BigW
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Posts posted by BigW
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40 minutes ago, Jeff Ream said:
Bingo lost money and we couldn’t get people to come out to help run it. Again you weren’t there.
I was told that was not the case by someone who volunteered there. Sorry. That wasn't the perspective of that individual. I'd be more far inclined to believe their perspective than the Director.
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On 4/18/2024 at 4:40 PM, waliman4444 said:
My corps director got so ###### off at the results of our inspection that he pulled us out of the competition and had the buses take us to another show later that day...It apparently paid more than the first ...The rumor was that the circuit we were a part of thought we had gotten too big for our britches so the only way they could screw us was to do it at inspection(Yankee circuit 1966)...We hadn't lost there in two years at the time and effectively gave away our title...lol..C'est la vie..peace
That's not the first time where I've heard the feeling that the inspections were being used to tilt the playing field.
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3 hours ago, Lance said:
Back to high school marching band inspection back in the day, if anybody forgot black socks before parade inspection, our band director spray painted our ankles and feet black. Different times.
There was a friend at the Bucs in the early 80's who forgot his pants. They fashioned a pair of pants out of Hefty bags and electrical taped it to him. Luckily they had those long blue coats at the time down to just above the ankles, and no one noticed during the performance.
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Regarding some of the permissiveness of certain things in Cadets culture in the GH era---
I'm gonna throw a lifeline and see if someone knows this with more certainty. Around 2006ish a friend and I were discussing Cadets and they shared some videos with me and explained how well the visual package was coordinated into the music. I'm watching and I hear this hollering on the video, not the normal crowd yells like "WE LOVE YOU, JEFF!!" stuff. I'm like, "what was that!?" and I was told it was a Cadets staff member yelling at some performer in the brass. He then resets and tells me to watch the brass. I see someone a bit out of form and after a couple of replays, it's IIRC "OH, GOD, (name of brass player)!!!!!!!!" Thinking it's the 2005 show possibly.
If it were me, that instructor wouldn't be back the next season. And had they not been back, I'm sure some other corps would have snapped them right up.
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On 9/5/2022 at 5:03 PM, C.Holland said:
There's a lovely old saying that "HR is setup to protect the company, not the employee"
A lot of these comments bring back memories. Dad was an Industrial Engineer in the steel industry, and he told me that at one time, HR was called "Industrial Relations", and it was about establishing good, positive, and strong relations between Labor and management, and that was how he was taught in college around 1960, and that's how he worked for 33 years.
Then, the term changed and that's when things began to jump the shark. People were no longer people but a resource like a crop to be harvested or scrap steel to be bought to recycle into railroad wheels.
Something to think hard about.
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6 hours ago, FormerXyloWhiz said:
Somethings really are, unfortunately, as simple as "boy grows up watching dad abuse mom, grows up and abuses his partner." Drum corps is no different. It takes work to find a different path than the one you were brought up in. Any time I have been involved in marching education I have been keenly aware and focused on not letting how I was originally taught be how I put things forward. Those old behavior pathways are always there, worn into the brain, and available to travel if I am not cautious and mindful.
Something I was told at some point in Drum Corps or College that made me stop on a dime:
"You teach like you were taught."
Read my last post about what was done to me at Syracuse. When I heard that little saying, I was determined NOT to do that. I learned HOW to teach from my brass instructors in corps and my college Wind Ensemble conductors. Some people like my HS band director, what to do and not to do. Some, what NOT to do. Getting a grad degree in Educational Development and Strategies also got me onto strong paths as an educator. Regarding Xylo's quote, I've seen abuse patterns exhibited by a student in a band I worked with. Ugly and still disturbing 25 years later.
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Jeff, I couldn't sleep after I realized there was yet another Red Flag I was aware of that you wouldn't have been aware of for very good reasons. I've kept it to myself for 30 years and have only discussed it a couple of days ago with someone else. Since this thread involves abuse- That contact person within the corps that we both know that I mentioned? Well, someone took that individual where there were no witnesses during a rehearsal and struck them. Who, Mom and I don't know, we just know the individual was struck and was afraid to say who it was. 30 years is a long time, but I'm thinking that was when Mom hit me with the question as to what in Hades was happening there. Mom and I don't know who it was. And whomever it was should be thankful I don't know. *sigh*
There was also the joint Bingo with the Fire Department where it was decided by the Management that it wasn't worth it. A loss of easy and steady income at the time. There's another Red Flag I remember.
A lot of times, I know more about many things that I let on, Jeff. I know to many I might come across as a total rube and a goof, but I figure I'm better off underestimated.
I know we agree on one thing, Jeff, and I believe everyone on this thread agrees:
We want the experience to be far, far better for young people who want to be challenged hard in this activity. It's an intense crucible where one finds out a lot about themselves. Without the discipline I learned and kept with me, I prolly would have given up in the hospital two Augusts ago. But I know I was determined and disciplined enough to fight hard from my corps experience.
We need transparency and professionalism badly. People need to stop running away from these things and try and bury it. Yeah, it's horribly embarrassing. Being called out and called a "Worthless sack of (insert colorful Noun)" like I was over the PA system at the Syracuse State Fair Grounds Stadium when I was 16 in the middle of a rehearsal was pretty embarrassing, and it still gets whole lots of great ho-ho-hos and chuckles when its brought up. I just smile and chuckle along, so funny. I overcame it and then some. I was determined to make it in the activity. Some folks might not have overcame that. The activity needs to learn from this stuff and do better.
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2 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:
quick point of order from someone who was there.....the red flags were not actually very apparent until after said championship. I too miss my corps, and was there for the resurgence. but many decisions and actions made AFTER the championship are what led to the fall of 97, and pure stupidity by those who took over mismanaged the last years.
I love you man, but you weren't there. I was, and you know the busybody I am, i asked a ton of questions and talked to a lot of people. A lot of us were fooled but the red flags didn't start appearing until the winter of 97. Come August well....they were full blown full field tarps.
Jeff, there were things I knew that happened before that. The big Red Flag was when the Business Manager passed away suddenly and the Director took the role of both Director and Business Manager by convincing people that's fine. and getting voted in. Right there's a huge Red Flag. Loss of Checks and Balances in management. That alone should have been a concern from everyone, and it wasn't. Those are two separate positions for good reasons, and it should have been done by two different individuals in spite of the sudden emergency situation. Some responsible individual should have been found. Bad things usually happen when one person is given too much control and there's no one there to check them. No, I wasn't there. I ended up doing other things with DCA. And if I was there at that point, I would have voiced very serious concerns about that alone and been shot down in flames. Likely been laughed out of the room. I look back when I made an approach about coming back in 1992 and got shot down. I think it was because I was thought of by the certain person who shot me down as someone who was going to ask too many questions about too many things.
There were other things I was privy too through contacts where things were shady and questionable before the Championship. It was why Mom had her questions. It's why that contact I had got the heck out of there before things got really bad and made sure the books on their end were tight. You can figure out who. Yes, the house got cleaned after 1the championship- but the damage was done in many ways before it, and there were enough clues there that even someone like me was concerned. Many folks were kind of oblivious or maybe they might not have wanted to look closer? There was a Championship to win, and if this stuff got dug up, it would have been a distraction. Folks wouldn't have been happy. As it was, folks were unhappy in many aspects. Was there an annual corps meeting some time around March where the corps' expenses were explained and itemized and how the income was raised and what the corps monetary balance was at that time after the Business Manager died? Just asking. That was done for 5 of the six seasons I was there, the Sixth was that whole insane six-week effort, and that really doesn't count. There's another red flag if the combination Director/Business Manager at that time didn't sit down and take the time to seriously discuss this with the membership like it used to be done. If that was done, all well and good, but I'm seriously asking you. Somehow, given who was the responsible person to lay out the accounting to the membership, I'm betting the answer is "no" and the excuse would have been that it wasted valuable rehearsal time, just trust me that everything is okay. Don't worry about where the jackets that were pre-paid for are, or the Rings. There's another red flag. Jeff- there were a lot of things that hard questions should have been asked about and got deflected, or folks were scared to go there.
Sometimes, when one is standing back from a distance and observing neutrally, maybe they're seeing more than someone that's right there in front of it about some of those things.
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19 minutes ago, IllianaLancerContra said:
Not to mention Henri Matisse, inspiration of the 2023 Blue Devils program, was to a degree a Nazi collaborator during WW2.
Now you mention, that, reading up on it, it was extremely weird. Then again, IIRC for some reason (Health and age?) he decided not to run for it and take his chances?
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40 minutes ago, FormerXyloWhiz said:
I'll preface this by saying I agree with the spirit of what this person posted in general. But, as somebody who was there, they do not know what they speak of with the Cadets regarding Hop. Of course the abuse was there before him, because lets face facts: the abuse was, and is, everywhere in the activity. No corps is immune from it.
The cycle didn't start with Hop, but he codified it there. He was dug in like a tick. His grip, an ironclad stranglehold. He was in charge for 34 years, more than one third of the corps' existence. He enabled the abuse there for those years and directly took part in it. Once he took over anybody who marched there can tell you: Hop's culture was the corps culture. Outside the abuse, that culture generally was "work yourself to absolute death if you have to in order to succeed." The work was literally all that mattered. Not people, not physical health, not mental health, not nutrition, not safety - work, even at the expense of all of these things. That was the lesson he wanted us all to get. With that culture, they won 6 out of 11 years with incredible performances. We all bought into that culture. We were flat out treated like dog sh** - and we lived for that experience. Looking back on it I see the absolute insanity. I would never let anybody treat me like that here in my adult life now. But I let them do it back then. Because they were the champions when I showed up for my first audition and I was not. I was a kid. I knew nothing. They're the adults. They must know. This is how you succeed. I must be wrong. I'll just take it.
Removing Hop drastically altered the organization and the culture. Immediately. The members from 2018 - 2023 were genuinely supported and taken care of to a degree we never were. It was a valiant effort. It was imperfect. But it was far better. Abuse is everywhere in the activity. Hop made the corps an even easier place for abusers and perpetrators to thrive. I hold him directly accountable for that.
The culture was there before Hop and outside Cadets. I'll testify to it. And it's lurking at the HS level and rears its ugly head more often than I care to recount.
There were many times at work when I was actively seeking a HS Band Director job when friends came to me with a newspaper clipping or a note telling me of an arrest and job opening. Sad.
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1 hour ago, Terri Schehr said:
The separation of the deeply flawed artist from their art is a tough call. I think Woody Allen and Polanski are despicable but I have to admit that I still watch their movies. And i didn’t flinch when Crown played Liebestod last year. https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20130509-is-wagners-nazi-stigma-fair
Oh, When I was an interim HS Concert band director, I scrapped "Elsa's Procession to the Cathedral", in part because it didn't fit the personality of the band, and also because it was Wagner.
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13 minutes ago, greg_orangecounty said:
So do I.
With as many corps that have folded over the past 45 years, My guess is that it's possible that the majority of former performers on DCP are in this situation.
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16 hours ago, Brass of the South said:
Jay Bocook is listed as a design consultant on BK 2024’s staff page 👀
Jay can punch his ticker where he desires and how. That being said, he's not getting any younger. Tom Aungst looks a LOT better than I do, but he's older than me (I'm 61) but he shows no signs of slowing down. My cap is tipped.
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On 4/11/2024 at 12:37 PM, Kopeck said:
Having marched with Phantom Regiment in 1985, early on learning the drill there was a lot of "get from here to there in xx counts" which made things sloppy at first but over time were worked out. And over the course of the season, everything did become muscle memory.
Things were more about pathing rather than well-defined subsets, which is why drill transitions are so much cleaner now.
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The same tarnish effect also applies to Stan Kenton.
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1 minute ago, greg_orangecounty said:
Feel really bad for Cadet alumni as the pain is real. I'm so sorry.
There's a lot of pain when your corps folds. I know this personally. But my anger is directed at those individuals who committed the malfeasance that killed it. And, the enabling that went on. My Mom asked me why it was all happening, and I told her, "People were willing to go along and ignore all of the red flags because the corps was gunning for a championship and didn't care about the long-term future of the organization." On that tangent, What Keith discussed and what Brian Tuma discussed on another thread as well as SG recently:
I've given a lot of thought about this. It's definitely the culture that exists and has existed. The activity is very result and win driven. Why are some of these people on board? They're perceived to get things done and that they're effective staff members, and there's an attitude with some people that to make an Omelet, well, a few eggs are broken, and well, those broken eggs aren't really corps material. There's also a very in house Good ole Boys' network in place. "Oh, X has a problem, well we can keep X under control here and they're great staff people, we'll give them another chance with our corps. We can keep an eye on them." Why? they figure they can win with this individual on staff or as a performer, just keep a lid on it.
People who turtle up about the dark secrets or shun those who speak up for fear it'll wreck their corps are playing into the hands of the abusers and enabling them. It's one of the tools of their trade. "Don't say anything or you'll be blamed when the corps gets sued and goes under." To me, that's evil incarnate. One can't knuckle under to that mindset.
Lord, I've got my dander up. And everything in the second paragraph has happened somewhere. Some of it, I've seen personally. You want to turn your back from it, shame on you. This (insert colorful noun here) has to stop.
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On 9/4/2022 at 3:38 PM, IllianaLancerContra said:
W/R/T sexual assault (or any kind of assault really) the jurisdiction where it occurs is where it will be investigated & potentially prosecuted. As Drum Corps travels through the season, any incident would need to be reported almost immediately, before the Corps leaves for the next show site.
For assaults that come ‘out of nowhere’, the victim knows what happened is wrong, and can get Corps leadership & law enforcement involved right away.
More difficult are cases where the victim is groomed; it seems that it sometimes requires time to pass before the victim realizes what happened is wrong & that they (victim) did not (or could not) consent. In these cases, Corps leadership certainly can act against the offender, but from a law enforcement angle it could well be difficult to prosecute.
Indeed. And I can tell you prosecutors want to make absolutely certain that they don't go in half cocked against an abuser Why? They do NOT want to fail and inoculate someone like that from further prosecution. It was a serious concern in the Sandusky case and was why they made sure they built a very strong and ironclad case before they moved.
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7 hours ago, 84BDsop said:
Yep...the echo chamber that was the venue was bad even on audio. Fortunately for SCV, the tear was after the gun, so no negative score impact
It was kind of a moot point. SCV was exciting, but BD was so tight and so "on" it didn't matter. I knew who won after BD's performance, it was obvious.
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On 4/11/2024 at 6:52 PM, 84BDsop said:
It wasn't just the tic that changed....it was also judged timing. Starting in 1984, shows were judged in their entirety....no more saving the riskiest stuff for after the 11:30 mark.
No more dropping a rifle and not having it affect the score (80 BD).
No more ensemble tear of the gods not affecting the score (82 SCV)
Now judging from beginning to end.
This also led to the end of every corps repeating large chunks of the prior year (much easier to clean when you already knew it)...83 BD was 3/5th of the 82 show....and the repeated charts were in the same places. 84 was the first year BD did not repeat at least one chart from the prior year (not counting the NY Fantasy tag ending). By 88 -- I think -- you rarely saw corps repeating charts in successive years as a matter of course.
I was in the audience at 1982 Finals, Sam. The crowd was so bananas there was no way in God's name SCV could have heard a thing on the field. I couldn't hear anything in the stands and my ears were ringing.
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Reaching out to Dr. Tim Ochran would be useful regarding the development of the Dot Books. He was on the ground floor of that development, though again, I have no clue as to contact.
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2 hours ago, IllianaLancerContra said:
Heck, I’m 62 & still don’t know what I want to do when I grow up.
I know what I wanted to do but School Administrators never valued the Corps experience on my resume and hired some real "interesting" folks and their cronies a lot of the time instead.
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4 hours ago, jmc5682 said:
That is so true. The reason I rarely come on the DCP forum is because the people leaving comments are rarely kind. They do not understand nuance. I normally just come on DCP forums to giggle at the BD haters.
Did you read about one of my former students who marched Cadets calling them "Spanish Gangsters" on the thread? I hope to God you get a giggle from that!
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12 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:
literally the name has zero value because if you own it, and new claims were to come up, guess who has to deal with it?
it's damaged goods. there's far more negative to trying again then to actually try again.
Agreed, if someone really had the plan and means to start a corps, they're better off creating their own brand for these exact reasons.
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17 minutes ago, scheherazadesghost said:
Some of us actively work towards this.
Honesty and transparency is something I was raised to have and live by. The total lack of that at one point killed my corps. This stuff has to stop. I'd add more but I have to eat/meds and get to work. A lot of things I experienced as a 16 year old kid who wanted nothing more than to play my axx off in a Corps have caused me to reflect on all of this, let me tell you. Later on that.
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The whistleblowers and survivors of abuse in this industry are tired...
in DCI World Class Corps Discussions
Posted
I wonder if the person who was struck was intimidated from speaking out by getting clocked. I honestly don't know but it would make sense. I believe John Williams was brought in after the person who was struck left.
Could I have spoken up? There would have been a "prove it and who the *Bleep* are you ruining everything?" response. The director is still regarded in some circles as a very charismatic individual in some circles in spite of everything and then, they were even more charismatic. And really... Was I in any real position? Possibly sued? Could I afford legal counsel at that time? In 1995 I was making 6:19 to 8 an hour teaching in a crappy private school or working nights. Hardee's employees made 7.50/hour. Maybe I get my lights punched out in the dark too behind the truck or somewhere else? A Mother in panic telling me to keep it hushed? I think that's not a very fair call. This isn't derailing the thread, really. Malfeasance went on. A volunteer exited the organization afraid and had been physically accosted. This is well part of the thread. Anyone who would have said anything would have been shouted down and taken the blame for wrecking the organization. Last time I knew that's a whistleblower by definition. That's part of the thread title. It's still happening out there with other Corps.
@50 years of this and I keep thinking for about 45 of it now- A lot still needs to be dealt with. I think since the arrests and jail time instead of quiet resignations and go somewhere else to teach at the Scholastic level has helped. I'm to the point where I'm becoming disillusioned as well.
A lot of good memories, but really, they say it takes ten good things to overcome one bad thing and I'm thinking I'm not hitting the 10:1 in my memories right now.
Maybe as a case study- a lot of programs end up where it has to hit the wall hard whether anyone liked it or not. There wasn't any other real option because of group think, intimidation and threats- and the how the perp manipulated everyone that expertly. We can insert many corps names into that category.