CaballarosJr.

Reach out to the heavens with your bugle cries. Out beyond the rainbow where your treasure lies. Carry proud your banners waving freely in the air. Keep on Marching Forward. You’ll find your goal somewhere. Fear not of the hardship-facing life is real. Onward as you travel, new friendships you will feel. Reach out with human kindness, be honest but be bold. Dreams Come True from doing, rewards are more than gold. Send out your joyful music, march with your royal air. Put on your finest raiments for everyone to share. Hearts all beat in rhythm, dreams are for keeping time. All are joined together as you pass in perfect line. Now hear the tinkle of chimes to the time of marching feet. Then comes a crash of cymbals, be alert don’t miss a beat. Obstacles before you, hills too steep too climb. Make your way around them, other paths you’ll find. Riches are before you, adventures to unfold. Every joy around you is within your reach to hold. Greatness is in victory, but one must also believe. It’s from rewards of giving that greater blessing you receive. March forward in unison, maneuvers make supreme. Each one in their own glory, to fulfill their own dream. Now times are here for parting, no matter where you stray. There are greater goals beyond you, you’ll surely make your way.

Following the motto of DCI and it's elitism and seeming desire to have as little people involved in Drum Corps as possible. DCI Fan Network's last year $40 cost was increased to $69 this year. With very performance videos on youtube or other online video sites, all pretty much shut down by DCI Copyright police, reliving old memories or even the few people who might want to know about DC has been made more difficult. The cost to DCI to make the videos from 1974-2012 online is almost trivial and they should be lowering the price to stimulate interest in Drum Corps. But then in the last 20 years or so, every effort has been made to make DC so elitist that it has become extinct compared to the 1960's and 1970's. So this move to obliterate the past and make DC even more inaccessible is no surprise. DCI should be doing everything it can do promote DC, not pull videos, increase the prices and increase the cost of Drum Corps. They should maybe even be offering The Legacy Collection to hundreds of libraries and providing FREE DCI Fan Network access to library patrons. All they have to do is take The Legacy Collections and download them for online access-at most a day's project with little or no production cost. In addition it's deplorable that the performers themselves and the corps themselves can't even look back at their own efforts that were done decades before The Net and even computers. The Legacy Collection DVD's are also more expensive-nearly three times as high as Hollywood Movies or TV Shows would be. That's all I have to say, I think, so no big finale in this posting.

Following the motto of DCI and it's elitism and seeming desire to have as little people involved in Drum Corps as possible. DCI Fan Network's last year $40 cost was increased to $69 this year. With very performance videos on youtube or other online video sites, all pretty much shut down by DCI Copyright police, reliving old memories or even the few people who might want to know about DC has been made more difficult. The cost to DCI to make the videos from 1974-2012 online is almost trivial and they should be lowering the price to stimulate interest in Drum Corps. But then in the last 20 years or so, every effort has been made to make DC so elitist that it has become extinct compared to the 1960's and 1970's. So this move to obliterate the past and make DC even more inaccessible is no surprise. DCI should be doing everything it can do promote DC, not pull videos, increase the prices and increase the cost of Drum Corps. They should maybe even be offering The Legacy Collection to hundreds of libraries and providing FREE DCI Fan Network access to library patrons. All they have to do is take The Legacy Collections and download them for online access-at most a day's project with little or no production cost. In addition it's deplorable that the performers themselves and the corps themselves can't even look back at their own efforts that were done decades before The Net and even computers. The Legacy Collection DVD's are also more expensive-nearly three times as high as Hollywood Movies or TV Shows would be. That's all I have to say, I think, so no big finale in this posting.

So the first day after the post, you DCPers would rather blame situations and relive the past then try to create a future like the past was. For me, today is what matters. There is no Caballaros in Brook Park, Ohio. I would much rather take my nieces to an actual practice session in Kennedy Park in Brook Park, Ohio for an actual competitive corps than listen to 38 year old recordings. I await the next 24 hour responses to see if anyone hear wants to have old school corps or just memories.

Regarding amplification and electronics. Why don't you stop relying on cheating and go back to real Drum Corps where the performers training, talent and ability is what the crowd and judges hear and is judged. How about the instruments create the sound not a sound engineers board ? How about playing music people without masters degrees in music education can understand. Maybe instead of "themes" that requires pages of information to read and understand like Crown's empty box, we have songs like "Let It Be Me", "Ice Castles", "In the Hall Of The Mountain King", "Autumn Leaves", "Music Of the Night." songs that most everyone knows. Discussions of electronics used in Drum Corps is pathetic. Why not have a system where doing bad stuff actually is subtracted from a corps score? Where it matters if people are cracking notes. There could be judges with score sheets on clip boards keeping track of people out of line, out of step, equipment not caught, cracked notes. Maybe they could make up a name like tics. That would require year long practice every weekend and once a weekday night practice-not just computers designing drills with performers using APPS to figure out what to do. Maybe we could have high school band members being in corps with members from their cities, not like a Canton corps that practices in Memphis and has only a few members who actually lives in Ohio. And heaven forbid, let's have maybe VOLUNTEERS. We could have local circuits of corps, maybe 6 or 7 corps per metropolitan area giving a million or so youth members being called the best youth organization by TIME, LIFE, ABC, CBS, THE NEW YORK TIMES, every newspaper, every local council, every governor, every congress member Presidents from Johnson to Reagan. Maybe bring back the days when Drum and Bugle Corps was second only to both Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts combined in total number of member. Maybe we could have drum corps every year take hundreds of thousands of youth kids from Jets and Sharks lifestyles into being doctors, lawyers, engineers, governors, mayors, legislators, CEO's. Not just be a source on music and performance majors resumes whose parents. make hundreds of thousands of dollars Maybe we could have drum corps where everyone goes to local schools, lives on the same street, gets together at someones back yard to practice until neighbors want to go to sleep. Not flies on planes to rehearsal sites. Maybe we could have what we had before George Hopkins took over Drum Corps. It's time to unplug drum corps.

Why don't you stop relying on cheating and go back to real Drum Corps where the performers training, talent and ability is what the crowd and judges hear and is judged. How about the instruments create the sound not a sound engineers board ? How about playing music people without masters degrees in music education can understand. Maybe instead of "themes" that requires pages of information to read and understand like Crown's empty box, we have songs like "Let It Be Me", "Ice Castles", "In the Hall Of The Mountain King", "Autumn Leaves", "Music Of the Night." songs that most everyone knows. Discussions of electronics used in Drum Corps is pathetic. Why not have a system where doing bad stuff actually is subtracted from a corps score? Where it matters if people are cracking nots. There could be judges with score sheets on clip boards keeping track of people out of line, out of step, equipment not caught, cracked notes. Maybe they could make up a name like tics. That would require year long practice every weekend and once a weekday night practice-not just computers designing drills with performers using APPS to figure out what to do. Maybe we could have high school band members being in corps with members from their cities, not like a Canton corps that practices in Memphis and has only a few members who actually lives in Ohio. And heaven forbid, let's have maybe VOLUNTEERS. We could have local circuits of corps, maybe 6 or 7 corps per metropolitan area giving a million or so youth members being called the best youth organization by TIME, LIFE, ABC, CBS, THE NEW YORK TIMES, every newspaper, every local council, every governor, every congress member Presidents from Johnson to Reagan. Maybe bring back the days when Drum and Bugle Corps was second only to both Girl Scouts and Boy Scouts combined in total number of member. Maybe we could have drum corps every year take hundreds of thousands of youth kids from Jets and Sharks lifestyles into being doctors, lawyers, engineers, governors, mayors, legislators, CEO's. Not just be a source on music and performance majors resumes whose parents. make hundreds of thousands of dollars Maybe we could have drum corps where everyone goes to local schools, lives on the same street, gets together at someones back yard to practice until neighbors want to go to sleep. Maybe we could have what we had before George Hopkins took over Drum Corps. It's time to unplug drum corps.

There are many threads here about how elitist and obscure drum corps has become in this forum including my own two entitled something like Saving Drum Corps. George Hopkin's and Star's influence has wiped out thousands of corps and turned drum corps into something that requires a degree in music to understand. Making the entire activity virtually extinct. That pretty much sums up dozens of original postings here. The question is, to what degree would you involve yourself in bringing back local, old school (pre-1989) drum corps competing in a separate governing body totally separate from Drum Corps International with some other cool name. If you have kids or grandkids with music would you do what your parents did and take them across town for rehearsals. Would you participate in local fund raisers like my mother did almost every night after working all day and raising four kids. The pre-George Hopkins victims outnumber DCI like maybe 1,000 to 1. For every 1 person who performs or watches in a Drum Corps performance there are like maybe 1,000 who marched or attended a drum corps show. We could have a present of the 27th Lancers, Squires, Royal Crusaders, Bridgemen, Buckeye State Caballaros, Buckeyes, Greece Cadets, Audobon Bon Bons, Alberta Girls, Etibocoke Crusaders, North Star, Marion Cadets and thousands of corps that were destroyed by the elitist movement of the late 1980's. DCI is a small minority of those of us who no longer have kids to have march in your former corps telling your kids of places you practiced when you drive by. IMO we should stop posting pictures and stuff about the old time and just bring them back. George Hopkins isn't the dictator of the world. If thousands of people who want to resurrect old school drum corps then Hopkins can't stop us from filing Articles of Incorporation. Recruiting members from local high schools. Finding places to practice. Establish an artistic constitution mandating principals that old school drum corps had before the rich elitist music and performance majors. With facebook, twitter, google, really old deteriorating rosters we should be able to contact massive numbers of old school alumni who have long since stopped going to shows that require pages of theme explanations to read while the next corps takes the stage. There must be places where the hundreds of thousands of G Bugles are located. They have to be in someones' garages or attics or basements. And if enough old school drum corps start then Getzen, Bach, Conn, Olds etc. will make our types of instruments. I welcome my facebook page to organize the effort. Steve Bayt

Thank you for providing the answer to one of the biggest mystery in Drum Corps. I have been wondering about this for about 4 years when the Ohio University Library started carrying The Legacy Collection and was trying to figure out a song I had in my head since "the late 1980's." I went through Sky Riders, Freelancers, etc. trying to figure out where Autumn Leaves came from. I didn't think that that many riflers can all of a sudden collapse simultaneously when the rest of the show was really great. While I have your attention. Do you agree with me that the 1988 reboot was much better than the 1987 ? In my opinion the 1988 version is much more jazzy and has much more contrast. The 1987 seems a bit stiff.

I like my bubble. I don't want it burst. It's a good bubble. Bubbles are good to have. We were the best-bubble or no bubble. Don't burst my bubble. It's my bubble and I like it very much.

I'm not sure of the Buckeyes but several Cabs went to the Scouts in 1974. Maybe the Cabs influx to Madison had something to do with Buckeyes. That's something to think about.

As someone who was in the Caballaros 1969-1982. The other Cleveland Corps who merged with The Buckeyes. I can state that this might have happened. I remember some baritone players who would have done something like that. No names. There is a Buckeyes facebook page to find out any more details. I'm not sure what to type in the search box. I joined so it just comes up along the side.

Spartucus version 1 was in 1981 and 1982. The decline didn't start in Birmingham's 1979 and 1980. Those were the best years. I do though agree with the rest of your posting. I remember Phantom having to hand out librettos to the crowds. Too bad every show since about the Star of Indiana 1990 needs a libretto now. The 2008 Spartacus didn't need explaining due to rule changes that made it more possible for theatrical shows. 1981 and 1982 were not horrible shows. Just a quarter century ahead of their time, with rules that just didn't allow for proper presentation.

Seriously good idea. Drum Corps is totally too over intellectual. There's simply no way to market Drum Corps to the masses. One of many reasons DC has died is the music, drills, and theatrical elements are way over the head of anyone other than a microscopic portion of even the music population. One would have thought that Star of Indiana's 1993 obscure program would have ended the pain. Yet, it just got worse. The nightmares of Garfield's 2007 virtually all vocal show "teaching us" drum corps still reverberate. Bring back Jim Ott, Jerry Noonan, Phantom of The Opera etc. anything but what corps are playing now.

The bottom line is that the current Drum Corps model has dreadfully failed. For back in the youth volunteer days, DC was part of the American Landscape. Every city had at least one drum corps. Virtually everyone had someone in a Drum Corps or knew one or more people in a drum corps. Everyone hailed the activity including high school teachers to mayors to even Presidents Truman to Reagan until the current high business model was evolved. Cities had entire festivities dedicated to their local drum corps competition. Yes, there were enough corps within a 50 mile diameter to hold local contests. Now, DC is virtually non-existant. We've gone from a few thousand corps on the day of the IC Reveries 1966 sit down, to at most 40 corps. Some states that had a hundred corps now have none. The elitist mentality DC has established has destroyed the activity. DC is just about he only artistic endeavor that has copyright police preventing any distribution of drum corps performances without being paid. DC is all about big money now. And the on field product just doesn't have a mass market audience. The only hope to save drum corps is to go back to being a youth activity that truly is a non-profit organization.

With the same motive of not being offensive. But there are only like 38 corps now. Drum Corps really doesn't exist much anymore. I think that going back to all volunteer corps would reduce the financial entry to barriers and take DC back to the youth model with parents actively involved. Back in my day a corps' biggest cost was the initial fund raising for the initial purchase of bugles, and percussion instruments. Most of the flags and hundreds of corps had home made rifles. Corps marched in the same uniform maybe for 5 summers. Once a corps had their start up costs, there was not much yearly costs. The more corps the more shows, the less each corps will have to compete and expensively travel to at great cost. This is a great idea The Glassmen are trying and I intend to do whatever I can logistically do to help bring back the days of 38 corps in a state or part of a state. And the name is Caballaros (there's no E) we weren't from Hawthorne or Cambridge, MA. The A was intentional.