Puppet

You are so not getting it. And I will not even begin to begin to explain why.

When, I ask you ... when have I ever passed up a chance to post this marvelous guard shot? I mean ... c'mon! I just wish I had a bunch of pics of Anaheim's rifle section from back then, too. Oh, I'm not in this shot, either.

Oh! And BTW many of the shots posted here are by not only friends and family and just pure fans but from some of the most famous names in Drum Corp photography ... and let me just grab one out of the archives ... shot at one of the premier venues for Drum Corps, ever and the type of show we will never, ever (if DCI has anything to say about it and that's a darn shame because a preview show like Evening With The Corps could generate soooo much money here in the East!) see again. Imagine, OMG if you could get a sneak peak and listen to in a concert setting Crown, Phantom, SCV, Cavies and yeah, even Garfield pre season - how much would you pay? not the least of whom is Moe Knox I'm just saying ... And I'm not in this shot.. And those were the black plumes we got ruined in the rain like the first show of the season in Chester PA.

I'm thinking this post gives new meaning to BITD. Because I think of then and I think the sixties ... that was BITD.

I have said this or something like this a half a dozen times or more over the past several years. Thank you yonnenana (whoever the heck you really are!) for giving us this wonderful thread on which by my estimate over three generations of members, fans and others have shared their pictorial and other memories ... you just cannot fit what is on these pages ... in a book ... this is without a doubt (and if for no other reason because most of all else on this site doesn't hold a candle to this thread right here!) the place every current and past marching member should spend a few minutes every once in a while. There is more Drum Corps history on these 2,000 pages than anywhere else! Contribute if you can, revel in it because you can. Puppet - really honored to have had a chance to post some memories of my own here.

I am for the first time this year LMSLAOFAROTFL! This is what I mean when I hear about these (adult human beings 18-22) Kids who have to put up with no place to sleep, tough camps, eating out of the back of who knows what ... and on top of that these are healthy people?! They live on granola when we had to make do on mere bacon and eggs and toast and orange juice with butter and there were no McDonalds so we had to actually eat real meat as hamburgers and we didn't have breathing instructors ... "hey guys, try not to smoke for about 15 minutes before we go on, OK?" was like the unspoken word. And, because we were so young (yes, even in the late 60s!) we were not getting it on with the guard ... darn it 'cause the Marco Polo was like a Honeymoon hotel. If the Kids today could get a good night's sleep in a motel or hotel the way we did on tour - if they could have two sets of uniforms and march in a clean one or have a person take care of that kind of stuff while on tour OMG with the money they spend versus the money we didn't there are all kinds of national deficits that can be paid off. Big buses and sex just because does not a good night sleep make ... just saying. Puppet

This is where we had to stay during the 1970 VFW Nationals in Miami. Marco Polo Hotel - Collins Avenue

OMG! You only wore all that in the winter, right?

I agree this is Blue Rock but it's gotta be way before '72 ... pre DCI at the very least. Look at the lack of hair cutting ... take it from somebody who knows about the various 'Fro styles of the day. I'm going with '69 -'70 at the latest. Puppet

There were buttons ... and there were jackets! Every corps wore jackets ... Right?! Puppet

THANKS FOR SHARING, DAVE! Oh. but in order to worry about the strap, first you had to get the sucker (I mean shako!)on your head!

Wow! And as an aside, we marched at one of the Kingsmen shows - the people in the Midwest were great fans back in the day! Puppet

Of course ... I'd like to see a tymp line on the field again. Four players, four different parts, all wearing shakos, all marching as an integral part of the rest of the battery and all actually playing music. It was synchronicity at it's most beautiful. Yeah, I know ... Puppet

Here ya go. I wore shakos in both St. Joseph Patron Cadets and St. Rita's Brassmen. Two different types of straps - one adjustable with the little buckle and the other metal links that once adjusted were set. "Chin" straps in true military tradition were not made to keep the shako or helmet on ... that, like in wearing a cowboy hat, was determined by the size of the hat. And no matter how hard you rode or marched, that headpiece was not coming off your head! Cowboys used to test this by flicking the brim with their finger, BTW. As to the strap. We wore it resting loosely under the bottom lip. And we were taught rigorously to never (especially as a horn player) tilt our heads back while playing because that would be a plume directional issue that was unforgivable. OT (sorta) leaning back was pretty much a thing that happened because somebody decided that would make your horn line sound louder which is pretty much poppycock. Even the Bb configuration allows for sond to be dispersed in a very wide arc. Puppet

Let me say this about that. Portable music back when I marched was very, very limited. Many readers of this may well remember cassette players (many more will not!)and the process of transferring recordings from LP (yes, that stands for "Long Playing") records to cassette tape with any kind of fidelity was ... analogue. Only the oldest and by definition coolest members of my corps had cars and only the very coolest had cassette players in their vehicles. The 8 tracks drove us crazy with the switching of tracks in the middle of shows and again the technology of the time was so much more different. These days with that Fan web site and You Tube and the ability to get pretty darn good video on your phone (even if you have one of those non-iphone phones!) you can email the audio or video files to your friends, family, editor ... whatever. I'm sure however in answer to the second part of the question, that by the third week of the season everybody knows whatever everybody else is playing. And, I think, there is much more communication between corps members than in the past. I liken it to free agency. People want that ring. So (and forgive me, this is just a for-instance, mind you) if you marched with SCV in 2009 and over the winter one of your grandparents passed away and left you a whole lot of money and then you could travel east to Florida and march 2010 with the Garfield, New Jersey Cadets. And I just picked the Cadets because of the incongruity of their location. Puppet

Is that a 747? Kids from Chicago had it going on during the 80's, huh? ... of not. Puppet

Well, this is what I mean when I say there has been a true exchange going on here. If I had asked Microsoft word (for instance) to look at the missive I wrote last night it would have told me that too many of the sentences written were in the "passive voice" and would have suggested that I change them. I wouldn't have. I aged out as you know by now, Mike, in '72. My commitment to the Air Force and my need to fly barely allowed me to march that year. When I got back I heard about the big changes and about DCI and saw a few shows up in MA. Good shows. When I mention humanity and esprit and all that I am talking about the stuff that happens when the same kids march together from the age of 12 or 13 until they age out. That's like 6 years of learning together, traveling together, feeling who is the weak guy in your section and being over his house in between rehearsals. It's practicing together so that 6 or 7 people of different heights (who are all wearing white bucks and uniforms trousers with stripes - and you know what I mean when I say that all of those who did) to work on leg lift adjustments during different parts of the show so that we all looked uniform. It's all those little tiny things that come with time and time together and time spent pouring your heart into that one passage (when you're a mid range player) that literally makes your horn line sound twice as big for just that breath of time. I don't dare discount what today's kids who are all old enough to vote and drink and have (dare I say it?!) sex go through to get themselves on the field. They are by comparison, professional musicians and dancers and actors and gymnasts. The fact that they are massive organizations of up to 135 performers is amazing to me. But, if you want to put on a show like Aida or any opera, you better be a pro to pull it off. Remember, in the sixties and early seventies the only kids in the horn lines who didn't smoke hadn't started yet. Remember, in the sixties and early seventies the adults with the corps were usually parents and you can read that as "This is "CYO" there will be no hanky-panky!" Remember, in the sixties and early seventies the equipment we carried and played and spun and threw into the air and even the props we used were mostly penalized by judges, hand made by one of the Dads and (this is important) never touched the ground. Those days saw the beginning of 'themed shows' that everyone seems to forget about. and those days were the harbinger of what is now. Those days were stanchions of the bridge between then and now and I think that if we had then the technology we have now we would have less explaining to do. "Oh!" The Kids will say! "That's when they stopped marching and ran on the field to another formation! How did they do that without paint spots on field?" "Oh!" The Kids will say! "They're actually playing in two different time signatures in on opposite sides of the field at the same time and none of it's semetrical! (yeah, I know I spelled it wrong!) What year was that again, wow! My Dad was a kid!" I think, all most of us are looking for is some of the new to actually recognize where it all came from. It was literally drilled into us. As a writer or an professional creative person we are taught the rules and only then can we proceed to break them in the name of creativity. I certainly applauded with abandon the efforts of Star when they smashed all the notions of normalcy. But they followed the crowd and lost doing it. And they learned how to lose until they learned all the rules of winning and then bent them until they broke. Seems to me no one has tried that since. It's still not me. It's the activity who doesn't believe in it's own history. It's the activity who in in lock-step thinking it's listening to a different drummer when some one corps should just say: "Wait a minute...didn't we march this last year?" And nobody can remember because most of those who marched last year can't afford to march this year. "Darn, who was that guy, he was kinda cool. Wonder why he's not at camp this year." Puppet (who just signed a new contract and has had a few ...)

Well, this is what I mean when I say there has been a true exchange going on here. If I had asked Microsoft word (for instance) to look at the missive I wrote last night it would have told me that too many of the sentences written were in the "passive voice" and would have suggested that I change them. I wouldn't have. I aged out as you know by now, Mike, in '72. My commitment to the Air Force and my need to fly barely allowed me to march that year. When I got back I heard about the big changes and about DCI and saw a few shows up in MA. Good shows. When I mention humanity and esprit and all that I am talking about the stuff that happens when the same kids march together from the age of 12 or 13 until they age out. That's like 6 years of learning together, traveling together, feeling who is the weak guy in your section and being over his house in between rehearsals. It's practicing together so that 6 or 7 people of different heights (who are all wearing white bucks and uniforms trousers with stripes - and you know what I mean when I say that all of those who did) to work on leg lift adjustments during different parts of the show so that we all looked uniform. It's all those little tiny things that come with time and time together and time spent pouring your heart into that one passage (when you're a mid range player) that literally makes your horn line sound twice as big for just that breath of time. I don't dare discount what today's kids who are all old enough to vote and drink and have (dare I say it?!) sex go through to get themselves on the field. They are by comparison, professional musicians and dancers and actors and gymnasts. The fact that they are massive organizations of up to 135 performers is amazing to me. But, if you want to put on a show like Aida or any opera, you better be a pro to pull it off. Remember, in the sixties and early seventies the only kids in the horn lines who didn't smoke hadn't started yet. Remember, in the sixties and early seventies the adults with the corps were usually parents and you can read that as "This is "CYO" there will be no hanky-panky!" Remember, in the sixties and early seventies the equipment we carried and played and spun and threw into the air and even the props we used were mostly penalized by judges, hand made by one of the Dads and (this is important) never touched the ground. Those days saw the beginning of 'themed shows' that everyone seems to forget about. and those days were the harbinger of what is now. Those days were stanchions of the bridge between then and now and I think that if we had then the technology we have now we would have less explaining to do. "Oh!" The Kids will say! "That's when they stopped marching and ran on the field to another formation! How did they do that without paint spots on field?" "Oh!" The Kids will say! "They're actually playing in two different time signatures in on opposite sides of the field at the same time and none of it's semetrical! (yeah, I know I spelled it wrong!) What year was that again, wow! My Dad was a kid!" I think, all most of us are looking for is some of the new to actually recognize where it all came from. It was literally drilled into us. As a writer or an professional creative person we are taught the rules and only then can we proceed to break them in the name of creativity. I certainly applauded with abandon the efforts of Star when they smashed all the notions of normalcy. But they followed the crowd and lost doing it. And they learned how to lose until they learned all the rules of winning and then bent them until they broke. Seems to me no one has tried that since. It's still not me. It's the activity who doesn't believe in it's own history. It's the activity who in in lock-step thinking it's listening to a different drummer when some one corps should just say: "Wait a minute...didn't we march this last year?" And nobody can remember because most of those who marched last year can't afford to march this year. "Darn, who was that guy, he was kinda cool. Wonder why he's not at camp this year." Puppet (who just signed a new contract and has had a few ...)

Wow! This, my mostly fossilized DCP compatriots, has turned out to be one of the most eloquent threads to read in many a moon. No rants, no bickering just clearly thought out discussion of the topic with understanding of the other writer's positions. Clearly we are all thinking of the many years we have all given to this activity and clearly (to varying degrees) are trying to adjust to all the changes. I said to a friend the other day on a completely different topic: "Oh heck! I just sounded like my Father!" Is it you, Keith? No, brother, it is me and us and just like I embrace my lap top and my iPhone and all the technology that makes my life easier as a writer and producer I still wish I could open up the hood of my car and see that the tension belt needs tightening and then do it. But I can't anymore. And I can't understand for the life of me how or why we lost bit by bit, piece by piece the core of what made Drum Corps to me. Great sounding horn lines aside, nothing will ever replace the "snap, snap, snap" of 12 6 to 8 pound rifles being spun in unison during those brief moments of a drum solo or just before an entire cadre of a massive 35 horn front hits that final chorus of a song you know and didn't have to pay the rights to play. The humanity lost when shows were the product of a single person's imagination and realized on the field with his corps over hours and days and months of rehearsals with teenagers whose lack of musical acumen was made up for by their enthusiasm and (dare I say it?!) esprit d corps. Is it me? It's not me. 'Is it about the Kids?' as one writer put it? Gee, they're not kids. The people we see on the field are adults. The shows the 'spectacular' shows they reproduce on the field are first perfected via computer programs as are the charts they play. You cannot open up the hood and get in there like George Z did with amazing success and tighten up the belt a little. And there ya go. Puppet

And there are Blue Stars ... out there, somewhere ... Puppet

Just out behind the Belleville Black Knights. Aside from the Marco Polo Hotel on Collins Avenue and some other stuff I only remember vaguely, the Miami trip was hell. Puppet

So this causes me to wonder whether all the Catholic sponsored corps (St. fill in-the-blank) were named for the actual Saint or did they actually represent the church the building? 'Cause if so, now you've got a real list! Ruling, please. Puppet - with a couple of candidates for the list in my signature.

So because I have been so remiss in posting anything for quite some time and although I have enjoyed going over these pages and all the pictures herein, and since this is already a run-on sentence and my hair is really short now I figured this shot from our VFW Miami (can you guess what year?) trip still matches the topic title of the original poster who would be none other than ... me! Puppet

Soooooo .... if you can do it, do it! BTW (and I don't know why I notice these things) but that was your 6,666th post. Maybe we should start a "Are you a DCP Fossil?" Topic. Puppet

That's what I love about that post! He's so darn cool about it! Puppet