BASTimpanist

the more people know, the better. believe me, there is more. like the cake and ice cream dinner. followed by no breakfast or lunch and a...let's say "sketchy" bus driver who took food from a kid who had bought something at a rest stop. i emptied out my entire bus box of goodies to the drummers who were really hurting for food. pop tarts and oreo's aren't much, but it's better than NOTHING AT ALL. what about the traveling? we were no strangers to 10+ hour bus rides. especially when they should've only taken 4 or 2 or 5 hours. what about the total lack of acknowledgement or respect for the poor souls who tried to volunteer? my girlfriend's mom was crucified by rick for moving food tables out of the wind. what about the kids he purposefully left behind (running after the bus, pounding on it) in allentown last year? do you think he cared about him? how would you feel after your guard staff left, if several of the guard came to you and asked you to protect their uniforms because rick was planning on throwing them away? how would you feel if you made one freaking mistake, and for THREE years you were on his bad side? what about the laundry stop in cicero at 2 A.M. that, my friends, is a ghetto. what about the sheer volume of people that drove buses, and then left us? the ONLY reason i ever went back is because of the family i had there. FAMILY, and i mean it. and if no one from DCI reads this forum, then they need to wake the #### up, because your children are reaching out to you.

none of this is rumors. everyone needs to know about it so that rick isn't allowed to run anything else. he is a terrible corps director. pittsburg, kansas- 20 people had to be put on oxygen and 6 went to the hospital (whose parents weren't contacted) for dehydration. and i dare any of you to tell me that watching a girl shake and twitch like a god #### fish-out-of-water is a rumor, because the image of that girl with brian and gustavo trying to help her calm down will always, ALWAYS be with me. and was it a rumor that rick didn't get us the food we needed that day? no, it wasn't a rumor. i'll tell you i had two bowls of cereal for breakfast, and half an apple for lunch. and he openly admitted, in a midnight gym meeting that he didn't get the food ordered and worse, didn't do anything to get the food ordered in time and worse yet, didn't take the blame for it. i clearly remember the speech at walnut ridge in the early days of the season about how he wasn't going to take us on the road if he didn't have insurance and blah blah blah and how he was accepting the responsibility of us all. which he did right up until it was his ### in the fire, and then all of a sudden not having food for us was derek's fault. and still worse, took a cheap shot at the man who DID feed us that night, jeff fiedler. this is a direct quote from rick that night: "...and in a very ''cavalier" like manner said, 'it's okay rick, just feed us one night'' ...to which, as i recall, we never did. the cavaliers shows have never interested me and i always kinda hated them because of it (which is stupid, and i realize that i'm an opinionated person) but after that mess, i have unlimited amount of respect for that classsssssssy organization. at any rate-that is the rick bays that all of you need to know him as. i've marched capital since 2004, and i don't care if i'm airing dirty laundry, and i don't care what any of you think of me for saying all this because i'm only doing what i feel is right. and, quite frankly, he needs to be removed from whatever it is that he does. which this summer, usually involved pissing off members, staff and volunteers and smoking cigs with a crack-addict bus driver. and don't even get me started on her...omg...

all i have to say is good luck to those guys. fred is the man and he did an absolutely amazing job helping at capital. amazing. i'm not joking when i say that we regularly broke out into "fred" chants.

of course i picked pit. do we do the most physical activity? no, i realize this. but in the deadlift competition, i challenge any of you. bring it on. 2 summers lifting timpani and keyboards. seriously though-i find it funny that people that march and all that just kind of get skinnier or more toned. people in the pit actually get stronger. case and point: sarah haines (cap reg veteran vibe player) at the beginning of the year she couldn't push her vibes over pavement about 100 yards. at the end of the year she could push her vibes through like 2 foot tall grass with one wheel missing. hoss.

currently: pit second choice: bassline third choice: contra line. i don't know why...just looks like fun kinda...

i wasn't REEEEALLY picking on bd, but i mean c'mon people. stereotypes are stereotypes because of repititious behavior. there IS a reason why bd is stereotyped as they are...drummers are stereotyped into smoking because about A WHOLE FREAKING LOT of them smoke. can't say that i never have...i know about 6 who don't...and about 4.3 billion who do... i can't stand the people who think nothing "bad" ever happens. the only thing wrong with smoking weed is that it makes you contempt with being bored...which is time you should spend learning how to do something useful... but if you've got nothing better to do it's a good way to pass time!! haha... by the way, i don't smoke anymore...i haven't in about a year...

WAAAAAIT WAIT WAIT!!!! ....so.... somebody from the blue devils....smokes weed?

scv let me have hotdogs one night after a show. i'm pretty sure that the lady didn't know i took them but...whatever, leaving hot dogs laying around a bunch of hungry people isn't exactly..."smart"...and they were mmm mmm gooooood. southwind let us use their equipment during a rained out show/gymnasium exihibition...which...was...cool...i guess... one time when we were pushing up to the gates we passed the troopers...one of their techs said "the crapital regiment"...like we haven't heard THAT one before. but the thing that ###### me off about it was that he was with the troopers. making poop jokes about other corps...i mean seriously...the poopers? how easy is it to come up with that? that's like george bush making fun of himself...

aaahhh very, very true. i just meant apples in oranges in reference to style. neo-classical to hard rock.

not as progressive? are you kidding? romeo couldn't hold petrucci's guitar case? are you kidding? i'll admit that petrucci is better, but c'mon man-romeo is...freaking impressive to say the least. the difference is symphony x is more neo-classical metal influenced (which i don't really like anyway) and dream theater is more hard rock...just kinda "out-there" hard rock.

not the same genre either. apples and oranges my friend, apples and oranges.

the guard staff bailing was just the cherry on top, believe me. on top of the most sour, brown, stinking ice cream sundae you've ever seen. we didn't have closer drill forever, we didn't even field the last 3 minutes of our show until JULY. we didn't even PLAY the last section of the show because it would've been too much for the guard who was learning their 3RD TAKE ON THE SHOW. a visual staff was sent home. conflict between staff was out-freakin-rageous all summer. our administration was doing about 7 different jobs each. we ended up running our own rehearsal one day with a BASS TECH running ensemble, i've heard of some pretty rank bus-break down stories, but none worse than that. there IS more. besides the fact that we did the whole drumcorps thing. no sleep, bus rides, rain, heat, sweat, blood, pain and agony so that we could play 11 minutes of music to people who probably weren't there to see us. you know, the "usual" crap an upcoming 14th (2004) ranked corps deals with. i will never forget when derrick (brass caption) got up and told us that we could either quit, and coast into finals week and wing it on a hope and a prayer for semis...or pull together, set all the BULL S H I T aside and do what we came to do. 15th place biotch. and #### proud of it. to say we didn't work hard is flat-out ignorance.

yeah um.... WOW. what a ridiculous statement.

jeez...if you guys like dream theater then check out symphony x. they're way better. although, dream theater is definitely cool. i was almost in an indoor that tried some dt music. i quit because it sucked big ones. interpretive dream theater can definitely go WAY WRONG!!!

livin on a prayer by bon jovi, and bohemian rhapsody were favorites on the drum bus last year. everybody kinda hummed along in the queen song until it came in with 40 people screaming out of tune: MOMMAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!! OOH OOH OOOOOOOOOOOHHH!!!! classic. i think we did that before....everything. haha...

wow.

hi, my name is james. people call me trey. my opinions of this matter can be expressed with this mathematical equation: rock and roll + dci = stupid shows. unless you did something WAY cool like some progressive swedish death metal. man, that would be sweet. opeth on the field. mmm mmm good. or some power metal, since it's pretty much classical music turned up to 11, like some blind guardian.

yea, gustavo (guard caption) was caption in 2003, and he came back last year when the guard staff bailed mid-season. he's pretty cool, and a great teacher. the corps i want to see do well is scv, there 2004 show is by far my favorite show ever...and last years show...well...wasn't it...

2004 scv is probably my best wow show. i don't know what it is about that show, but it makes me happy everytime i hear it.

no way...i've never enjoyed being at the same housing site as another corps...never. boston being a specific corps that bugged the #### out of me....blue stars were pretty cool actually, but i would rather eat my own foot than house with boston again...

YES! the hershey show was wicked. pit had about 2 feet of space between us and the crowd...but regardless, nothing was better than my tech bringing out some chocolate milkshakes. good god, i think i passed out from all the sugar in those things...

mine lasted quite a while...i think i've been permanently burned a darker shade though hahaha... my pit tech tan lines all over his feet still because he wore sandals with like 40 straps on them...it's pretty funny

what happened to patrick? is he not coming back this year? he was a cool dude. and by the way, precious' real name was alex. he was a cool cat too... and speaking of piffle, his family came up to the pit one day looking for him...and i had no idea that his last name was actually phile...it took me a second to realize who they were talking about and then i was like, "oh, piffle?! he's over in the horn arc" and they looked at me weird...oh well... we also had a guy in the drumline two years ago who was from holland. his name was coen (pronounced coon) but we all called him fashaaaa like from austin powers 3 haha...

the drumline did do the clock. that was especially cool with the visuals they were doing. the screeching was a drumstick on a gong. i'm quite sure that we didn't use the violin bows. we did expirement with them, but we didn't use them. there was a lot going on at the beginning of our show last year. i'm not gonna lie, i have no idea what all was played. i know that i was the center of time for the pit, and i listen through all that noise to the drumline. what was really going to be cool was the epilogue for last year's show. lots of people probably don't even know, but there was another minute or so planned out. THAT was cool. i was just playing a quarter note-time keeping part. the marimbas had a overtone triplet ostanato, the vibes had these weird spacy chords that were kind of free time (but due to my #### willingness to figure things out turned out being a different chord every 5th triplet 8th note) on top of all that noise crap we did in the beginning and ending with 12 tolls of the bell while everything faded out. REALLY spooky down ending. but alas, it would've been too much for the guard to learn, as they had redone the whole show about 3 times already.

in 2004 we pulled up to a show and the pit was told we had 20 minutes to get off the bus-find the truck (a mile away), unload it, put instruments together, get into uniform, and push to the gates. somehow, we managed to pull all of that off. we were rushed into the show, no warmup, tired legs, sweat already pouring into our eyes while facing the biggest crowd we had seen yet. we had a terrible show hahaha...i had not even set my heads....sounded like a mess of brown notes.