jbl

I have a pair of guard gloves from that year and they were pink and white.

I know the Sop player on the far right in the photo. He had been marching with SCV's A corps since 1977 when he was in the seventh grade. If I recall he only marched a year in the SCV cadets.

Oh my God, YES!!!!! Still to this day, man... Randy....as a matter of fact I DID spend the entire bus ride back from Atlanta wondering what I did to cost of the show. Jerry, you remember be marching the drill solo at our housing site the daye after finals? I did the entire show....visuals and all...Stymie asked me if I won after I came off the field. Rich, like Jerry, my sincere thanks! And BTW....Garfield thought they'd LOST the show! According to Dave Fowler, they felt Prelims was a better performance. I don't remember much the next day, I had the most massive headache from the night before and all I wanted to do was sleep most of the day. Just a note: for me 84 finals was a much better experience than 83. In 83 I was in SCV and we had gone from first place to third and experienced a very negative crowd reaction. After retreat the corps was lectured by Gail for the incident (but that's been discussed in other posts)

Yeah, but you know........ The ring represents a moment in time. It doesn't put a smile on my face as much as reading somebody elses impressions of our performances......whether we won or lost. Oh, I know...losing by 1/10th doesn't wipe away 9 months of memories of the best musical group I ever played with...living out of the attic in the bingo hall for 2 months, sharing our apartment with a dozen or so other dudes, how often Andy Hedein was late to practice (EVERY DAY!!), watching Scott and Jake golf at every opportunity, etc. On the BD board there's a thread about Dave Fowler meeting Scott Heffle (84Cadet & bluestars80)...Fowler made the mistake of mentioning the ring, and the thread kinda got hijacked...we're discussing the 84 version of La Fiesta right now! If it makes you guys feel any better, in my opinion (and believe me, I'm not the only one) BD won in '84. Now I don't say this to try and #### anyone (Garfield) off, but I can honestly say in the 25 years I've been involved with Corps, I've never witnessed a show that had more drive, energy, talent, sophistication and pure in-your-face Drum Corps than that show. All I know is anytime I introduce Corps to someone, '84 BD is the first thing they hear, and thanks to you guys who put it out there. Rich Gee thanks from me too. In the three years I marched nothing was as intense as the 84 finals' show. Most of the people I've talked with who marched that year have a similar experience. One thing that seems to come up is that the concentration was so focused that many only remember playing bits and pieces of the first two tunes (Bacchanal and Latin Implosion). And the highlights of that show was the crowd response after La Fiesta and the closer. So gee thanks again for the comment

You see, I keep thinking I was wearing Green and red when it happened. I must be thinking back to prelims 83 when we came on after the Cadets (or as we said then Garfield). I guess those things happen when you get older. :) Wait a minute was I wearing blue when we stood along the wall at Denver? Oh, wait that was red and green standing behind us then. Wearing green and red? Wearing blue? Are you a switch hitter JBL?? Like you, he marched SC before moving to BD...I think there were about 9 or so people who left Vanguard for BD between the 83 & 84 seasons....and the poor shmucks STILL never won at Pacific Procession (figures...84 was the first year in nearly a decade where SCV won it's own show...) Sam I believe there were about 20 of us that moved from SCV to BD in 1984. There was about 5 former SCV members in the hornline, but about 50 percent of the 84 BD drumline came from 83 SCV, and there were a few girls in the guard who had also marched 83 SCV.

My memory of that year about Star was hearing some guys in the Madison Scouts singing a critical version of Star's closing tune, the Mickey Mouse club ending song. M-i-c (see how we spend money) k - e - y (Why? because we're corporate sponsored) M-o-n-e-y.

You see, I keep thinking I was wearing Green and red when it happened. I must be thinking back to prelims 83 when we came on after the Cadets (or as we said then Garfield). I guess those things happen when you get older. :) Wait a minute was I wearing blue when we stood along the wall at Denver? Oh, wait that was red and green standing behind us then.

Nope, it was '84. Hmmm, I have this vision of standing on the ramp before heading down into the pit that was whitewater. As were waiting to go on the Cadets are starting to do their z pull, and then the crowd starts going crazy as cadets start going down on the crowds right side. I must be combining some memories.

We were out of uniform and in the stands......how could we be in the end-zone....I don't think that place had one...did it? It didn't have much of an endzone at DCI Midwest because of the hill that was at the end of the stadium. And I don't remember many shows at all that allowed other corps to stand at the endzone while another corps was on the field. And, didn't the fall happen in 83, at the end of the Cadet's Rockypoint Holiday re-entry (the z pull) during prelims? Not during their 84 finals show.

And, of course, as Jan points out in the RAMD thread, the acoustics in Montreal's Olympic Stadium were not the greatest. So maybe that, combined with all the crowd noise, was all it took. The sad thing is that on the telecast tape, you can hear the phasing all too clearly. And yet even the telecast announcers don't seem to be aware of what happened. One thing I've heard from anyone who marched finals in 81 and 82 in Montreal was how horrible the acoustics were. Every horn players who was there talks about the echo that came off the back stands when they turned around and played. And if I recall most of the corps spent time working on the phasing problem, that was created by this echo, before finals.

Again, you could very well be right. I wasn't there, and certainly never marched Santa Clara . . . though I would've loved to. But Kevin makes a good point in that RAMD thread: If crowd noise were the issue, then wouldn't watching the drum major for visual cues compensate for that? Maybe someone who marched Santa Clara that year could enlighten us? (I know, it's probably not a favorite topic of conversation.) If I recall most of the hornline was next to the sideline on their knees, many of them couldn't see the dm. And something that comes to mind, there were some problems with the drumline rushing. When I saw SCVs video from finals (taken near the press box) it's amazing how loud the crowd is. You can see the corps on the field, but you can't hear a note coming off the field.

oops

You could very well be right. I know the crowd was loud. But I've also read this explanation on RAMD: Re: Santa Clara, and the Bottledance Hmmm, I don't recall hearing to much about the drum major and the conducting. In 1983 I marched in SCV and spent most of my summer in between two horn players who marched 1982. It seemed like on every free moment I was relieving 82 finals. They were always consistant that they couldn't hear the commands. And from my experience with with SCV at the time, verbal commands were the standard during the show. Usually there was a high mark time of 4 counts, then the verbal command. The hat didn't come off until the end of the show. So I'm not sure that it was used as a command to start the closer. Well... maybe I'm confused, I guess it comes with age. :) Just to throw this out, how many of you ever talked on the field during a show? Me, never. But I remember hearing a judge's tape of Blue Devil's show from 1982 finals and hearing the voice of horn player coming across the tape.

Speaking as one who was there...no we didn't. I wasn't there, but I clearly remember a discussion about this on RAMD (ironically, in a thread nearly identical to this one) in which a couple of Blue Devils members admitted that they laughed and cheered when this happened: Embarrassing drum corps moments After my "no we didn't" post I was PMed by someone who was there and did see some cheering...then I read the thread you referenced . To be quite honest, I don't remember cheerng myself, nor do I remember others doing it, but I may not have been near them. Apparently, I stand corrected... Sam, I wonder if this was finals or the afternoon prelims in 84? At prelims we were still warming up when Garfield went out and if I recall we went on after Suncoast sound. In the evening we went on before SCV and if you remember the hornline had their wings clipped by Moxley becuase of the antic we pulled that afternoon (barking at Garfield's colorguard). I'm like you I don't recall cheering or anyone around me.

From a musical standpoint, you're correct. However, the guard held it together somehow. I'll never figure out how they managed that. One of those sad moments in history that you wish you could rewrite. Just rewind the tape, and this time they play with no phasing. Let it happen the way it was supposed to. *sigh* The guard held it together because they didn't listen to the horn line. When they rehearsed the change the week before (in a hotel banquet area) the guard was told to count and ignore what was going on in front of them musically. One of the main reasons the hornline phased so bad was because they couldn't hear each other. When they played the first chord the crowd went wild. When I marched SCV in 83 all I used to hear from the horn players who marched 82 was how they could barely hear the guys to their left and right because of how loud the crowd was in the dome.

Hoping to improve their GE score in 82 SCV changed their last couple minutes and threw in the bottle dance after the two shots.