Cavie74

I sat in CC in 2002 and the sound was fine. I moved to the back of the lower deck at the 50 for the encore and it was loud but the reverb was terrible. I think the best seats are anywhere in the upper deck. The judges take the first two rows of the upper deck and you're really close to them in CC.

I don't see him logged on right now - Mike lives in Chesterton Indiana.

Dan Spalding - Percussion arranger for Cavaliers and Spirit of Atlanta mid seventies to early eighties. He's the founder, musical director, and conductor of the world touring Philadelphia Virtuosi Chamber Orchestra: http://www.philadelphiavirtuosi.com/danielSpalding.html

To give you a perspective on how clean SCV was back in '74, They probably had fewer than 10 ticks for the entire line for the entire show!

Retreat, DCI Midwest 1975 - Whitewater Wisconsin The Kilties lined up next to us. I look over at their drum line after they get to their spot. They stacked their bass drums into a tower and their snares into a pyramid. They then proceeded to sit on their capes like a picnic behind their drums. The icing on the cake was when they broke out the Doritos and cigarettes! b**bs

Sorry everyone, I was out of town. The guy was at a west coast college and attended a west coast corps' rehearsals during the winter. He would attend our rehearsals when he was in town for holidays. When he showed up at camp the caption head found out and said "You can't just pick and choose. It's unfair to the guys that showed up to every Wednesday rehearsal all winter. And by the way, we're fully prepared to march without you." The guy made two mistakes. We were all pulling for him and congratulated him at the end of the performance. The caption head came up to him and shook is hand. It was one of those character building experiences for everyone associated with it. That was over 30 years ago and I still remember it like it was yesterday.

Yes, that's demeaning. There's no law that says a staffer can't be a rat fink. If a judge saw it I'm sure it would be reflected in the score. This is how it should be. That stuff happens all the time. Back in '74 there was a member of my corps that learned the drill and score 2 weeks before the season started. It turns out he was at rehearsals for another corps during the winter. We really needed this guy, he was a great leader and a great performer. At the first show, the caption head stood on the sidelines watching him with his arms crossed counting with his fingers the number of mistakes the guy made. If he reached 3, the guy was out! Everyone on the field saw it and knew what it meant. It's tough out there and everyone expects 100%.

Here’s my 2 cents on amplification. If you’re going to use it, you might as well make every effort to produce a quality product. If this means using the standard method of using a sound board operator in the audience – so be it. Those of you who suggest it reduces the responsibility of the performer to perform at their best are selling those kids short. I’m certain they all making every effort to march in time, in step, in line, in tune, with the ensemble, AND WITHIN THE DYNAMIC RANGE as instructed. To suggest that the performers don’t make that effort is silly and demeaning to the effort they put out to entertain us (the audience). Some instruments and effects just can’t be produced without amplification. Given the fact that each corps has a short time to set up, I find it counterproductive to suggest they can’t adjust for problems during a performance. That’s like saying a guard member can’t pick up a dropped implement or a horn player can’t use his spit valve during a performance. Would you suggest that the Rolling Stones should set up their sound board moments before going on stage and not have it manned? After all, they should be professional enough to control their own dynamic range. Should the Chicago Symphony Orchestra not use a mixing board to improve the quality of their recordings? After all they are among the best musicians on the planet. If the objection is that a non-marching member is in control of the quality of the performance we hear then let’s have a uniformed member man the board. I have a better idea. Let’s have every contest venue provide one standard set of amplification equipment that every corps has to be prepared to plug in to. They don’t have to haul their own gear out there and the playing field would be level with respect to the quality of the equipment. It would be a predictable constant like yard markers and hash marks on the field. Let’s have the marching-member-sound-guy climb the stands and sit near the GE and Penalty judges so they can observe what he/she does. That should minimize the possibility of any shenanigans with an equalizer. It also gives the Penalty judge something to do besides watching a stopwatch.

Would anyone like to discuss the Muchachos disqualification in 1975? First I might suggest plowing through the 233 posts over here: http://www.drumcorpsplanet.com/forums//ind...isqualification

I'm playing in the Classic Cavaliers alumni corps and we're having a lot of fun playing those old Larry McCormick and Dan Spalding scores. Those two have to be right up there with the contemporary guys. My wife took some pictures of us at the Michigan City Show. How do I post them here? John Leo Cavaliers '74 - '77 Classic Cavaliers '06

'75 Madison. As soon as they finished their opener (at their first show of the season) and were able to clear all the babies thrown from the stand off the field, the buzz was "So who's gonna take second at DCI finals this year?"

I’ll agree with Blue Devils ’76 and ’77. They had great books for great shows. They executed the heck out of them. I loved those North tenors. I got to see them a bunch of times those years and watch them improve from show to show. That ’76 drum line established the Blue Devils identity we recognize today. I’ll also have to add SCV ’74 to the list. They were super clean. Robby Carson really set the bar high for individual snare that year. The show was incredible for that era. The “Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra” drum solo had some incredible full line one-handed stuff.

If I didn’t make the cut in Cavaliers, I wouldn’t have marched anywhere. I was born in 1960, and the youngest of five kids. All my siblings marched in the neighborhood drum and twirling corps “The Hi Lighters” so I did too. We were taught by Cavaliers from the neighborhood. In the sixties and seventies, every town and neighborhood in Chicago had some kind of marching unit. I can think of a dozen guys from Norridge Illinois that marched in the Cavaliers at that time. If you look at a map of Chicago you can find Norridge as a one square mile area on the northwest side of Chicago completely surrounded by the city. Its due east of O’Hare airport. Some of the corps from that part of town included the Cavaliers, Norwood Park Imperials, Des Plaines Vanguard, Mount Prospect Guardsmen, Franklin Park Colonels, and Nisei Ambassadors. The twirling corps from that era included the Hi Lighters, the Harwood Heights Flares, the Velvet Knights, Vernel, the Silver Knights and others. Guys from my high school marched in the Cavaliers, Norwood, and the Kilties! Guys that I marched with in the Cavaliers came from all the local twirling corps. We were all taught by Cavies and that’s where we gravitated. No-one really corps shopped. You stuck with one corps and wouldn’t even consider another. Back in my day, Cavalier practice was every Wednesday night beginning in October and every other Saturday. We began learning drill in January and finished the program at camp during Mother’s Day weekend. We used to car pool because half of us were too young to drive.

Perhaps they're trying to nurture some audience participation like a midnight showing of "Rocky Horror Picture Show". People come to those performances dressed as the characters with a goody bag containing toast, a squirt gun, newspaper, toilet paper and a bunch of other stuff. I went to one 25 years ago and when it rained on screen, the audience squirted straight in the air. The characters on screen put a newspaper over their head and the audience did the same. Someone proposed a toast and well... toast went flying. Brad (a character) says "great scott!" and toilet paper goes flying. I think the Cadets and their loyal fans would really like to have the audience loosen up and buy into what they're doing on the field.

I don't think a judge is going to go on the record saying that order of appearance doesn't matter. From one Cavalier alumnus to one Blue Devil Alumnus, I'd be delighted if the Blue Devils would volunteer to go on first at DCI finals. After all, It really doesn't matter. Or does it???? John Leo Cavalier Former Marching Member 1974 -1977

I was in the stands when this video was shot. The sequence starts with the corps making a series of large right angled forms all over the field. The horns and guard separate from the drum line and form right triangles at the uper left and lower right of the field. As you can see the tempo is fast paced and the music is very aggressive. The drumline is staged between the two triangles and each section (tenors, snares, and basses) have to snap individual wheels to form a diagonal as the two triangles collapse on them to form a HUGE box. At one point the flags are flying amongst everyone. I'm surprised some horn players aren't missing some teeth with what's going on. The music changes to a techno robot theme driven by the pit. They use amplification techniques (no voice microphones to be seen or heard) similar to Blue Devil's train theme for the robot sound. As you can see the corps busts into a Geico Gecko robot move. The next thing I remember is that the music turns humerous and the box is deformed in a funny way that will be talked about all year. I can't speak about the horns but the pit and the battery are very clean and the ensamble is very tight already. The snares are tilted and worn a little low. It hints to an old-school percussion style. The book sounds like its a gas to play. I hear that they spent the first week of camp on marching technique and no drill. They must have spent a lot of time on visuals because the show is packed with gimicks already. My overall impression is that the corps looks huge because of the 72 horns but the guard looks a little lean. They must have lost the 8 guys to the hornline slots. Overall the show has a different look to it from a typical show because they aparently mask the size of the guard by integrating them into the drill much more than a typical drum corps show. By this I mean that they spend less time framing the perimeter of the show or being the feature staged on the front 50 yard line. As usual, everything looks ... tidy. That's one advantage to marching dots as apposed to marching forms. Cavalier FMM '74 - '77

On the starting line, from Oak Park Ridge Illinois, the Chicago Cavaliers! I hate when the announcers ad lib (circa 1974). :(

Oops You're right. I have a good memory, it's just short!

You can see something similar in the Cavaliers 2002 Frameworks show. About 2/3rds of the way through the show the hornline is running in spirals during a drum feature that ends with a rifle toss over the snare line. The horns are staging themselves for a moment called "family photo" where they are clustered into three groups. If you watch the right-most group run, you will see a baritone fall and his horn comes apart. As the snares are performing their feature you can see him trying to work the slide back into the horn. I'm not a brass player but I think the guy told me he couldn't get the slide to move because of internal pressure inside the horn. He'd push it in and it would pop right out. He would have needed to press one of the valves to relieve the pressure. I think it ended up popping out and he left it. A field judge eventually picked it up. b**bs

Around 1980 or 1981 the Cavalier snare line spelled "NICE T?T$" for one count with their sticks.

What happened to the Muchachos in 1975? I marched in the Cavaliers in 1975 and we busted them. One of our members marched with the Muchachos' feature Roto-tom player in Blessed Sac when he aged out of that corps. He (the Cavalier guy) told our management who told DCI. They asked him to stand on the sidelines after the Muchachos DCI Prelims performance and point him out. The next thing that happened was that DCI decided not to anounce Muchachos prelim score. Rumor had it that they may have outscored Madison that afternoon. When we (The Cavaliers) showed up for finals, we were heckled in the parking lot. We were roundly booed on the starting line. People threw all kinds of debris at us while we watched finals from the back stands after our performance. For us marching members, the east coast reception was highly entertaining and it motivated us to a better than expected finals performance. It was really a shame for the Muchachos. They had an exciting show. They had this spectacular lead soprano that played some kind of call to the bulls perfomance when the corps was lining up on the starting line. It electrified the crowd. If you don't know what a Remo Roto-tom was it was a tunable three headed tenor drum without drum shells. You tuned it like a tympani by rotating the head on spider-like frame beneath it. The Muchachos had the full package that year and were in the same class as Madison in my opinion.