higherlouderfaster

Well bless your heart young lady. You are truly a sweetheart for saying such a nice thing to lift the spirits of an old man. However, I have had some sudden bad health recently, and it has effected my lungs, heart and kidneys. I'm not able to play at this time, and that was why I didn't get to see your smiling face at the forum this year. However, I do fully believe I will play again. I will either play again or die with a horn in my hand trying to. If you are a praying person, please keep me in your prayers.

Yes I am higher louder and faster. Thank you for noticing. Unfortunately, I used to be highest, loudest and fastest....but age and my youthful indiscretions have left me a shell of my former self.

Hi Phil, You forgot that I'm a Pisces and I enjoy long walks in the park, playing with cute puppies, moonlit beaches in September, and whistling. Just kidding buddy. It's been a long time. How have you been? I hope all is well with you. If you want, send me a pm with your email and we can catch up. I love to keep up with the old gang. Can you believe it's been twenty years?!?!

I was a drummer until I saw the 1979 R.I. Matadors at the Bucknell show in Lewisburg, PA. That night I heard Richie Price and Jimmy Centerino for the first time. I turned to my parents who took me to the show, and I pointed at Richie and Jimmy and said, "That is what I want to do!!!" I put down the drum sticks, picked up a sop and the rest is history. Last year I got to perform with Richie Price in the Westshoremen Alumni Corps. It was the first time I ever met him. When we met, he said he loved my solo work with the Bluecoats and was excited to finally meet me................... After I came to again, I told him the story about him being the reason I became a horn player in the first place and thanked him for the profound influence he had on my life without even knowing it. Thank God for the return of the Matadors. I wish you guys all the best!!!

You could put an amplifier and a synthesizer in the pit and have somebody dive off the top rope and smash them. Used this way, even I would vote to allow the use of synthesizers.

I've played lead sop and lead mello. The only advantages I found on mello were the ability to do outrageous lip trills and shakes effortlessly, and I could see more guard chicks reflections in the bell while I was marching in front of them. :devin:

Once they toss in a few moog synths and an amplified clarinet solo with barbershop quartet accompaniment, then the magic will be overflowing.

Oh...and that guy with the '87 Bluecoats who played the Autumn Leaves solos..............I wonder what he's up to these days?

I find the picture extremely offensive. Not one single woodwind, amplifier, or synthesizer in it. You should be more sensitive to the more "artistically advanced" people on the board.

The plume shake is a hype...but my favorite is the overly aggressive horns down that causes the mouthpiece to fly out. It's worth extra points if it hits a drummer !

80's ............. the final decade of real and pure drum corps in DCI. You can feel free to flame on me now for saying it....but I'm right! Period!

I have an old Deg 2v french and an old valve and rotor sop. I wired them both up and turned them into lamps. Great conversation starters.

Please read more carefully. That post was addressed to Drum corps fan, who mentioned in an earlier post on this thread that he is a counselor. Glenn Beck is a moron who probably couldn't spell original thought much less have one. I'm a boomer and a very responsible parent of two wonderful kids. Feel free to keep anything and everything you want "to yourself"

Drum corps fan, I will respond to your other post in response to mine, because you have given me much to think about. You make some very valid points about responsibility to society in effecting other children's education. I also respect your opinion as a professional in the education field. Parents rights and how they are affected within the public school system is a very hot issue for me, and I am very interested on an intelligent opinion from the inside. However...it is late, and I need my rest for I am recovering from some recent health problems. So I will respond tomorrow.

I wasn't careful enough in my post. When I referred to the mom's mom, I was showing the futility of her cyclical argument. She was complaining about the mom's lack of attention to the child. I took the opportunity to point out that it isn't really that mom's fault, because she was probably not raised right by her own mother, who was probably not raised right by her mother, who also was probably not raised right by her mother, and so on and so on. So this little kid is not a bad kid and mom is not a bad mom...it's really the fault of great great great grandma's poor parenting skills.

Hi Jim, Unfortunately, it wouldn't be so good right now. As you know from the Westshore history thread, I have had a recent health set back that has affected my heart, lungs and kidneys. I'm making a come back, but haven't even tried to pick up the horn again yet. This morning I walked two miles in therapy. Before the coma, I was walking four miles a day in one hour. The two miles today took me 45 minutes, so I'm still a good bit under my old pace. However, when I got out of the hospital, I could only walk about 50 to 75 yards and I had to take a break. So to be walking two miles only five weeks later is very exciting. I hated missing the Forum concert this year, but hopefully I'll be back on stage by next years show. This past Sunday, I was back in the pulpit again for the first time since I went into the hospital. It really felt good, and my congregation was wonderfully supportive.

Actually, Stravinsky was limited. Your statement fits this thread perfectly. There were a whole bunch of musical instruments that existed when he wrote Rite of Spring, but because he wrote for orchestra, he wrote for orchestral instruments. He did not achieve a new level of artistic by throwing in a bunch of new instruments. He achieved a new level of artistic by using the available instruments in new and more creative ways. That is exactly what I want to see the activity do. Take what they have, percussion and brass, and use them more creatively. Not throw in everything else and the kitchen sink because some people need more toys to pretend they are creative.

Well...if you know that you are...then you can't be a lead sop.

Hey...before you waste all that time and energy putting keyboards and electronics and circus animals and whatever else into the activity, why don't you come up with something that is actually useful.....................like octave keys on sopranos (trumpets) so I can stop seeing those little dots, getting headaches and passing out at the end of solos.

How adult are your kids? As somebody who has kids who are currently kids, I have experienced interference and I do know what it takes to find out anything from my child's school without first having his permission. The last time I took my son to his doctor, the doctor said to me, "at age 13 we ask the patient a few questions in private, so I would appreciate it if you would leave the room while I talk to your son." I refused and he is no longer my son's doctor. My refusal to leave the room, however, constituted in the doctor's mind a reason to call authorities and report my unwillingness to allow my son to answer questions as a reason to investigate whatever I was obviously hiding. I'm sorry to hear about your grocery store experience but I'm sure it's just because the mom's mom never corrected her....after all...it's the parents fault...right?

If he would have been expelled, then the parents and the ACLU would have sued the school for discrimination and infringement of his right to free speech because they didn't like his "dark" writing. They would have either won or settled out and he would have either gone back to school, or did what he did anyway. As for your parental responsibility rant, I must start by asking if you are a parent. If you are, do you honestly believe that you know everything that is going on in you child's life? Have you parented a teenager? I am extremely close to both of my children, of which one is a teenager, but I am enough of a realist to know that one...I don't know everything and two...I am biased toward them and will always see them and there actions through a biased lens. And as for your "teacher and administration" comment...the expectations that are placed on them were fought for by them. Every time something like this happens, people like you want to cry "it's the parents" but yet how many states have laws that allow teenage girls to go to a school nurse, be taken to have an abortion, and the parents don't have to be informed of any of it. How many states now have laws that stop guidance counselors from revealing the content of student counseling sessions without the students permission. How many states now have laws that allow a school to force parents to drug their kids for ADD and ADHD in order to attend school. Parental rights are being legislated away and it is teachers and administrators who are supporting these laws, and then crying about irresponsible parents. If you want to put the responsibility on parents, then stop our legislators, administrators, and teachers from taking away parents ability to parent. And one last point...this guy was in college...not high school. He was an adult.

Personally, I'm getting tired of all of the "they should have seen the warning signs" stuff coming out now. There is no way to stop something like this within our current legal system and politically correct culture. Truth be known, if they would have kicked this guy out of school before he did this, like I've heard so many "specialists" say on T.V., then the same people who are now saying he should have been kicked out would have been saying he was treated unfairly and discriminated against. Until he actually did what he did, any conjecture that he might do it or was capable of it would have been met with a "you have no way of knowing for sure" argument and he would have been reinstated to the school. As long as evil exists, people will do evil things. As long as sickness exists, people will get sick. We can do all that we can do in order to try to prevent this kind of stuff, but it will happen again...and probably worse.

Hey there Scott, Just in case you do come back to this thread, I just wanted to say "hi." It sure has been a long time...twenty years!!! I hope all is well with you. One thing this thread sure seems to prove is that we will probably never see a good "knock 'em out of the stands" drum corps like we did back in the 80s. Now its all about subtlety, and artistic expression. I'll take the good old "six pack and pizza" drum corps days over this "wine and cheese" stuff they're doing today in a heartbeat!!!

Actually, I think the better baseball example in relation to Einstein's question would be this: Since football is light years ahead of baseball, we should let base runners have blockers, allow the fielders try to tackle the runner, add cheerleaders and bands, and huddle between each pitch. Look...if bands and indoor groups want to do amplification, woodwinds, and all that other stuff then let them do it...but don't shove it down drum corps throats. As for allowing the activity to become more artistic and theatrical, it has done just fine. I've been around this activity since the 70's and the advances in artistry have been mind blowing. Now some people may say that the advances happened as a result of putting keyboards in the pit, the shift from dominantly rudamental drumming to contemporary percussion, going from the single valve bugle to the valve/slide to the valve/rotor to the two valve to the three valve and eventually to the Bb bugle, and the amazing advances in color guard and drill, and I agree that these changes are all good and have advanced the activity....BUT...these changes were advances in what already existed within the activity. They were taking what we already had and making it better. Opening Pandora's box and saying anything goes and lets throw anything that makes noise into the mix, is going beyond "improving" drum corps into "changing" drum corps into something else entirely. Woodwinds are not bugles but they are band instruments. If you want to hear them, go to a band show. Synthesizers are not played with mallets, they are wonderfully useful instruments. However, if you want to hear one, sell your drum corps show ticket and buy a "Yes" album. If you want to hear narration, go to a play or rent a DVD collection of "The Wonder Years." If you want to hear great brass and percussion displayed within a wonderfully artistic visual package, then go to a drum corps show. If you don't like drum corps anymore, or you have become so much more "culturally advanced" than us die hard "drum corps bums" then go do your thing and leave us alone!!!