Glenn Loving

Exactly right! A friend and I traveled to ATL by plane, stayed in a nice hotel and saw the DCI Southeast show (23 corps) with 50 YD line seats about half way up for less than it would cost to drive to Indy and see only 12 corps. DCI SE was only about 2 weeks from finals and just a few points from their final scores. We have a great time. The only thing that we felt that wee missed by going to ATL was the excitment of "finals". We got over that quickly. $55 in ATL or $125 in Indy. You do the math

I was not going to respond to any of the replies. I was going to sit back and watch the response. But you have hit a nerve. I was a member of the 1983 27th Lancers and the 1981 Pride of Cincinnati. The Lancers got us to the show, but sometimes just barely. The Pride of Cincinnati tour in 1981 is where we lost 5 people in an accident. 3 family members and two corps members. Please don't think for a minute that I conveniently forget about the kids traveling in bad conditions. I was there surviving on PB&J, bologna, apples and cerial for weeks at a time. My memory is NOT selective. I live with the memory everyday.

You know drum corps is dying when…………… You replace your marching instructor with a choreographer. You try to improve your front line sound by buying a new amp You publish your repertoire and you play no RECOGNISABLE songs from it You feel the need to amplify your soloists You have to make room in the food truck for the 30 tons of props you are hauling around the country The fans are in the stands complaining that they have to wait for an “exciting” corps……..And they are at the World Finals!!! You have to make room in your corps budget for MICROPHONES It stops being about the corps members and becomes all about the corps administration ego It stops being about horns, drums and pageantry and more about a stage production You cancel a show because your singer lost her voice. Your "The Who" theme show involves smashing your amp at the end. You ditch your Navy oxford shoes for jazz slippers. You have more brass on the field than ever and still need amplification. Your field show cures insomnia. Your drum line cannot execute a single rudiment but moves like Cirque du Soleil. Your color guard makes male figure skaters look brawny, rugged, and manly in comparison. Jazz Running? Your drum major doesn't use a baton or a mace but yells, "Plug it in!" to start the show. Your drum corps auditions includes a voice lesson Your music is not recognizable ……….. by anyone High mark time marching is unique and original someone hears DCI and thinks of old Titleist irons. there are more people in the pit than on the field. rain cancels a show for fear of electrical problems. judges give recaps like Bruno Tonioli critiquing a celebrity on "Dancing With the Stars." drills look like a strand of DNA. the music you play is so obscure the composers forgot they wrote it. You hear comments like “I play third violin for the Troopers.” You think WGI is the bomb but never heard of drum corps. A soloist blames cracked notes on his #### reed being too dry. They give I&E medals to flute and saxophone performances! They start referring to drum corps as BAND! You are a lifelong drum corps nut and you actually question whether you want to go a competition You mention the 27th Lancers, North Star, Freelancers, or the Muchachos to “a drum corps fan” and they say “Who?” The goal of the corps directors is to win a Tony Award Your show requires an MC to explain what is going on. The crowd as a whole does not yell and scream anymore during the performance. People start to compare drum corps sound to that of a concert band The corps is concerned with conveying nuance rather than giving “that chill” Can any one think of more?

This G-7 idea spells trouble. What is being proposed will end drum corps forever. After doing some reading about it, I believe the G-7 concept is flawed in every way. It makes the rich corps richer, the poor corps poorer, discourages new corps from forming, and pushes upcoming corps to the side of the road. Now I expect this kind of twaddle from George Hopkins. He can say he "likes the activity as it is" all he wants but he is wasting his breath because we all know it’s not true. He has long had a dream of destroying DCI and raising up G-7 in his own image and it pains me greatly that any other corps – but especially the corps I marched with, The Cavaliers -- would even think about participating. The big idea about drum corps is to take the simplest brass and percussion instruments in existence and make great music happen with them. Today, however, the emphasis is on visual tricks and gimmicks and no one seems to care about what a corps sounds like. If brass is deemphasized then woodwinds and even strings could be forced upon the activity, diluting its pure form further than it already is. I was a huge proponent of moving from G bugles to Bb/F horns due to superior tone quality of Bb/F instrumentation but I was assured by one and all that it would stop at that point: No woodwinds. No strings. People I trusted lied to me and I am still fuming because now here comes the rest of the orchestra onto the field. Once again it is apparent that G-7 is not interested at all in keeping drum corps alive when in actual fact it needs to be kept alive more than ever. There are fewer corps than ever, there are less competitions, less people are attending those competitions, and the activity itself is exorbitantly expensive. Operating expenses for a corps are just beyond belief and it seems to me G-7 would put a stranglehold on the activity and, as a result, every other corps would eventually fold. Corps dues are so high today that only the more well-off young people can march and this is also unfortunate. Drum corps is for ALL who have the ability to march and play, not just those with money. Think of all the talented musicians of modest means who got to see the country for the first time while on tour! Until the idea of G-7 came along, the members of ANY DCI Finalist Corps were considered to be great by the general public and especially by the students in school bands. I remember in my days with The Cavaliers where fans would look up to those of us who were marching. Corps members were their unreachable role models and they aspired to be like us, play like us, and they would play our shows at home on DVD over and over. Now G-7 wants to tear all that down and bring a once great activity down to the level of the average band member. DISGUSTING! To make matters worse, just wait until the price of a ticket to a G-7 show increases to the point where it is cost-prohibitive to attend. Hoppy and his band friends may think they are going to make more money this way but the opposite will hold true: The fan base will shrink even further than it has now. To save drum corps it will take doing the OPPOSITE of what Hoppy and G-7 want! Ditch the expensive electronics, trash the overpriced props, and get back to playing some real music! Why do you think the Madison Scouts got such a tremendous reception in 2010? OLD SCHOOL ROCKS THE HOUSE! Every time I went to a competition in 2010 all I heard from fans was how much they loved The Cavaliers and the Madison Scouts. Fans want to go to a drum corps show to escape the humdrum schlock of boring marching bands. They go to see -- and especially hear -- something so incredible they talk about it for months. The audience wants to be entertained with their facial skin peeled off from the force of a brass line, mesmerized by exciting drill, and looking in wonder as a great drum line makes the impossible look easy. The fans want it loud, exciting, energetic, and emotional. They want to stand up, clap until their hands hurt, and go home totally drained and happy. I'm not advocating rewinding the clock here, either, because "old school" can be done in a new way just as The Cavaliers and the Madison Scouts did in 2010. I'm not talking about bringing back flag presentations, uniform inspections, or even reinstating the "tick system" to count brass and drum line members' individual errors. However, I AM talking about restoring parts of a simpler judging system where the corps who performs the most difficult show the best wins: 25 points brass, 25 points visual, 20 points percussion, and 30 points for general effect. Fans who attend drum corps shows go to see and hear something DIFFERENT than a marching band and for G-7 to degrade the activity to make it MORE like marching band benefits nobody. "Dumbing down" a great activity is what G-7 is truly all about and, respectfully, I think moving in the opposite direction makes sense where drum corps once again becomes so unique, so great, so pleasingly different, and so far and above a common marching band that the activity once again becomes an unreachable ideal to which young musicians can aspire. John Florio Lead Trumpet, The Cavaliers Drum and Bugle Corps, 1980-1983