mobrien

At a time when there were still 200+ drum corps in operation. They were "a few", and most of the rest of the activity was pretty ###### off, because it was clear that they were in it to have access to the money that their performances and recordings generated, as well as to have control over the judging system. I was around in the first few years of DCI, marching a non-DCI corps; trust me, DCI didn't do squat for anyone outside of their member corps except give them a shot to be seen at prelims at the various events. The focus on promoting the best corps was a double edged sword. it made drum corps much more visible, and much more respectable, but it also made it harder for small, local drum corps to hold on to their best members, since kids would rather be seen in a big corps that gets television time than a local corps that has a hard time breaking 60 on the competition field. In the long view, it was probably great timing for them to strike off on their own, since the future of small town drum corps was already cast, with the end of the baby boom and the mid-70s recession that gutted the northeast and midwest factory towns that were some of drum corps' biggest supporters. But make no mistake; DCI's purpose wasn't to create a utopia where anyone who wanted to form a drum corps would be given whatever help they needed, and even a 30 member corps from the sticks was treated as equals with the Troopers; it was the original Tour of Champions.

Not at all. Those kids who don't make the cut are often opting to sit out of marching altogether rather than marching at a corps that doesn't really do that much to excite them. The costs of membership in most of the World Class corps are relatively similar, unlike universities, where the price difference between Harvard and a much-less impressive school might be 50% or more. In a sane world, marching at a corps that's less competitive would be a lot cheaper than marching at a Top 6 corps, but it's not really the case. That being true, it's a disincentive for those who want to march to shift their sights down a little in the rankings if they fail to make the cut at BD or PR.

No one should have been surprised by that situation.

Anyone who thinks DCI is doing "exceptionally well" at a time when they are only drawing 16,000 to Finals and returning to the drum corps a fraction of the corps' overall expenses in producing the product DCI sells is delusional. DCI is keeping their head above water, barely. They have more mouths at their teats than they have resources to provide, and there's very little organizational focus on growing the audience past the existing moms and dads in the stands. There are no major corporate sponsors for the tour. The judging system is designed to allow a relatively small coterie of judges and designers to form mutual admiration societies that make moving up the competitive ranks almost completely impossible (that's not to say that the top corps aren't also the most accomplished in terms of design and instruction, but that in the visual and guard captions, especially, if you're not in "the club", your work is less likely to be rewarded fairly). And there's no one within the organization who seems to recognize that these issues are major problems, and is willing to stick a dagger in the heart of mediocrity and devise a plan for a radical reorganization of the competitive standards, the touring model, and the compensation system for the drum corps. DCI's a bake sale in a Hollywood world. They're keeping the doors open, but they're not exactly the next big thing.

Some of them are whiners, but it seems to cut across competitive boundaries.

Which is one of the problems with DCI, as a concept. There's no financial incentive for some of the lower-ranking corps to improve their product and make themselves more sellable, and a limit to how much the more marketable corps can leverage their success in creating popular products. There are plenty of corps that are not necessarily tops, competitively, who would still benefit from this idea, and I'd think that TEP's themselves would also find it beneficial to have the chance to put together the bill that best serves their particular audience interests. But the current model of "central planning" from the DCI office is failing to give the corps themselves an ability to benefit from their excellence and the TEP's from maximizing their own ability to create first class events. Any fear that Blue Devils would demand $10,000 to show up would be put right by the reality that most event promoters couldn't afford to pay that much for a single corps (unless the event were happening at a big enough venue that the promoter felt that having BD there would be enough of a draw, in which case good on 'em). By the same token, if the Board of corps X discovers that their corps can almost never get more than the minimum fee, because event promoters don't feel they'll bring that much of an audience to the house, the Board would have an incentive to ask themselves what they have to do in order to boost their corps' marketability (not their competitiveness; their marketabilty). Give the corps an ability to leverage their own excellence, and you've taken away any need for Board room antics at the DCI level. They'll be more focused on doing what they can to maximize their paydays on the road, and less focused on trying to squeeze juice from a piece of fruit that isn't that big to begin with.

And it sounds like the overwhelming opinion is that no, regular fans wouldn't care. They want to see the corps they want to see, and if they can see that group together in one setting, they'll go, regardless of whether the corps themselves are producing the show or whether DCI is collecting the gate. One of these days it would be an interesting experiment for DCI to try operating a season in which rather than the package pricing they have now, they instead instituted a minimum performance fee (of let's say, $1,400) per corps, but then allowed the individual show sponsors to negotiate with the specific corps they wanted. Were that to happen, it would start letting the market work in a way that the current system doesn't, and give the individual corps directors an incentive to make their corps as desirable as possible for the TEP presenters. Being a past title winner wouldn't necessarily be as important a draw as being entertaining, so a corps that might not be a Top 5 or 6, but had a unique draw, would still have an opportunity to capitalize on their skill at creating programs and an identity that people liked. Were that to happen, all the G7 discussion would go by the wayside, since each corps would be given a chance to realize their real market value (and as a side benefit, you wouldn't have to have sheets to try and encourage corps to be "more entertaining" - the paycheck at the end of the night would be the real motivator, whatever the judges have to say). Waiting to hear the first response from someone who will say that such an idea would only further empower the top corps - which would only underscore THEIR point in terms of their market value relative to the field. :tongue:/>/>

The players in question faked their eligibility to a level that literally rose to federal offense. There has never been any suggestion that anyone in Vanguard's staff was aware of their fraud. In the case of Muchachos, management was complicit in the illegality. Apples and oranges.

There's a partial video recording of the '75 prelims show from Philly out there. Picks up in "Pines of Rome" and goes most of the way through the rest of the show, if not completely to the end (it's been awhile since I've watched it). It's single cam, shot from what appears to be the press box. Sound quality is bad - at one point, you get some Elvis in the background - but like the Zapruder film, quality isn't as important as the historical interest. Ken Kobold's stereo audio recording from prelims is also out there, and can be found without too much trouble. I could believe DeLucia's claim that they beat SCV in drums that day, since the show was very clean, and they beat Vanguard the week before by a decent spread, but then you have to factor in that Muchachos were also marching with at least one overage member in the line, so couldn't legitimately "win" anything.

Drum Corps Planet. Now with even more tinfoil hat.

Looking at the scores from that season, it would have appeared that Cavaliers should have felt pretty comfortable going into prelims that they would make the Saturday night show. Their scores in early August put them right in a block that included Kilts and Regiment (and at the World Open prelims, they were only 3 points behind Muchachos, even though M's were considered one of the only two corps who had a shot of knocking off Madison that year). So there goes that part of the argument. Paul Milano's article mentions that the Cavaliers had information, but no proof, that Blue Stars were marching overage too, and that if they'd had something concrete, they would have used it. They couldn't get something incontrovertible, so they let it go. Muchachos, on the other hand.... 1975 was a year in which DCI was becoming a much more legitimate organization. It was the first year for Finals being on live television, it was a year in which the DCI brand really started to be accepted as the last word in what junior drum corps could be. In a situation in which the profile of DCI was growing, it was important to finally show the activity that they were serious about enforcing eligibility rules. As to Muchachos being singled out, probably not. Again, referencing the Milano article, Blue Stars were also suspected and would have been nailed, and they, unlike Muchachos, had been one of the founding organizations, with their director an enthusiastic leader of DCI in its earliest days. So the "DCI hated the Muchachos" thing doesn't necessarily wash. It's unfortunate that DeLucia cites SCV's experience in being conned by a couple scammers as being somehow analogous to Muchachos dq. Royer and his corps were the victims in that case, not the perpetrators, as was the case with Hawthorne's leadership.

I don't really think Gibbs/Hopkins/Coates would be that threatened by otherwise 19th/20th/21st place corps being seen on Finals night, especially if they saw that it helped increase the overall gate at Finals. The financial structure of a premier league being compensated at a greater level than national/second league would still stand, simply because the costs of putting together a top flight corps/team are naturally greater. Again, the English soccer leagues are the model. A truly major league would attract most of the marketing attention and would the most attractive to potential corporate sponsors, but if they're aggressive enough about marketing the product, there'll be more money that can be used to help seed and support more regional clubs/teams/corps that operate with a different set of goals, competitively.

If they're not interspersed, then people would just skip their performances, the same way they skip most of the opening hour of Finals night now. DCI needs to take efforts to show the corps at that level that they consider them as important, and this would be a little thing that cost nothing but increased the value of the experience to the kids in those corps. Who knows, some of the Finals night audience might discover a second league corps or two they really liked, and buy a t-shirt on the way out.

Probably not, but at a certain point, someone is going to have to call things as they are, if for no other reason then to maintain the credibility of DCI as an organization that arranges competitive events. If you're "World Class" but being beaten by other corps who are supposedly not as good as you, then you're probably in the wrong class to begin with. The more I think of it, the more sense a three-tier system makes. One more suggestion - make Premier finals cut-off for the top 10, and have the top 3 National (or whatever you call the second league) corps also competing on Finals night, so you're actually crowning two champions at the same event. Intersperse the national league corps in the schedule that night so they're getting the same type of audience exposure. Increase the overall audience for Finals night and give the kids marching in those corps, kids who'd normally be heading home or sitting in the stands on Saturday night, a chance to be seen by the biggest audience of the year.

Because you need to keep the scale of the performances relatively close. The difference between 110 and 150 is sizable, but the difference between 76 and 150 is a gulf too far. If you're promising sponsors and potential audiences 18 (or 16, or 9, whatever size makes most sense) of the Premier corps, they should have their expectations met by a product that fits certain criteria, and "enough members to make a statement" should be one of those criteria. Another element I'd recommend is that DCI get rid of the all-skate regionals in favor of the old model, where you had regionals that might have 7 or 8 previous years Finalists, but not everyone. There's no drama left in the season, because by the time they hit DCI East, most people who know anything about drum corps could pretty easily predict where everyone will wind up at Finals. Make the judges in Finals week work for their paycheck by taking away any opportunities to do the full-roster ranking and rating before Prelims day. perc2100, I think your three-tier idea is also workable, though a slightly bigger Premier League would allow for a greater regional spread of corps. In terms of "why", for me, it's about two issues: 1. Honesty and clarity in the eyes of potential audience members. Right now "World Class" has no meaning whatsoever, since some WC corps actually get beaten regularly by other corps in what's supposed to be the inferior class, despite DCI's promotion of the World Class as being "the best of the best" (their words). 2. Because adding a median league that would give members competing in what are now 16th or 20th place corps a chance to win their own championships is a good thing for growing potential interest in the activity. More champions at more levels makes everyone feel that they're involved in a race, not just those at the top.

There was a lot more movement in the early days of DCI than there is today. For the record, in '74 Cavaliers went from 15th to 8th, and BD from 23rd to 9th - no corps have achieved the same sorts of rebounds (in Cavaliers' case) or jumps in the years since the early 80s. No one is going to go back to playing with an Atari game system, and no is going to find a way to get back to making big time drum corps something that can be done well on $150,000 a year. Things have moved on since 1976, and while we can rue the passing of a simpler time, that emotion isn't going to do anything to change the reality of the picture as it stands today. In order for DCI to remain relevant at all, it will have to continue to try to present the most professionally produced work out there, or lose its reason for being altogether. In other words, if what the drum corps at the top levels put out there in summer isn't really 'the best in the world" in the world of motion and music on a football field, then DCI has nothing to sell. If it's no better than average marching band, turn out the lights. There's a model out there for how full-sized drum corps can operate, one that allows for competition to happen within stratified leagues, but also for teams in the 'lower' league to be promoted to the major league and for those in the major league whose competitive level falls to be relegated to a lower league, where they'll be competing with those who are more naturally their competitive peers. It's the English soccer leagues. A Premier League for corps ranked 1 to 18, with a minimum membership of 110. And then a National League, for those ranked 19th and lower. If a National League corps' average scores for the year are better than those of any Premier member corps, and they beat the Premier corps in Prelims, then the Premier corps in question would be relegated to the National League the next season and the better National league corps would be promoted. And by stratifying, if your corps comes in 23rd at Prelims at DCI, you actually came in 5th in your league, which is a helluva lot more impressive to potential funders and members than saying "we took 23rd." Do this, and you've created a matrix of competitive elements that give the members something to shoot for that is attainable, and help clarify, for potential sponsors, just what it is they're seeing. DCI is going to have a better shot of selling major corporate sponsors on the idea of getting behind the Premier League when they can say "these are the best 18 performing units in the world", then they do if they keep the current inherently messy structure of everyone swimming around in the same pot.

Uh huh. So you think we should have truancy laws to force kids to march with whichever corps is closest to their homes? You guys keep reaching for analogies, and they keep failing. The only one that works is McDonalds vs Burger King. They both offer a product. If you choose to eat at one every day, then decide you're gonna switch to the other the next day, you've done exactly the same thing as a kid who moves from Pioneer to Troopers, or from Colts to Bluecoats. The kids are consumers, the corps are providers, and that's the extent of the relationship. If marching a lower-ranked corps is turned into a type of blood commitment for the members, you'll find that the most ambitious performers will simply skip that level altogether.

I think it would be worth a review of the judging standards to possibly revise what is thought of as good, since the current approach encourages corps to "teach to the test" from a programming standpoint, which has led to an unfortunate sameness in approaches. Everyone feels they need "a theme" and that if "the theme" isn't clever enough, it won't win. Here's the thing; almost none of the themes are ever that clever. Sometimes they're just plain awful. Either they're loaded with pretension or they're just a little too obvious, hence cloying (too many examples to mention). Shaking up the competitive possibilities would be a good thing, but the way to do it isn't through drafts or penalties or spending caps; it's through a revised judging system that's more geared towards performance skills and audience impact and less concerned with 'design.' You know that your activity is succeeding when the crowd goes into Finals week having no idea which of any 4 or 5 corps will win on Saturday night. Put THAT as the goal, and design a judging system that would allow it to happen again. Side note; Oakland Crusaders in '75 were only half a new Finalist; DeLaSalle Oaklands had made Finals the year before.

You would think so, but apparently not.

Most businesses exist to sell goods or services. They don't exist to hire people. If you "lose" a customer to a competitor, that person has made a decision to buy the competitor's goods. If a kid leaves Corps X to march Corps Y, Corps X has "lost a client." I'm sorry, that's the only business analogy that works in this discussion because it's the only one that reflects the reality. The corps are all selling a product, the members evaluate their options and choose to buy one corps' product over others.

Ok, I'll type real big, since this doesn't seem to be getting through with some of us here. UNLIKE EMPLOYERS, THE DRUM CORPS ARE NOT BUYERS OF TALENT. THEY ARE THE SELLERS OF THEIR PRODUCTS TO POTENTIAL CLIENTS - ALSO KNOW AS MARCHING MEMBERS. Aside from that, all that goofy stuff about finders fees etc is spot on. :cool:/>

Sigh. Comparing professional teams, who are buying talent, with non-profit music education and performance organization who are sellers, not buyers, is pointless. If your business is losing a customer to a competitor, you don't blame the customer OR the competitor. You ask yourself what you need to do better in order to hang on to your clients. And when you do that, you also put plans in place to try and take everyone ELSE's clients or grow the overall market, because that drive to offer the best products and own the most marketshare is what drives successful organizations, profit or non-profit. So since the 'finders fee' thing is both a bad idea in nature, and unworkable in practice, let's move this conversation in a different direction. What will any of the lowest-ranked corps today have to do in order to turn themselves around and become more competitive. Leave off handicapping devices designed to hobble the top-ranked corps; you have to own your own excellence in this activity. So what could Pioneer, Cascades, Mandarins, and the others in that segment of the field do to make themselves corps who can score a 90 come August?

Let's see what vision the "teeth" would be there to support first, shall we? If it continues to view DCI as a pee wee soccer league, where everyone's a winner just because they participated, DCI will continue to be a product that has only moms and dads of the participants as their audience.

Daniel Ray has proposed some pretty fanciful ideas in the past, but he's never come up with one so divorced from business reality as charging any other corps a "finders fee" or whatever you want to call it for accepting a member who marched somewhere else last time. If anyone wants to make marching at a 15th to 25th place WC corps even LESS common, then the finders fee model is the key. Indentured drum corpsitude.

No, I made a point that "spending caps" don't exist in most places outside of the professional sports leagues, and even then, the teams that are capped aren't necessarily the most successful (see "Cubs, Chicago"), but the ones from the biggest markets. And even then, the only things that are capped are athlete salaries; the most successful GM can still demand the biggest payday he can manage to wrangle out of ownership. I'd be willing to allow that limits on how many keyboard instruments could be used might be effective in putting reins on spending and transport, or that limiting the number of days of move-in allowed before first show could have an effect. But limiting what the corps decide to pay their designers and staffs to the lowest functioning corps' ability to raise money and build organizational capacity is a non-starter.