ST_Lawson

4th largest city in Iowa. Bigger than Dubuque. Not big by California standards, but around here, that's a good sized city.

Greg is from Decorah, IA if I remember correctly (anyone remember the Decorah Kilties?) That was my guess...he was a band director in Gowrie, IA early in his career.

People keep talking about the G7 corps leaving and starting their own circuit. I'd be more worried that they'll leave, go back to their "roots" in many cases, and start their own military units... http://pictureisunrelated.memebase.com/201...-inconspicuous/ (and begin old contra jokes......now)

Agreed. I was lucky enough to have had 4 years with Chuck and Dean ("Better teaching through sarcasm") in the late '90s with the Colts. I'm glad to hear that Chuck is going to be arranging for the Crossmen. I've always enjoyed their shows in the past, and can't wait to hear what he's working on for them this year.

Just wanted to toss out a quick update/clarification. Some of you may have thought that I was going to have the guard members watch drum corps and learn how to do it from that. I was actually looking more for inspiration for the people instructing and writing work for the guard. Generally, the person teaching the guard/writing the work is a recent alumni or upperclassman, and may not have any idea of what's going on with modern guards. They just teach the same thing they learned, and the style hasn't really been updated/addressed in the last 20 years or so. I'm hoping that they can take a look at what some of the best guards are doing and maybe start to integrate a few of the more basic concepts into the stuff they are writing. Thanks for the help, and I apologize for starting a whole "Phantom's guard sucks" vs "no they don't" argument.

I think it's really more about how to integrate a little more movement into the work that they're doing, not so much of the full-on dance routines. The band director is amazing and has been there for something like 25-30 years, but his style is very "traditional". The guard members pretty much stand straight up and spin/move the flags. Just trying to get some inspiration to help update their style a little.

Hi everyone. My high school marching band has decided that their guard needs to start including more dance in the shows, however, they've never really done much in the way of dance before. Being a brass guy, I don't really have a good idea of what makes a good color guard. I'm wondering if anyone can offer recommendations on corps that have had good dancing color guards, specifically, years and/or specific songs. Just something to give an idea of how dance can be well integrated into a show. For exampe: Santa Clara 200X, or Blue Devils 199X (third song/ballad). Thanks in advance for your help.

Colts - 1993, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1998, 1999, 2001, 2007

At Colts, I think we did the '96 Montreal show, but '98 was the most memorable. We were involved in a bus accident on the way to the show and ended up not performing that night. Nobody was seriously hurt, but I think all 3 of our buses were "totaled".

I'm @ST_Lawson on twitter. Also tweets about the Colts are frequently tagged as #redteam

I just got back from his memorial service and realized that this hadn't been posted here. From his obituary: "Brett started his teaching career in Sigourney. He was the Director of Bands at Knoxville High School and Newton High School. Brett continued to contribute his time, talents and instruction to Skyryders and the Colts Drum and Bugle Corps from 1986-2002. He was most recently employed at Childserve in Johnston. Brett influenced and encouraged a plethora of musical students throughout his life." For more information, you can read the article here: http://www.colts.org/news/news.cfm?news_id=444 (apologies for not getting this posted before the memorial service was held)

I did my best to respond to the poll, although the structure made it confusing for someone who marched Div. III from '94-'95, corps folded, then marched '96-'00 with a Div. I corps.

Since I marched '94-'00, I'm going to list the shows that I didn't march in. The vast majority of my experiences, I wouldn't trade for anything, so this is purely hypothetical (obviously). 1990 - Santa Clara Vanguard; Carmen 1991 - Santa Clara Vanguard; Miss Saigon 1992 - Blue Devils; Big, Bad and Blue (can't beat "When A Man Loves a Woman") 1993 - Colts; The Four Seasons (First year in finals, and from what I heard, one of those "magical" fun seasons) 1994 - Blue Devils; My Spanish Heart 1995 - Madison Scouts; A Drum Corps Fan's Dream: A Day in the Life of a Bullfighter 1996 - Phantom Regiment; Defiant Heart 1997 - Madison Scouts; Pirates of Lake Mendota (just one heck of a fun show) 1998 - Blue Devils; One Hand, One Heart: Romeo & Juliet/West Side Story 1999 - Madison Scouts: Jesus Christ Superstar (I've always loved Superstar)

That's hilarious. It's probably from around '89-'90, since they moved from Geneseo to the Quad Cities in '89, and they did rock from the '70s and 80's from '87-'90.

That makes the most sense to me, but I didn't want to tell other people who they should be voting for. For those that don't already know: All of the organizations in the top 100 received $25K (so that includes the four corps listed). Of the top 100, the organization with the most votes after the second round of voting gets $1MM, and 5 runner-ups get $100K. So it's possible that one corps could get the $1MM, with the other three corps, and two other organizations getting the $100K each.