mark riley

Here are a couple most people never mention.... Max Roach- Concord Baptist Church Drum and Bugle Corps, Bklyn. Omar Brasheer- Giles Yellowjackets, Chicago Steve Johns (Sonny Fortune Quartet)- Sharpshooters, Framingham, Mass. There have also been rumors for years that Frankie Valli of the Four Seasons marched (which corps I'm not sure). Billy Cobham and his brother Wayne both marched Sunrisers, as Ray Priester has already noted. Mark Riley

Just two.... Vanguard '99 Boston Crusaders '69 (CONQUEST!) Mark Riley

This one's easy. Cavaliers 1966. Somewhere from West Side Story used to make the old war vets in the #### cutters cry. They did it several years, but '66 is my favorite. Mark Riley

Ah, youth! Whe it comes to experiencing REAL discrimination, you obviously haven't. Yet coming up in drum corps back in the day, we DID experience it, and the way it was dealt with taught me several life's lessons. Example 1- I was in a corps that stopped to eat in New Jersey (where I now live). A group of us (four blacks, one white) sat at a table, and were the first to give a waitress our orders. We sat and watched as every other table (almost all white) ordered and got their meals, while we sat and waited. When our meals finally came, we all got up and left. Our director was highly upset (not knowing why we left). He came out to our bus with fire in his eyes. When we told him why we left, he went back into the restaurant with us, and roundly cursed out the owner and the entire waitstaff! They couldn't say much. He was a cop! Example 2- A certain corps was marching a major parade in a southern city. At one of those traffic light stops, the corps is standing, waiting at parade rest. From out of the crowd a voice, clear as a bell yells, "take your niggers and go back where you came from". A certain Italian member of the corps broke ranks, walked up to the guy who said it, and went upside his head with his horn. Wouldn't you know, the light changed, he got back in line, and the corps moved on. I could cite other examples, but the point here isn't just about racism. It's about people standing up against it when they don't have to. And that, folks, is one reason I've always LOVED this activity.

Interesting to see all you kids talking about the '80s, '90s, etc. For me, the best years were 1965-71. Most of you never saw corps like Blue Rock, the Chicago Royal Airs, Vasella, Lucy's, Sac, Batavia, and so on and so on. Few of you were at the 1969 VFW Nationals in Philadelphia when 88, count 'em 88 corps competed over two full days. For drummers like me, this was the time tuned bass drums, multi toms, and tympani were introduced. It was one #### of a time to be around this activity. In Connecticut, where I grew up, every single town had a corps of some type. This is not, repeat, not a slam against DCI. It's just that the sheer quantity of corps makes subsequent eras pale by comparison. BTW, a little trivia or urban legend: At those '69 VFW's there were still inspections of every competing corps. One of the judges was a certain Col. Norman Schwartzkopf, who later found fame as a General in the first gulf War. Mark Riley Sandy Hook Fife Drum and Bugle Corps 1959-66 Connecticut Yankees '67 Bridgeport PAL Cadets '68 Milford Shoreliners '69-'70 St. Rita's Brassmen '72 Long Island Sunrisers '78-'79 NY Skyliners '83-'84 Skyliners Alumni '97-'02 Old, and proud of it!!!

Now this is something I know a little about. That fact is, unamplified steelpans don't project well unless they're used in sufficient numbers. I've been to the annual steelband competition in Trinidad many times. Panorama involves steel orchestras the size of a drum and bugle corps (their max may be right around 130-135). Those steelbands have a number of different voicings that drum corps couldn't possibly replicate unless the entire corps put down all other equipment and became a steel orchestra. If the names Desperados, Renegades, All Stars, and Phase Two Pan Groove (current champs) mean anything to you, you know what I'm talking about. Haven't seen Bluecoats yet, but unless they have a MASSIVE number of pans, I'd expect them to be amplified. BTW- In Trinidad, the pans are tuned by the appllication of heat to the underside of the drums. It can take the better part of a week to tune all of them for competition. Mark Riley

Many thanks for putting Cadets Indy show up....Ive heard so much about it, and was all prepared to hate it but...... It's not as bad as I thought. Now I really want to check them out in Allentown and Madison. I think I'll refrain from criticizing the parts I didn't like until I see it live, but yo, Cadets' haters, you may need to hang your hats someplace else. As to whether or not they'll win with it....I believe that in modern drum corps, you can't accurately predict these things UNTIL YOU"VE SEEN THE FINALS NIGHT PERFORMANCE! Yes, corps are getting themselves bunched into several strata as the season moves forward, but the "x" factor has always been how well it's done when it counts. BTW, I'm one of those old timers, who began my love affair with the activity in 1959. One thing I've learned...what you may not like in principle (Bf horns, amps, singing) can change when you see and hear it presented in a way that pleases you. Congrats to Cadets, and ALL the corps who are spending so much time and energy trying to entertain an increasingly diverse and critical drum corps audience. Mark Riley

I heard a couple of years back the BF Committee decided to drop the competitive Champions on Parade for an alumni show largely because they felt corps weren't ready, and therefore fans weren't getting their money's worth. I also heard there was a drum corps person on that committee who agreed with that position. Is this urban legend, or is it true? The Barnum was a one of a kind contest, and it breaks my heart to have to choose between Skyliner show in Dover and ANY Champions on Parade show in Bridgeport, be it alumni or competition corps. I grew up in Ct., and the Barnum is in my blood. Mark Riley

The fact that this is being discussed/argued about points up a fundamental problem. When a change as radical as amplification is implemented, it behooves those making the change to take into account the possibility of malfunctions. Following that, there should be no question in the minds of judges, corps staff and yes, fans, as to what is supposed to take place when these problems happen. From where I sit, this is simple. Malfunctions ought to be dealt with on a case by case basis, within EXISTING guidelines set by DCI. How harsh should judges be? Think about this. If it's true a corps had amplification problems of a serious nature for three minutes during an 11 minute show, that represents 27% of the time they were performing. How many people would tolerate such problems for 27% of a classical performance, or rock concert? Many, I submit, would be asking for their money back. I know several music critics who wouldn't even review a performance with sound problems that frequent. I've attended literally hundreds of music performances in my life. I've left more than a few when the sound wasn't right. This includes feedback, intermittent sound drop-offs, and poorly balanced sound. BTW, I brought this issue up at a drum corps gathering back in 1998. The issue was not just about malfunctions, however. Even then, no one at that meeting could answer how to deal with the potential to technologically alter sound along with its amplification. They'll get to it sooner or later. Mark Riley

Just for the heck of it.....if you're not performing in a corps this summer, what shows are you planning to attend? Fran Haring, you're not eligible, you're an ANNOUNCER! Here's mine, feel free to share yours. June 10- Bayonne alumni show July 1- Dover NJ DCA show July 15- Grand Prix DCA show July 16- Wayne NJ DCI II-III show July 29- Bridgeport, Ct. DCI II-III show August 4-5- Allentown, PA. DCI East Regional August 10-13- DCI Championships August 27- West Haven, Ct. DCA show Sad to say, I can't make Rochester DCAs this year, unless I tell my wife I'm going out for cigarettes and disappear for a few days (I don't smoke). Mark Riley

Although I never marched in ICA or RCA, there's an important lesson to be learned from the discussions about these and other so-called small circuits. It's simply this....the quality of experience you have in a drum corps seems to have little to do with the size of the corps you marched in, or the size of the circuit you competed in. It's camraderie, the bus fumes, the bus trips, the card games, the beer (yes, the beer), the pit stops on the way home. All these things make for memories people cherish, and that's something that hopefully, the activity will never, ever lose. Amplification, B flat instruments, singing on the field....these things are trivial compared to that feeling I used to get at the end of seasons when I was a kid. The feeling was, Why does it ever have to end? So much for sniveling sentimentality. Mark Riley

Thanks for that very thoughtful post, Tom. I would add two other circumstances that changed junior drum corps just before the advent of DCI. One was the Vietnam war. It took literally hundreds of young men out of drum corps uniforms and put them in soldiers' uniforms during the period from '66-'71 at least. The other factor that went on at the same time was the wholesale withdrawal of support from drum corps on the part of the Catholic church. So many great junior corps were sponsored by the church, and the combination of greatly increased costs plus (at least in the NYC area) the notion that corps no longer represented "parish kids" cost many a corps their home. Some, like the IC Reveries morphed into other great corps (27th Lancers). Others even got other parishes to sponsor them (St. Joe's Patron to St. Rita's Brassmen), but in the end, these two situations were two big body blows for the activity BEFORE DCI WAS FORMED. As you point out, mistakes were made. I still believe to this day that one of them was limiting early membership to only the corps that made finals. I think that created a system (whether purposely or not) where the validity of ideas was measured strictly by whether you were in the top 12. And yet, all these years later, we still love this thing we call drum corps, no matter how much we complain about it. And to me, that's a tribute to the kids (and adults) that put it all out there for us each year. Mark Riley

Donny, what you say may be true, but take a quick look at the 2005 Bugler's Hall of Fame Inductees. Many if not most had affiliations with both junior and senior corps. This is especially true of people in the NYC metropolitan area. How many guys went from corps like the Queensmen, Loretto, Selden, Bpt. PAL, St. Raphael's, the Warriors, and others, then went to Sky, Sun, Cabs, Hurcs, etc? This wouldn't be true about the midwest, where the number of senior corps were limited at that time. I was just speaking from my own experience. ....and Fran, as they used to say in Sun, I HEAR YA! Mark Riley

This is something that fascinates me, and I wonder what others think..... When I was young, there was a very different relationship between junior and senior (all age) drum corps. For many of us, the transition from marching for a junior corps to "going senior" was something we looked forward to with great anticipation. I'm talking now about the late 60s and early 70s in Connecticut, where I grew up, and in New York, where I later marched. We used to have alumni from corps I marched with come to our rehearsals and develop relationships with the better players so they would go "up the Valley" and march with the Connecticut Hurricanes. Senior corps was something that we as kids aspired to be part of (and not just for the drinking). Corps like the Hurcs, Cabs, and Skyliners used to have huge influxes of kids from corps that broke up during that period (there were many reasons for those breakups, so I'm not talking poaching here). So my question is this.... When did the relationship change? When did junior corps kids start looking at the senior experience as a step down, because it certainly wasn't that way for us. Do they get burned out marching junior, do they really think seniors are to avoided at all costs? Just a question....... Mark Riley

Point well taken! That early show in Rochester is also a great one! BTW, I talked last week with your congresswoman, Louise Slaughter, and she seems to know quite a bit about upstate NY drum and bugle corps, especially Empire and Cru. She loves you both! Sorry for the oversight. Mark Riley