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For those who don't know, today marks the beginning of move-in at Castleton College in Castleton, Vermont. The section leaders, drum majors, battery percussion and front ensemble should all be there by sometime tonight. The brass and guard arrive on Monday. It is an awesome facility, surrounded by the Green Mountains on all sides, and is enhanced by the fact that the members and staff eat three meals a day (all you can eat buffet style) in the campus dining hall, and the members sleep in the adjacent dorms. Staff sleeps in the faculty dorm. The kitchen truck is there and will provide the second dinner, usually at 10pm every night. One of the gyms is the home space for the guard and also provides space for corps meetings, sexual harassment training, etc and the other is taken up completely by the outgoing and incoming percussion equipment. Adjacent to the percussion Gym is the uniform room on one side and the medical room on the other, where Dr. Vivien and her team of medical interns set up. There also a large, windowed room with about a dozen folks sitting at a huge boardroom style table all with laptops. These are the admin folks, media team, merchandise team, and the rest of the corps office staff who essentially move from Hyde Park to Vermont for the duration of spring training. The stadium is quaint, but is artificial turf with nice aluminum seating and decent early season height for the staff. Within walking distance is "downtown" Castleton, with the famous Blue Cat Bistro and the really cool pizza "Third Place" and literally one gas station with two pumps. Boston's first shows are July 1st and 2nd in Lynn and Quincy, MA, and so it begins. I hope to visit for the first time 5/30-6/1. I am trying to thread the needle between my hs band's Memorial Day Parade on that Monday and our drum major auditions that Thursday. I am looking forward to being there with them, and will do my best to post daily updates in real time, which readers here can believe or not. 😉 I think this is our 8th or 9th year here, and the kids call this home. They even have named some of the nearby mountains. I am so glad the time has come.

This may be an unpopular opinion, but I really hope the design takes a major step up this season. 2022 looked to me like a show scoring in the lower 1/3 at a BoA regional. IMHO, what is needed is what used to be known as 'Madison Swagger'. The screaming brass, and importantly, the overall confidence - 1980s & 90s Madison owned the field from the second they entered to the second they exited. The problem is NOT because they went coed - women can be just as confident. Make Madison Great Again.

Happy move in weekend Crown!! Cannot wait to see and hear your magic this season!

Its really good food honestly. All you can eat with variety and every visual staffs worst nightmare. Ice cream. Craig really is right. Castleton to a lot of us mm's is our second home. I basically spent my last four summers at Castleton. We end up knowing every nook and cranny of that town and we do have silly little names for the surrounding mountains.

Just listened to Jojo's bizarre adventure and Stardust Crusaders. BD is going to slay it in 2023.

Boston will be complete. The planning of the show, for the first show is in place. The staff is very efficient in teaching drill and planning the layering during the season. They have a community night scheduled for June 17 in Castleton. They’ve been done each year for this event. No reason to think they won’t be once again.

Ha ha, they know every nook and cranny. The town is so small there is only one nook and one cranny. It’s a great place for ST. No distractions.

Really love hearing about the good food. Keep it up. Here to stand up for ice cream, though. 🍨 Are there sweet options that pack more nutrients? Sure. But from an ayurvedic perspective, dense, sweet, cold foods (ice cream included) can help keep fat on body types that have trouble doing so, especially under the demand of drum corps summers. Also helps to tame a hot digestive system. I say enjoy all the ice creams, Boston. Going after whales is tough work that deserves sweet treats. 🐳

I watched BLL in the theater last year while my brother watched on Flo. Flo used the BLL crew. Rondinaro & company.

I said this last year. Just because they went coed didn't mean they had to lose the Madison style. I'm sure a lot of the females who joined Madison were wanting to perform that style. But last year just really wasn't it.

We managed to have 11&1/2+ min on the field by opening weekend in DCM, which was usually second weekend in June. Was it clean? - No. Did we add more stuff as the season went on? - Yes. I have no patience for incomplete shows in Marching Music's Major League. Plus, there are kids on the lawn that I need to go chase off...

Good. I will tentatively put them in the 'Nice' column. But, as Ronaldus Magnus said, 'Trust, but verify'.

Wow - I guess that means we won't need to start lining up at the Verizon gate until 8am for entry? 😜

The Erie Thunderbirds and the entire Erie Drum Corps' community welcome, again, the Cadets and offer our support for their continued success.

I posted in the Regiment thread, and I think we need to discuss the top shows from JD Shaw's illustrious catalog. My top 5, as of this second and subject to change at a later second: 1. 2018 SCV. My Body is a Cage was perfection, and I loved the Metropolis closer. 2. 2016 SCV. The "four seasons" kind of show has been done over and over, but this was a tremendous take on it. Love the last hook to end the closer. 3. 2011 Regiment. I loved how he melded East of Eden and Mozart. 4. 2004 Regiment. I don't listen to this show so much, but I think it's expertly arranged. I wish they'd had a better visual product - could've been more competitive (with fewer rewrites that took away from progress elsewhere). 5. 2010 Regiment. It gets a lot of love and deservedly so. Such an effective musical product, and he pulled it all from a lone source.

I am informed that all are performers/alternates. It may be that the alts get to do other jobs on the road but they are there to shadow, learn, and eventually perform.

2014 was the corps' first year in Castleton. Thanks to Patrick Refsnider for finding it

Yeah, the Castleton food service amazed by how much drum Corps kids eat. They told BAC that the members eat much more than the "normal college kids". And of course, drum corps kids all eat breakfast, which the regular college students apparently do not. 😀

Stop; you had me at 'all you can eat buffet style'...

JD is a consummate pro as a player, teacher, and arranger. Much respect from here.

Thanks for checking. He made it to Cleveland airport on time this morning and is currently on the shuttle to Erie with a slew of other Cadets. 😊

I get the frustration for sure but it seems pretty clear that many corps’ main priority, during ST, is increasingly less about learning the show and more about being prepared to handle the physical demands of the show, doing the building blocks of conditioning, strength- and movement training that they’ll need to have a successful, *healthy*, *low-injury*, endurance-friendly summer. Conditioning is obviously not new but the approach to it in the activity has clearly changed. Risk of injury is a lot higher. Stamina is harder-won. The “30 seconds of drill per day” ST expectation just isn’t the game some corps are playing anymore. They’re in it for the long game. And if that means incomplete shows after ST, but fewer preventable injuries over the summer, so be it, IMO.

They actually had to delay the show start time 30 minutes due to the folks lined up into two parking lots trying to enter. Then they had a weather delay after one or two of the first groups performed. I was watching my radar so I watched the first groups from the end zone & watched the events at the single gate entrance. They started with 3 or 4 scanners then added some more for a total of 7 scanning. Only one gate entrance. They're were HS students lined up from bus parking as well as car/fan parking. I watched a couple of guys from Boston with thick accents scolding the ticket office. (It was pretty entertaining.) I also talked to a stadium security guy in a golf cart & he said he's never seen anything like this at the gate entrance. He said they should have had the gate behind the press box open as well. I told him DCI does this at every show so the fans walk thru the "marketplace". But fans & students are going to the marketplace wherever it's located. Crazy 😜

It was both in the theater and on Flo last year

I think prelims last year started around 9-9:30am? So removing those corps would probably have moved the start time to 11:45am for this season. The DCI site show about 30-32 corps listed for prelims for 2023. Ticketmaster shows semis starting @1pm & finals @5:30pm which is the same as last year. Of course, semis & finals are a smaller set number of corps competing. The prelim numbers are based on the total number of open/world member corps competing. Plus last season, there were two or three international groups that I don't see on the list?

Was just asking because we have seen plenty of corps over the last 15 years use placeholder closers. Personally I will take that over a seven minute incomplete show.

Boston is in VT for 1st official day of ST today. 1st show is July 1 ( but Concert In The Park performance before then) so in VT for +/- 33 days. Season is 43 days. Very quick season. 18 shows before Indy.

And the crazy thing is typically several Corps exit ST with incomplete shows. I am tracking it this year & plan to name names when appropriate.

A person or group (thinking DCI) can go broke with court and lawyer costs even if they win the case. Knew someone who got sucked into a group sting operation. No idea if they were guilty, innocent or just stupid but they plea bargained part way through because of the expense. (State was going after 2 other people so this guy got probation for a few years.)

And don't "libel/defamation" only actually apply in the case that accusers are lying? In the case they're telling truth, they could still get dragged to court to prove it sure, which obviously, most survivors of abuse in drum corps don't need. But to be clear, just cause they're accused of lying doesn't mean they are. (I'm always posting with the intent of sharing info with other survivors.) I'm just not so sure how helpful it is for the libel/defamation threat to keep cropping up without more nuanced dialogue about it. Without nuance, it continues to be a scare tactic that protects predators in the end. The truth remains their best ally. Ultimately, we're talking about glorified bando-predators and their enablers protecting themselves by threatening use of this legal mechanism. Never forget that (not directed at MCG specifically.)

Right, and when someone commits and is CONVICTED of a crime, it's public record, and you can put it on a list. When they get fired for those actions and that person doesn't get charged/convicted, if the org that puts them on a list can't prove it in a court of law, they can be civilly liable for defamation/libel. Because they're saying, to other future employers, that you committed this crime. And if they can't prove it (and unfortunately most of those cases lack the evidence to be able to do that), then the person on the list can sue.

fewer corps and gotta line the timing up with the movie theater

The San Diego/Oceanside show is Saturday July 1st. San Bernardino show is Sunday July 2nd. Wife and I will be at both. Hope to see you there!!!

Nice! And glad that Boerma is back and arranging. Love that they are taking chances with Jazz and overall great music that we wouldn’t expect to hear on the field. Very much looking forward to this! But just one thing…for the love of Seattle, please do not have a patch or someone singing “ Black Hole Sun won’t you come and wash away the rain….”. Same with Rusty Cage, (which should be a phenomenal “in your face” opener). There is one Chris Cornell. And that Chris Cornell is hard to duplicate. Let the horns and percussion be the cover band and maybe some synth for those weird guitar riffs. If Black Hole Sun is the ballad, I’d like to hear something rough. Please no Sarah McLaughlin- esque patches. Beef it up and make it edgy.

That’s why it’s so lousy. Some Gen Zs I know listen to the same classic rock I do. The ones with taste, anyway.

Putting my CA kid on a redeye tonight. 😃 Safe travels to everyone on the move to their summer home.

The poster may be right. It might be the best season ever, great bread and circuses and even without a mainstay of DCI for the last 50 years in competition. My gall bladder was removed years ago. I held off on the removal so I could play with my alumni corps. My prostate went last month. My tonsils when I was 8. Age is irrelevant to the discussion, and a rather condescending comment to make. What original equipment pieces I still possess also make no difference to my perceptions or thoughts. The post is so typical of the "nothing to see here, nothing is wrong, go away", then make mocking comments school I see time and time again here when someone brings up things that make others uncomfortable. Like when... - things were brought up about two DCI at the time HoF directors that nose dived one of their corps nearly into oblivion and got the other one rendered effectively inactive through their behaviors that had been called out here. -A DCA corps had made serious efforts to bury the fact they had someone on Megan's list performing with them by threatening individuals in various ways to shut them up, and some of the members even made excuses here. Eventually someone doxxed out the secret here, and even then there were the "nothing to see here" crowds defending the decisions. (individual railroaded, even though the jury found them guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.... they deserved a second chance...umm, absolutely NOT...), and I pointed out at the time that the appeal in the linked official court documents didn't appeal the guilt, but the severity of sentence. They went away. So did the corps. - the recent SCV thread has shown there are elements in control at SCV doing the same thing. "Hush up, nothing to see here, go away or we'll drop the banhammer on you" when there's a real issue that they don't like having made public, even though the public documents are out there. So be aware that that kind of standpoint usually is a repeated failure. Look carefully at a lot of historical trends. Corps historically don't care about the well-being of their competitors. In fact, if they fail or have trouble, it's a benefit. They can get members, staff, and it's one less threat at championships. Jim and Jeff can vouch for the benefits of how Westshore got many great individuals from the failure of the Yankee-Rebels, as well as folks from Erie, Rochester, Johnsonburg, and Steel City when those corps had trouble. It's still like that. the OP in the Vanguard posted how some performers have landed with other corps and how he was happy they did, but he felt bad they didn't get the experience they'd hoped for. Whining? Really? Come on. The problem is, everyone's running out of corps to fail. One individual posted that no World Class corps has started in 7 years. In that time, one's gone inactive for this season, and another was basically suspended until a leadership change was done, and that's not likely to happen. Unless someone can find a well-heeled and financially savvy person like Mr. Cook, it's doubtful anyone can build one from the ground up and get it really competitive. As has been said by a mentor of mine on DCP, it's a walk to the gallows, the question is slower, or faster? The bread and circuses might be fine for now or a few years, but is it sustainable? There was a huge ruckus when the G6 proposal was leaked. That would have likely wiped out everyone but the G6, and indirectly, one of the masterminds behind it was moaning at the time how they weren't getting the best performers to audition anymore. Wiping out a few competitors may have helped their cause. It was likely a motive. Take the cream of the cream, and make lip service to education. Is it the answer? It's worth discussing. All just my tuppence. It's headed to some kind of tipping point in DCI and DCA. I'm not knowing when for either. Speaking of bread and circuses, Jim, if you're going to Dover, I'll take a personal day. I really dug your comment earlier. I'll show for the performers in Open who work just as hard. 3AM, time for bed.

The entire 1993 production at Phantom Regiment was inspired by Matisse cut outs. Silks, drill forms including the form the helmets made on the ground, the floral leaf motif on the guard uniforms, the color palette, the backdrop for the pit staging was all Matisse cut out inspired. I'm glad someone else mentioned us. I was starting to feel REALLY irrelevant. 😂

I lived on the west coast for decades and b!chd and moaned about only seeing BD early season. Now I've moved east and look forward to seeing my faves from the West late in the season at Allentown. Why do you hate me?🤪

Happy early move in day everyone, Go Crown!

…and your reputation as the go-to, CrownORACLE remains unblemished. Looking forward to another season of your memorable quotes, commentaries and indefatigable optimism. And God knows we need that ‘round here from time to time💫🎼⚡️🎺