BariBone

They went on first in 1980 in the 12th spot at prelims and moved up to 11th in finals...There can be no other best opening act to open a finals than the 1980 North Star..1990 Dutch Boy comes in a close second..

[class moment of the weekend...right before the Bucs victory concert, legendary DM george Parks saluted Josh, Bucs dm now. you could see the admiration...dare i say it love...the two had for each other. very classy to see the DM last time Bucs won out there saluting the current team. Wow...was wondering if George Parks was in the house and what he must have been thinking. The 1980 Bucs, although not strong in the percussion caption had one of the greatest hornlines in DCA history and won the title by over 2 full points scoring a 91.3 in the tic system days. Their encore performance that night was incredible.

It was an out of body experience to play that show that night. I remember vividly people standing by the fence at field level holding their ears when we hit the last chord. I remember looking at Russo for the cue at the end of the show out of the corner of my eye and seeing Jim Costello leaping into the air. The hornline was 58 strong. 24 sops, 18 baris, 4 flugels, 6 mellos and 6 contras. You could actually hear people yelling from the stands during all parts of the show..like "6th place my ###" Even after we left the field, you could hear a buzz throughout the crowd for a while very similar to when a guy would hit a 560 ft home run in baseball. Sadly, this performance was in the pre-DVD era and pre VHS era. The record sounds intense but like most live performances, you had to be there. I'm glad someone else was there and never forgot it!

This is somewhat radical but I think will make everyone happy. Continue with I&E on Fri Night. Have Class A prelims on Saturday morning 10 AM, followed by the Alumni spectacular. On Saturday night, divide all of the open class corps into 3 different blocks of 5 corps and have them perform at 3 different local high school stadiums in exhibition..call this "Preview of Champions". Base this on the seedings going in..so the top 3 seeds are in different venues. Create goodwill by not charging admission to this preview. Then..its on to Super Sunday the way it used to be...prelims and finals the same day/night. Bring back open seating in prelims. I think its shame that corps in the lower echelons of open class basically travel great distances to perform once. This will give them at least 2 performances.

Well, speaking of penalties and the Cabs, in 1982 during the DCA prelims, the Cabs were warming up in the park across the street from J Birny Crum. Just so happened that the warmup number was building to the hit in Evita and the corps let it fly while there was a quiet moment in the Matadors prelim performance. Richtie Price, the soloist actually turned around and had a "what the ? " expression on his face. I think it was least a one point or more penalty backing the Cabs into 6th after prelims. Finals was the same night so the corps came out and took out all the frustration with one of the most electrifying perfomances (literally if anyone ever remmebers the old magic cube flash at the end of the rumps) in their storied history moving up 2 places in finals. The reporter for Drum Corps World reported 7 standing ovations throughout the show. Keith Griffin, who played the soprano solo in Land of Make Believe for the '76 Bridgemen reprised his solo in the '82 Cabs. Keith was on fire the whole show. He nailed every note. A year later, in '83 Westshore had the penalty in prelims dropping them in 4th. If you listen to Westore in '83 finals, they also gave an incredible emotionally power packed performance.

Brandt Crocker announcing.."on the starting line.....from Hawthorne, New Jersey....The Hawthorne Caballeros Alumni Drum and Bugle Corps"....and also announcing ..Drum Major Jim Russo..is your corps ready? "...was definitely the highlight of semi-finals. Looking at the jumbo tron and seeing closeups of many of the men and women of the corps was also a sight especially Frank Ponzo nailing many of his trademark high notes.

DCI was telecast LIVE in it's entirety on PBS from 1975-1980. It used to run well over 4 hours. Programming on PBS was much more diverse back then. I remember watching CHESS MATCHES of all things on PBS back in the early 70's. I remmember vividly the 1980 telecast becasue I happened to be home at the time and unknowingly turned the dial at the exact moment Jerry Noonan hit the high note in North Star's opener. I was hooked for life after that. The 1980 telecast is my favorite because Rita Moreno, who at the time was the only person ever to win an Oscar, Emmy and a Tony was flabbergasted by what she saw that night. She was joined by Steve Rondinaro and Jim Peck. They also had a sideline reporter on the track who interviewed an estatic George Zingali after 27th's performance. One of my favorite Rita Moreno questions to Steve Rondinaro was "Who are these people?, they are not high schools, they are not colleges, who are they"? I was wondering the exact same thing. The whole telecast was much different than what you see today. of course the camera work is much better now, but there were some amazing shots on the '80 telecast. Being that it was live, you got to see some of the corps set up, warm up and the analysis was not the overblown, overhyped dribble you get today. It was straight and to the point. Rondinaro's best telecast by far. When DCI went to Montreal in 1981, they claimed that the costs of doing a telecast were too expensive, even though a record 39.000 people were going to attend finals. Instead they braodcast the 1981 DCI-Midwest finals in its entirety, another 4 hour marathon. This time they had rock drummer Carmen Appice in the booth..and you could see Rondinaro wince everytime Carmen Appice opened his mouth. Sadly there is no official video of 1981 DCI finals. In 1982, we got the 2 hour edited after the fact PBS presentation with Rondinaro and Rob McConnell. This was the infamous telecast where they talked over every corps. In 1983, they had Chuck Mangione and Grease choreagrapher Pat Birch in the booth. Pat Birch loved Phantom, but she seemed to be unimpressed with every else. I loved the segment where they pretaped statements from corps members introducing themselves and Larry Dodd from the Blue Devils says.." Hi I'm Larry Dodd, I marched in Seattle Imperials and the Blue Devils, this is my last year in drum corps and I'm glad it's my last year in drum corps"...LOL not good for recruiting the potential out there who where thinking of marching.. LOL. In 1984, we went back to a live broadcast, albiet just the top 5. From 1984-1993 DCI finals top 5 then top 6 were live. We got a bonus one year when there was a tie in the top 6 and we got to see 7 out of the top 12 live. In 1994 DCI tried to broadcast the top 12 live over a closed circuit system in select areas. Sadly there just is no market for drum corps on live television. As computer technology increases, maybe some day, we will be able to go to the dci website and pay a fee and get super clear live uninterrupted muli-camera feed from finals over the internet.