EKBari

Were there lots of complaints about BD's "Tommy" tarps in 1990? Yes. But mainly because it didn't look very much line a pinball machine. posted from the DrumScorps app

They told you there's a policy, leave it alone. If you or a potential member has a question, then there's a perfect way to get it answered: Call them and talk to them personally. You don't know what's going on with CT, and you have admitted that you don't. But instead of approaching them maturely, you're trying to shame them.

Doesn't matter about today, his comment was a response to somebody saying a corps in 8th-12th place would medal in the past. And they wouldn't. Different rules and expectations like he said. In fact if a corps from today went back to the 80s, they'd be disqualified immediately.

89 Spirit got off to a slow start and then spent part of the summer doing standstills because at any given moment, half the corps had food poisoning. 86 Garfield was just tired as hell. In addition to cleaning the show they had to learn additional music for the Statue of Liberty celebration. That meant late nights trying to perfect charts that had nothing to do with the show, only to get to NY and find out they were only going to play one song. The fact that both of those corps got as high as they did is a testament to the commitment of the members and the staff.

If Stephen King (or your favorite author) wrote a book and then did an interview in which he had ABSOLUTELY no idea about what the book is about, would you buy it? Show designers have been pushing the idea of using themes to tell a story and in the one moment in which they need to have concise explanations about their shows, they blow it and basically ended up talking out the side of their necks. More than anything it just demonstrated their is no real "story" to be told and the shows are built upon a vague phrase with music shoehorned in to fit said phrase. I would much rather hear that explanation than to see a drum corps staff member mumble, bumble, and stumble through an interview. If you wouldn't put up with that in any other situation, why would you accept it just because it's drum corps?

Do you have any idea how well Aimachi, Vanguard or the Robins are doing this year?

Blue Stars and Limited Edition played it that year too. Imagine how sick I was of Carmina Burana after a few shows on the DCM tour.

'87 was a good show, but when you look at '86 and '88, it had the misfortune of being... well, 1987.

No it's not discrimination. By it's very nature alone, drum corps is an exclusive organization because as a performing arts group they can and do pick and choose who their members are based on their needs for a particular performance.

You keep using the word "discriminate" and I'm still trying to grasp what you're talking about. I could see if there were no other opportunities for men to be in a color guard. That's discrimination. But as we all know, there are plenty of opportunities out there. And I'm quite sure the men in last year's Phantom guard knew far in advance they were not going to be used in the 2011 show, so they had ample time to go see if they can get into another guard. As for the all-male corps, Cavies and Scouts aren't discriminating against women. They are Boy Scouts units which is the reason for them being all male.

Is size going to be an issue? That's the title of the thread. I go off that. Or... We can just stop beating around the bush and say what some are thinking? Is BDB winning because they're big? Not because they have a great staff, great recruiting, and the one thing people tend to overlook is regardless of their size, their shows are written for the talent level of the members. Failure to do this has tripped up more than a few corps even back in the 80s when I marched. Corps would manage to field a 75-80 member corps and suddenly the staff would think they were the next Boston Crusaders (ask an old head about this reference). It's one thing to have difficulty in your shows, but it is another thing entirely to put so much difficulty in the show that the entire summer is spent cleaning the same thing over and over, eventually, the members start to tune out and next summer your corps isn't so large anymore.

I'm slightly amused at some of the posts. Only in Open Class can someone argue about how being in a larger corps is a problem. "You have to work harder to clean a larger corps." Really? I mean REALLY? I'm quite sure every corps since the very first drum corps hit the field knows full well how much work goes into cleaning a large corps. But then again, only in Open Class would a small corps have a chance of beating a larger corps. This says more about the scoring system in Open Class than it does the corps themselves. Remember when Magic only won D2 by 3 points over Capital Regiment, but then went into D1 competition and put a 10 point gap between them in D1 semis. Do any of you honestly think Pioneer has a hope in hell of beating the Blue Devils? Yeah, a few small corps have made WC semifinals, but that's just it... a few. But all in all, the big boys win out, because how many of those small corps made Top 12 or was in position to win it all?

S I have a copy of the 77 show on my iPod and the 88 show can be bought on preserveourcorpsmemories.com.

Let's see, back in the late 80s when I did march... On the Jr. side - Boston On the Sr. side - Bushwackers

Am I the only one to notice that all the corps listed above competed in OC/D2/Class A?