TonyDanza007

Yes.

http://www.raidersdbc.org/ Now that^^ is how this entire situation should have been handled... A professional, well thought out letter that was released in a timely manner offering a possible solution to the problem rather than blind-sighting everyone and saying, "####... sorry. Yall should've paid!"

This is a rather harsh statement... Why must an entire organization be destroyed because of the careless acts of the corps director? Teal deserves a chance to come back, they just need an overhaul of the BOD and a new director.

Teal Sound's final performance of the season on July 9th at Centerville, Ohio.

In regards to your comment about no income from sources excluding member fees and performance fees, that is not true, until this past year. In years past, they played several convention events during the off-season, sold raffle tickets for a prize drawing at the Friends and Family show (Memorial Day Camp) and their "home show" (Milton), and participated in numerous parades and shows for different communities during the season that provided a decent amount of income. This past year, the same cannot be said. On top of the lack of proper fundraising, there were a lot of kids that did not pay their dues, and Cary did nothing about it. The ones that DID pay their dues merely financed getting Teal Sound out of the debt it was in from the prior administration and paid last years staff that had not yet been paid. DCI and many others did tell Teal that they should not have gone on the road or that they should have done a shorter tour, but Cary Byrd and her 5 member, self-appointed Board of Directors (featuring herself as President and her boyfriend as Vice President) made the decision that they wanted to do a full tour. The intentions were great, that cannot be argued, and I would have respected this decision if they had had the money to complete the tour, however, they did not, and Cary knew this before she went on the road. She admitted this in her letter (I quote, "It was over before it started") that she finally released to the members and parents of Teal Sound 2012 last night (July 15th, 10:30 PM). You may be wondering why the public has heard nothing of this or what took so long, but she claims that the members and their parents are the only people that deserve to hear an explanation... I beg to differ. To make matters worse, once the kids found out how dire their situation truly was after the first bus fiasco, they were told by DCI that they should not tell the parents how bad everything was... This I do not understand. I believe that if people had known, there would have been a chance for the support to come through, but I digress. However, on Teal's defense, the reason they did not want to take the season off to re-group and raise funds was because that would have forced them to revert to Open Class status since Teal Sound is still in it's "probationary" World Class status. The probationary period was supposed to end prior to the 2011 season, but DCI voted to prevent them from achieving "full" World Class status, which, most interesting of all, was due to a certain somebody being added to their Board of Directors in January of 2011 (and this is no current board member). The reason they were afraid of becoming an Open Class corps again is because many argue that the corps could not survive monetarily as an Open Class corps again. The way the DCI tour is structured it basically forces any corps (Open or World) in Florida to do a full tour as it is too expensive to travel from Florida to many of the Open Class shows. On top of that problem, most kids want to be apart of a World Class organization and with Boston Crusaders doing audition camps in Florida it's already hard enough for Teal to recruit kids... It would be even tougher if Teal was once again an Open Class corps. Lastly if you think "Top 17 was NOT going to happen," you really must not have seen the show this year. The design team and instructional staff this year were top notch; it was devastating to see so much potential go to waste. I think and hope there is a chance for Teal Sound to survive and return, but only with an entire overhaul of the Board of Directors, a new Corps Director, and support from DCI and its community.

I would just like to clarify it's not Teal that does not care about getting "their" side of the story out, and it's not their management... It's their corps director, Cary Byrd. She made the decision to call it quits after meeting with Dan and some other DCI people after the Centerville, Ohio show on the 9th. There were other plans attempting to be implemented by DCI to try and prevent this from happening and Cary made the call to go home. In fact after coming out from the room where the meeting was held, she said to the kids, "We're going home" and left, all while the DCI folks dealt with getting the members ready to clean the school and head home. The day of the Centerville show I was at warm-up and a bunch of the members and staff were heckling me to come fill their contra hole; they had no idea any of this was happening. I also have a very close friend on their admin staff and he was blindsided by all of this as well.

If anybody would like to find out any of the facts as to what happened I would suggest talking to Cary Byrd, the corps director (and interestingly enough, the President of the 5 member Board of Directors as well), and Astro Travel- the original bus company. You will hear quite a different story from them than what Cary "released" to the public. List of the BOD Astro Travel

I sure hope for their sake they don't have to deal with Magical Charters ever again unless they have no other option.

I am a Music Ed. major at Jacksonville State University and my primary instrument is saxophone. I marched Teal Sound 2009-2011 on contra, was their horn sergeant in 2011, auditioned (and received a 1 and a contract in December) for the Phantom Regiment for the 2012 season and was with them all the way up until March when I had to back out for a myriad of personal reasons. I am also the section leader of the 20J section for the Marching Southerners at JSU. I don't buy the excuse that woodwind players can't march drum corps or play a brass instrument... And I find it absolutely ridiculous that people in this thread are saying they think Spirit of Atlanta is in trouble for the 2012 season because they have 6 or 7 woodwind players in their brass-line. I have a friend who plays bass-flute and marched Cadets last year when they, ya know, won DCI Championships. But on an on-topic note, I think Spirit could possibly make Top 8 this year, and same with Madison Scouts. I think it would be awesome to see these two old war horses back in top!

bump

Teal Sound had a 9 point jump from these consecutive shows early on in the season: 6/30/09 Drums Along the Mohawk - Rome, NY - 66.800 7/2/09 The Beanpot Invitational - Beverly, MA - 75.100

Where did you get that recording?

Hell yeah, Jupiter low brass horns sound awesome.

In The Presence of Enemies, Pt. 1