ive watched theatre and dance companies have things incorrect in their paperwork, and because of the back and forth trying to get things corrected they either missed the deadline, missed the fixes needed, or both. Should have they just paid for an attorney to handle the process and walk the through it instead of "we'll figure it out" maybe things would have been handled better.

They WERE registered for years but from what I caught (board never spelled out how they screwed up) what they claimed to be doing didn’t match what they were doing. One year PA looked at their paperwork and… nope. Took them years to get NP back. Finally had to actually give money 😱 to a school to match the “educational” claims they made. And (thinking of DCI) they had been “doing it this way for years” so why change. And why get someone from the outside (like lawyers who deal with NP) to check. Plus same board members for years (just rotate thru the offices) so no one had a clue what was really going on. Don’t think any board member had any legal expertise but they tried to handle it themselves 🤦‍♂️

Boston has their camps in Texas. Every. Single. One. Their spring training is in Castleton, Vermont, with the members all flying in to Albany, NY. The corps charters buses to pick them up from that airport and bring them to the campus. And for the record, I would assume that the Cadets' membership is as diverse geographically as any other drum corps. The three kids I met and chatted with at the Quincy show last summer were all from Texas

some let the body cool a bit before posting

how much of the membership is from that region? and who says Cadets couldn't have camps elsewhere. Where does Boston have winter camps? Blue Stars in LaCrosse? Madison in Madison?

I drove past it this weekend as I was heading into the city as well...I got some of those same memories.

On a side note, I auditioned at Cadets for the '98 season but ended up not marching there for a couple of reasons. I was in NJ this past week and staying there while I was going to NYC to see some concerts. During some driving around locally my GPS took me past the school in Teterboro and gave me a ton of memories for the 2 camps I went to there.

Let's be honest, anything any corps does after the SCV announcement is going to spell doom if you ask the people of this forum. 🤷

Catherine Float - extraordinary front ensemble writer and instructor for the Blue Devils in the 80s and 90s, and one of the first females to do it, especially in such an excellent and innovative way.

Tricia Nadolny.

Probably would've been a better written proposal to split the MA caption into Percussion Ensemble and Brass Ensemble.

DCI design meeting circa 1991 "Hey guys, how 'bout this? We're doing Miss Saigon, right? Why don't we recreate the effect of helicopters evacuating frantic people by having the drums play from left to right across the field. It will sound like helicopters flying across the field. It'll be cool!" DCI design meeting, circa 2024 "Hey guys, how 'bout this? We're doing Miss Saigon, right? Why don't we recreate the effect of helicopters evacuatimg frantic people by having a synth player hit a key, triggering a helicopter sound which we can pan across our speakers left to right. It will sound like helicopters flying across the field. It'll be cool"

No woodwind proposal?

I’m a no on number 4.

Fred Sanford and George Zingali also missing from that membership! 😲

That is funny. Whenever we complain about appearance fees, revenue sharing, souvie sales, endorsement deals etc. only being available to the top corps, we are told that those revenue sources are small percentages because member tuition/fees still provide half the funding even for those corps. And to be clear, I am speaking about corps funding, not total revenue. In other words, if the $2 million bingo revenue comes with $1,999,999 in operating costs, I only care about the $1 it contributes to funding the corps.