MaestroBen

Mannie, Normally, I agree that we shouldn't air our dirty laundry publicly, especially when the 'discussion' is just unfounded accusations being thrown about. I only felt the need to comment on a statement made by the director himself, and it seems that that statement is now what concerns several people. This is no longer a baseless personal attack, it is a discussion about the publicly-stated attitude of a corps director. (edited to direct this directly to Mannie, whose name I saw in his signature.)

Dear John, As a new parent who has just moved to San Antonio, I have been thinking a lot about where my daughter could march in 15 years or so and this caught my eye. You admit that you would force members of their corps to "find their own way back" 1000+ miles from Indianapolis to San Antonio. This is morally irresponsible. You made a covenant with the marching members and their parents to transport them on a tour. For you to strand them 1000 miles from home (even if their behavior was not acceptable...I'm not arguing that it was right for the battery to refuse to march the parade) is reprehensible. Even if the entire battery were over 18, your corps still needs to make sure that they can get home, whether it's on your buses, or another corps's buses, or through alternative means. They should not be in a position to have to do that themselves on no notice. Being dismissed from the corps is plenty of punishment for their actions. During my marching career, I saw exactly one member of my corps be dismissed from the corps before the end of a season. That member was driven by the corps director to a Greyhound station and provided with a ticket home. And, even this decision was only made by the corps director, the staff, the member in question, and the member's parents. -Ben Carlisle

1995 - Madison Scouts A Drum Corps Fan's Dream 1996 - Madison Scouts A Drum Corps Fan's Dream, Part Dos . . . Oh, wait, I think I missed something...

Robert Shaw recognized this. Shortly after he became Music Director of the Atlanta Symphony (which was, at the time, a rather rough ensemble, and -- more importantly -- a rather small ensemble), he began telling the violins: "Play slightly out of tune, it makes it sound like there are more of you." Just FWIW. -Ben

It's entirely possible I have 95 and 96 confused re: Harmon. I just know that one of the years I marched he was on brass staff, and it was weird. I'm gettin' old, and that was a long time ago, you know? Anyway, now that we've solved that major issue....GO '11 SCOUTS!

Harmon definitely didn't write any of '96. That was all Mike. If I remember correctly, '96 was the year that Harmon was on Brass staff, not visual. That would have made basics easier if Ivan weren't there.

In addition, Todd came back and wrote drill for Santos in 94, before leaving for Concord. But, most of that was re-written by Loeffelholz. I'm sure that there were a few drill charts in the final '94 show that Todd wrote.

But he was when this thread was started. Just sayin.....

Yes, it is. And, I wasn't saying, or implying, that JSU hadn't also been playing it for a long time. I just know Spirit had been playing it for a long time when I marched in '93, before the association with JSU began. In fact, that year, we added a line from 'Send in the Clowns' to the end as a tribute to Gail Royer.

Spirit was playing it long before the association with JSU.

I don't know if it still is, but for many years it was a warm-up for Spirit of Atlanta. And, yes, beautiful piece.... ... goes to check corps reps... and there's not much there. Nothing under 'Chesnokov'. 'Salvation is Created' has Windy City listed in 2005 as the only junior corps (although the composer is Alfred Reed; did he do a band piece based on Salvation?) and the Reading Buccaneers Alumni in 2001.

I do want to see lots of corps doing a back to the 1980's show. Please do. My humble opinion.

Hmmm... Thread topic might need to be changed to "If You Were Robert W. Smith..." http://www.madisonscouts.org/blog/?p=466

Here's what I'd like: The '92 show, with the '91 closer as an encore. The first time I heard '92, I thought, 'man, this ending to 'Funny' is great, what are they going to do with the closer to top THAT???'. I was actually a bit disappointed when the show was over. Upon further review, of course, the '92 ending is phenomenal, but, hey, a little encore wouldn't hurt, would it?

You'd absolutely HAVE to get Freddy Martin on board, or it wouldn't be a true Spirit alumni corps. To many of us, he was Spirit (as much if not more than Madison was for so long Scott Stewart). And, by the way, absolutely the best brass instructor I've ever had the chance to work with (with absolutely no disrespect meant to Freddy's brother Dan, or to Scott Boerma, or any of the other great staff at Madison).

Perfect...now you have something for your six-flute flute section to play.... /runs & hides //would love to play Shostakovich 4 sometime. Actually have most of the WW to do it this year. 32nd-note fugue in I sure is tough, though.

Least favorite: one time in 95 (I think) the cook staff decided that they had some extra nacho cheese. So, we had "macaroni & cheese" made with nacho cheese...it might have been OK...if we had had a little warning that we were about to eat that...

That's about how I feel. If I could pick any one 10-year period, it would be 1986-1995.

When we were doing the Alumni corps, Scott Stewart drove me to the airport after one of the camps. He talked about how influential the 27 Alumni Corps in '94 had been to him, and how (by focusing on great tunes that already have a strong identity with the corps) it really connected with the audience. He said that that strongly influenced his programming for "several years" (which, if you look at the shows) pretty much encompasses most of the rest of his time as corps director. And, then, that came back in a huge way this year. I love the 2010 show, and I've really liked many other shows this decade, but the 2001 show is still my favorite of the 20__'s. Do you think there might have been just a little bit of anger in that last note?

So, I should have added one of these... ... or something... What my way to subtle attempt at sarcasm meant to suggest is that I have faith that just about whatever ('just about') this design team comes up with will be a winner. ('Beat it' still could be an awesome encore type piece, IMHO. )

I'd love to hear another "Jim Prime Arranges Madison Classics" show, too...but if they wanted to go in a completely different direction, a full Michael Jackson (Thriller & Off the Wall era) show could be amazingly cool. Guard & DM wearing one white glove, all the opportunities for dance that DCI seems to love these days, and potentially a killer book as well. Take your pick from "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," "Beat It," "Don't Stop til you Get Enough," "Workin' Day and Night"...just to name a few. (just think about van Halen's guitar solo in "Beat It" as a scream soprano...err...trumpet solo; that'd have me throwing babies!

I don't know, I think the end of that show may be even louder than the beginning. Both were awesome. But, I've got to add another vote to Spirit '80. Another factor in the loudness of Spirit '80, beyond the passing of Jim Ott, (from what various Martins have said), is that that hornline was especially mature. It was had an unusually large group of ageouts, many of whom had been with the corps since the beginning...

This probably won't come as much of a surprise if you look at my signature and see where/when I marched, but THE SHOW. For those of you who say that drum corps shows would resemble spring training baseball if there weren't scores, consider this. Scott Stewart was fond of pointing out that when Duke basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski is asked in a post-game press conference whether he thought his team played well (after a victory) or poorly (after a defeat), he often answers with a variation of the following: "You really can't judge your performance level by the outcome of the game, because that outcome is based on so many things you can't control, like how well the other team plays. What's important is to judge your performance by looking inward...Did we (or did I) do the best that we (I) could do? If the answer is 'yes', we (I) played well. If the answer is 'no,' we (I) didn't." So, for Coach K, even in basketball, a sport where winning and losing is pretty objective, the answer to the question "Did we play well?" doesn't necessarily correspond to the answer to the question "Did we win?" Now, apply that to drum corps, where winning and losing is much more subjective. I know that I would not even be tempted if someone offered me a chance to trade the crowd reaction throughout our '95 show for a ring. Just my $.02

This is what we were told by Chad Duggan one afternoon when rehearsal got washed out by a thunderstorm. Chad and the design team had this in mind when they put the show together, but they didn't want the show to be so complex that we'd have to tell audiences that this is what the show was about: El Toro Caliente: A Bullfighter's dream about the ultimate fight. Concierto de Arunjuez: The Bullfighter confronts his mortality. La Danza: The Party before the bullfight. Malaga: The fight. So there was definitely a 'plot' to the '95 show. I never heard any similar 'analysis' of '96. My opinion, and JUST my opinion, is that the '96 show was shaped something like this... "Wow, last year sure was great, how can we do something similar? Well, we're all listening to this awesome Arturo Sandoval ('A Mis Abuelos') tune on the buses, let's start with that...Hmmm...'Bolero' was a great warmup last year [and it was...if you've never seen the '95 show with what the kids now would call 'the preshow' see if you can find it somewhere], let's try it on the field....Audiences, and the brass line, loved our percussion feature last year, but the drum line would actually like to have a feature this year, so let's try again, and compress each brass section's feature into one brass lick at the end....and, hey we haven't played Malaguena in a while." And somehow some John Tesh got thrown in, and bright orange paddle things. It was still an awesome show to play. I'm not sure that it had quite the 'plot' that '95 did...but I'm really not sure that - even today - you NEED to have a 'plot.' You certainly can have a plot-driven show succeed, but I'm really glad that Madison [we gotta get this discussion back to the topic at hand] seems to be creating a show this year by saying "this is the music we want to play" rather than "this is the story we want to tell." Because, I would guess, that at least a good portion of the music for '95 was picked before the design team came up with the "day in the life of a bullfighter" idea, not after.

I've still got my sash, gauntlets, hat, shoes, and a bag with all of my gloves from '96. Used nothing but my '96 rehearsal gloves in rehearsals for the alumni corps, and wore the gloves I wore for finals in '96 for the semifinals reunion corps performance. Even with the big bag of gloves, my recurring drum corps nightmare is that I show up to a rehearsal and can't find any gloves.