Leland

It's not more difficult -- it's just heavier.

Imagine getting tired of Fruit Roll-Ups.

Yeah, that made us look like we had dead chickens sticking out of our shakos.. lol You guys got high drums for prelims with that performance, remember? It was kinda fun meeting up with Beatrix and trading renditions of Cruisin' For A Bluesin', too. I gotta tell ya, though, it was hard sticking around through the transition away from Union Pacific sponsorship. A lot of kids jumped ship, and it was almost a miracle that we came onto the field for '89. Thank goodness it came together by the end of that season. I think we were so frustrated about losing to the likes of Americanos and Northern Aurora ("Go for the cucumber!") that we busted our butts to tighten down the show going into Finals week. That was an experience in itself, because prior to each performance, we figured that we were going to be one place away from continuing to the next show. Every corps ahead of us had beaten us all season long. Shane's preshow speech for Class A prelims went something like, "Now, this is probably our last performance, so give it everything you've got, play smart, play well..", etc. So, we beat out a corps for the first time that year, getting ourselves a Finals spot. Okay, well, to go past Finals, we had to get something like 5th or higher overall that night, but it looked like we were going to be 6th. Fine, "go out and give it your best", yadda yadda yadda... So we beat that corps and advanced again to Open prelims, where we had our best performance of the year and beat another couple of corps to make Top 25 and Quarterfinals. We just kinda had fun with Thursday night's performance, figuring that we couldn't advance eight spots to get into the Top 17 for Friday. :P

lol.. well, actually, they're all back at mom & dad's house in Omaha... what few pictures there are.

Another way to word it -- Grab the big pipe by the bell at its balance point (as described above) with the bell straight down, and your right palm facing away with the thumb pointed to the ground. Give it a kick with your left hand, spin it, catch the bottom pipe with your left hand, and put it on your shoulder. "Helicopter" spin: Just like above, except start with the horn horizontal. You can be carrying the horn at waist level, or you can pick it up from laying flat on the ground. VERY IMPORTANT: Do NOT try to spin by using your right arm's wrist muscles. Imagine that it is a pivot, guiding the horn through the spin, keeping it from hitting you in the face (or, yes, the ####). ALSO, the horn is only spinning on one hand for about 270 degrees, not all the way up to the shoulder. Look closely at Scott's left hand in his clip -- it grabs the "shoulder pipe" right about when the horn reaches vertical again. Do this, and you will have control of the horn as it comes to your shoulder. Don't do it, and you're more likely to bust your forehead or drop the horn on the ground. How to spin in unison cleanly as a line: (This is a lot easier to teach in person, but I'll try to describe it anyway) -- Most contra spins are done in a ripple for two reasons -- to look cool, and to look cleaner than a potentially dirty unison spin. For a unison spin, it's best to have a count structure. There are four moments during the spin where a hand or shoulder makes contact with the horn, so doing them in sequence 1-2-3-4 will yield a repeatable, clean unison spin. These "moments" are when you kick off the spin with your left hand, then grab it again on the bottom pipe below the valves, then placement on the shoulder, and finally moving the right hand back to the valves. So, think of it like this: 1. Spin 2. Catch 3. Shoulder 4. Valves If you watch Scott's video clip, you'll see the "1-2-3" pretty easily. PS -- Hi, Shawn.. lol

You think that was crazy from the stands, you should've been in that corps. We couldn't believe what the crowd was doing -- ####, they were even chanting "Railmen! Railmen!" We had said to heck with the judges a few weeks earlier (we tied Colts in Canada, but found a 6-point gap two nights later), so we went to attention a second time specifically to acknowledge the crowd. What you don't see on the CorpsReps page is the repertoire for the '94 show. The board had decided to not field a corps for that season (what a depressing night that was when Bill Truelove and I heard the news), so to maintain our DCM membership and to keep the name out there, we decided to do a senior corps. That way, we could all march -- instructors, past ageouts, and current members -- and we could play just what we wanted to play, which was Tower Of Power. B) We marched the bare minimum of shows -- our home show, one road show, and DCM. We had one version of the program for the first two shows, then had two weeks (well, five rehearsals) to rewrite the drill and ground the percussion for DCM. We finally had everybody together for the first time Friday at DCM, finished learning the drill Saturday morning, and snuck past the likes of Governaires and Kilties to 2nd place and a Finals appearance. Man, that was fun. Last I talked to him, Truelove is finishing his master's in composition and running the music department at a high school in Illinois. Me, I'm whoring myself out by playing drum corps in the Marines. It's been a while since I've been able to get to an Omaha show. Is the Kearney corps true, or just a rumor? While Shane was teaching Ralston (might still be, for all I know), they would call themselves the Ralston Regiment, but they were still a band. ... cool, a Railmen thread. I may have to start getting some pictures scanned for the Yahoo group.