Marthonius J. Gleason

Ha! I love you, man!!!!!! You *get* what it's like to be a CA drum corps fan. B) And I'm such a dork, I'm not even going to finals. D'OH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I was there on the 50yd line in the 2nd row from the top. Great seats! I've been watching SCV rehearse all week because they've been housed at the school across the street from my house in Fremont, CA since June 11 (yes, lucky me :P ). The design, quality and overall impact of their show did not hit me until last night, seeing it performed in uniform and up high. I can say for sure that they have a GREAT show this year! All areas of the corps are very strong: horns, drums, guard, GE and visual. They have the whole package. I can't wait to see the finished product in August - they're about 75% done w/their show as far as I can tell. I'm guessing they'll have the whole show on the field next weekend or shortly thereafter. I heard from a reliable source that they are getting the drill for the closing piece tomorrow (Tuesday). I had a bad gut feeling about BD's performance as they were coming on the field, and left Stockton feeling very dissatisfied and confused. I saw many problems that I've never seen from BD before: phasing, out of step marching, interval problems, and a color guard that seemed well behind the "norm" for BD on any given year. BD usually 10 points SCV early on. I felt like I went to Stockton and landed in some bizarro universe. Major disappointment, although I won't lie. I'm an SCV alum, so I was VERY happy to see them win, in the early season and with an unfinished show to boot. They deserved it last night. The crowd was on their side as well. We'll see how this pans out in the coming weeks. I agree with Bill Thomas though about GR's quote about poking a snake with a stick. BD has never laid down and licked their wounds after a loss, and they never will. They will crank it up and come out with a vengeance ASAP, which I am looking forward to! OK, I'm just gonna come out and say it. I'm sure I'll get flamed to death, but oh well. I think the "Vanguard yell" (a fairly new product in drum corps, which I refuse to partake in) is kind of silly. Sorry!!! GO SCV!!!!!!!!!!!!

Disclaimer: I saw BD's show only once, on June 18, their first performance for the 2005 season. What they're doing now may be something completely different given how show designs can change drastically over the course of the summer. That said, their show was a huge disappointment to me. My initial impression of it was a semi-professional dance troupe with some horn and drum accompanyment. Now, I'm not a color guard person, so my view may be biased, but for me it was way too much color guard. A good drum corps show, for me at least, has balance, and the BD 2005 show I saw didn't have enough for my tastes. I will see them again at finals. Ironically, I'll have seen their first and last performance of the year and nothing in between. I am truly hoping that I'll enjoy it more the second time, but I'm not keeping my hopes up based on what I'm reading. As always, this is NOT a slam to the kids or their talent level, which as always is phenominal. I just dislike the show design - that's my honest opinion. Martha

Watched: Sky Ryders 1987, St. Louis MO. Beautiful. I watched from way up high on the top deck, and cried at the end when the "Tony" and the "Maria" kiss, then run off the back side of the field together. No other show has ever made me cry. Performed: Finals 1987. Absolute pure joy and exhileration. Whatta way to age out after four great years, especially with what I (and, as we found out later, Gail Royer) felt was our best performance ever in the history of the corps. Kent Cater and Allen Kristensen (our respective bass and snare techs), had to help me off the field and up the ramp at Camp Randall, cuz I was crying so hard I could barely breathe or walk. So many fabulous emotions. Wow. Still intense to think about. ***And I remember Santa Clara Vangaurd refusing to walk by and salute the Cadets... Talk about CLASS*** Yeah, that was something we heard all about my rookie year in 1984 as an example of how SCV should NEVER be. You can't blame the corps for that though. Supposedly, it was something the DM did all on his own, spur of the moment. or so we were told. Legend had it that that the DM was "fired" after that, even though he didn't age out. Sad....but boy, was the animosity towards Garfield strong with us in 1984. Stupid, huh?

Darn, I don't have speakers here at work <**> I'll have a listen at home tonight. Thank you Blue Devil Legend!!! :) Paul Wojtena was awesome! My other fave judge was Len Carey. He would always judge us fairly. I think somewhere out there is a tape of him judging GE percussion from the same show, and he's going apes**t at the end of Great Gate of Kiev. :P Martha

I can't recall actually running into someone I marched with randomly. However, a year ago Rich (BD alum husband) and I went to a party at our synagogue for some girl's bat mitzvah. The party, being in the summertime, was a casual dress affair, and as we walked up I noticed a teenaged boy wearing a grey and black baseball jersey t-shirt with a number 67 on the back. I recognized it as an SCV shirt, and I called him over to ask him about it. I had no idea who he was nor him me, since there are about 300 families at our synagogue. Rich and I became his best friend in about 3 milliseconds. He dragged us over to meet his parents, who it turns out we did know indirectly through some of our other friends there. Anyway, the kid Jake was a huge drum corps nut and was planning to audition for SCV in the fall. He auditioned, and ended up making SCV Cadets. We became good friend w/the family, and even went to some shows w/them this summer. Best of all, he's only 15 so now I feel like I have someone I know personally to root for in the SCV organization for a few years. All I can think of is that had that particular bat mitzvah party been formal dress, as they usually are, he would have been wearing a regular shirt and tie and I probably never would have found out the kid had an interest in drum corps! Things happen for a reason!

I dunno what happened, and no offense to the kids in 2005 BD, but the brass loss to CC gave me plenty good reason to run in to my BD horn alum husband and shout out a hearty "neener neener neeee-nerrrrr". Immature, yes, but GOD, I LOVE doing that to the arrogant little poo! :P

It was an ambulence going by. I remember it very vividly.

This may or may not be an urban legend, but this is what I heard: We were playing the first of two Stillwater, MN shows in 1985. BD was there too. The first night, we won drums. What we HEARD was that the next day, BD's entire drum line decided to say "f*** it" to practicing and snuck off to a local theater to go see the film "Rambo". Supposedly, Tom Float found out, went IN to the theater, and loudly kicked them all out and made them go back to practice cuz he was so ###### that we had beaten them the night before in drums. Any '85 BD drummers out there who can confirm or elaborate on this story? Clearing up a couple of SCV urban legends started earlier in this thread by Sam or Rob: First, we did not lose "most" of our horn vets to the Olympic band in 1984. We lost three lead sop vets: Mike McWilliams, Kevin Kono and Ron Abadam. All three returned for their ageout in 1985. We DID have a ton of rookies though that year: 98 to be exact. God, we sucked SO hard in the spring, even right through Memorial Day camp, and I'm sure the staff was preparing for an embarrassing and painfully long summer....but then suddenly, inexplicably, out of nowhere we became REALLY good and slaughtered everyone pretty much all season long. Second, I don't know if Lee addressed this yet, our snare line did NOT climb to the top of Camp Randall and throw off their drums after we lost by .01 in 1987. That would've been kinda cool, but it didn't happen. If it had, Ralph Hardimon would have killed them AND probably their immediate families, thus Lee would not exist anymore....so you know it can't possibly be true since Lee is alive and well. However, our pit decided to walk off the field in protest right in the middle of retreat. We decided "f*** it" and took off to load the truck. We marched around the back of the stadium, and I think we scared people we looked so ###### off. When we arrived at our equipment (which was waiting by the ramp to bring on for a victory performance - D'OH), most of our parents were all there waiting for us...and most of us broke down and fell into their arms crying. Sigh.... Third, the burnt down BD food truck: BD put their horns and drum equipment into their food truck after the Minneapolis show in 1985 cuz their equipment truck had broken down. I remember waking up on our busses in the middle of the night when I overheard Gail Royer talking to our driver via CB about the fire. We were absolutely stunned and broken-hearted for BD. They used VKs percussion equipment for the next few shows, which was funny cuz that year VK had really loud teal blue drums. Not a pretty sight to see poor BD on the field.

I am trying to sell off my semifinals tickets. I have SIX tickets available. I am willing to sell them in any amount possible, whether you want one, two, or all six. I just need to get rid of as many as possible, or all if I'm lucky. The tickets are in section 330, rows 9 and 10. Please contact me if you are interested at marsha_garsha@yahoo.com. I'd like to sell them at face value, but I *might* consider taking a hit on the price if it means I can sell them to someone who might actually use them. Make me a REASONABLE offer....I'll consider being open to it.

Haven't read through the 7 pages of replies yet, so this may be redundant.... Garfield Cadets at Whitewater in 1984....the domino effect at the tail end of the Z pull when the last kid bit it....and then next, and the next and the next. Yikes! Scary to watch, but whatta recovery. They still won marching too. D'oh!

I don't think I can't post any of the songs we sang without censoring pretty much every word. Clean cut SCV...HAHA!!!!! I know this isn't a song thing, but at night sometimes we DID play a great game on the bus called Porno Theater. Basically, someone would read a Penthouse Forum over the bus' PA system while two people in the front two rows would "act out" the scene via flashlight with two stuffed animals in the aisle. Of course, this game got REALLY boring in about five minutes. I mean, c'mon, we're talking about cute little stuffed animals here! It DID kinda beat singing though! b**bs ^0^

Hidleeho Mavaroo!!! Geez, it was less painful giving birth than it was setting up an account and getting logged on to DCP!!! First of all, to set the record straight, I am in NO WAY related to the SCV Leeson family (Jeff, Debbie or Ed). My family is very much into geneology and I can assure you that those Leesons are not in my lineage. Leeson is a very uncommon name too, so it's quite surprising and interesting that we're not related. It's simply a bizarre coinkydink that there have been as many Leesons as there have been in the SCV family over the years! Mav, that IL air is doing something to your purty head, because my parents couldn't have cared less about drum corps when I was in. On the SCV board? Ha...maybe they were bored by SCV. They were and still are symphony musician snobs. My saving grace was that I didn't join BD...that "lowly jazz music" would have had me eliminated from their will for sure. :blah: BTW, Mav definitely forgot our all-male rifle line in 1987. The ten of them collectively won the Rookie of the Year award that year. All of them were awesome guys, and they endured a lot of homophobic crap from the guys in the drumline at first. They really proved themselves fast and shut up their critics even faster. TTFN! Martha