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.

Wow, did I just fall into a time machine or what. So, DC adults are actually paid and get 401K's health benefits etc. I know there are a great deal of changes on field but I had no idea they were off field also. Drum Corps being all volunteer was how it was like for decades. I'm 48 and was in The Caballaros Drum Corps from 1969-1981 and the only people who got paid were instructors, but for like 30% of the salary they would get if they did the same thing in like a university marching band. There were no health care plans or 401K's. My mother wrote a check to each instructor for the month for about $150 merely to re-imburse them for gas and summer food travel. That was just about it. We had mostly volunteers who drove buses and my mother and others cooked food which was in the large part donated by companies. Our yearly budget, albeit in the 1970's was about $60,000. It was considered extravagant that Spirit got like $110,000 in their weekend TV telethon about 1976-ish. So, if the Glassmen are seeking to go with all volunteers then good for them. If they weren't so far away, I might consider helping out. Steve Bayt -Caballaros Jr. Drum and Bugle Corps 1969-1981

Now that apparently youtube is allowed here. Then someone should play I Sing The Body Electric with all the modern rules and possibilities that we old schoolers didn't have. In 1980 the rules we were burdened with would have made this a completely watered down song. But now, WOW even part of the opening solo could be vocalized. Apparently two corps attempted it in 1982.

This isn't 1989. It's from 1988 and the first solo in Autumn Leaves.

Other noteable times when death right before a major sporting event happened to someone and how they handled it very consistent with my epiphany. Last night at the Ravens Game, Favre's Monday Night Football Game and Rochette winning the Olympic Figure Skating Bronze Medal. This weekend alone there were probably a few thousand marathoners who lost family and friends through out the week or month who were ther for them through all the ACL's, sore feet, missed family gatherings, trips to the ER, trips to the Vitamin World or GNC, providing massages and physical therapy. All the types of stuff (ideologically) that Jim Ott did to Spirit. They did all that so that their loved ones would win, not be in tears during the event the deceased helped out with so vigorously. I've read a lot about Jim Ott and I think he would have wanted to have heard that night "And In First Place, The Spirit of Atlanta." http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nfl--support-from-ravens--rival-players-helps-lift-torrey-smith-on-day-of-family-tragedy.html http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/football/nfl/12/23/packers.raiders.ap/ http://www.cnn.com/2010/SPORT/02/24/olympics.rochette/index.html

Other noteable times when death right before a major sporting event happened to someone and how they handled it very consistent with my epiphany. Last night at the Ravens Game, Favre's Monday Night Football Game and Rochette winning the Olympic Figure Skating Bronze Medal. http://sports.yahoo.com/news/nfl--support-from-ravens--rival-players-helps-lift-torrey-smith-on-day-of-family-tragedy.html http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2003/football/nfl/12/23/packers.raiders.ap/ http://www.cnn.com/2010/SPORT/02/24/olympics.rochette/index.html

Obviously I am going to reply to this being one of those in Birmingham who cried in 1979 over Phantom (which I have gone over a bazillion times) and the next year over Spirit. Hardly a week or less passes where I haven't had to put on my vinyl records (I bought four that I thought would last a lifetime in 1980 with PR, Spirt, Cavs and 27), then CDS, then DVD's then sometimes when I am in a library and I just have to hear my non-Caballaros Jr. favorite song "Let It Be Me" I go to yoxtuxx for "One Night In August". Amazingly, from 1980 and the advent of CD's three of four of my records are now scratched, worn out or melted in my cars. I love that I have finally seen the actual night of Spirit's performance and they did a wonderful job. HOWEVER..... I slightly disagree with doing just an exhibition. My mother died just a week before a Marathon I was planning on dedicating to Elsa's Procession, Carmen, Beethoven's Ninth etc. Instead, I dedicated it in church during a eulogy to my mother. I had no intention of having some sort of exhibition like run. I wanted to have the marathon of my life then be at the finish line with some type of Cold Case Kathryn Morris moment with my Mom. I was on a goal pace, incarnated August 18,1979 to finally qualify for Boston, at Mile 17 until an injury forced me to stop. I would have felt horrible just downgrading to a half marathon or 10-K. I feel as though Spirit should have done an actual competition with having July 8,1980 being the eternal highest score in DCI history. They should have taken that emotion and vowed stuff like "No one cracks a single note, no one gets out of formation, no one drops a rifle or mistimes a flag dip, or whatever percussion sections did wrong for tics.(I never played drums)" "Tonight for Jim we are going to be perfect, not just real good so that for the rest of history drum corps fans might someday be mourning the loss of All My Children while typing (on a Monday at about 1 p.m.) on their computers on this thing that will be called The Internet about the night Spirit got a 100." "Everyone remember what Jim taught us and be perfect tonight. I wouldn't have wanted to just stand there and play or like they did. I would have wanted to hear that night during retreat "And In First Place with a score of 100, The Spirit of Atlanta." If I were in Spirit that night I would have wanted to just blow the stands down, send rifles in whatever the percussion solo was called(Devil Went Down To Georgia?), up to heaven to Jim then catch them perfectly, I'd want to have played and color guarded with such precision computer generated models would use us as perfection. I would have wanted some parent to find a really quick working local sign shop or even better a plague to be installed in the ground reading "On July 8,1980 The Spirit of Atlanta achieved perfection at this site in memory of Jim Ott." After the retreat scores they could have installed it right there for generations of Band members, crowds and athletes to be inspired. For few who have done stuff there in the last 32 years probably know what happened there. Just like the few residents who live in Jersey City's Society Hill housing where The Sit Down occurred. Well, I have to get ready for a training run with Jim Ott's waiting for me when I get home. I can't decide to watch July 8th, a DVD of Birmingham or just go to DCI FAN NETWORK, which is very much worth the price.

Obviously I am going to reply to this being one of those in Birmingham who cried in 1979 over Phantom (which I have gone over a bazillion times) and the next year over Spirit. Hardly a week or less passes where I haven't had to put on my vinyl records (I bought four that I thought would last a lifetime in 1980 with PR, Spirt, Cavs and 27), then CDS, then DVD's then sometimes when I am in a library and I just have to hear my non-Caballaros Jr. favorite song "Let It Be Me" I go to yoxtuxx for "One Night In August". Amazingly, from 1980 and the advent of CD's three of four of my records are now scratched, worn out or melted in my cars. I love that I have finally seen the actual night of Spirit's performance and they did a wonderful job. HOWEVER..... I slightly disagree with doing just an exhibition. My mother died just a week before a Marathon I was planning on dedicating to Elsa's Procession, Carmen, Beethoven's Ninth etc. Instead, I dedicated it in church during a eulogy to my mother. I had no intention of having some sort of exhibition like run. I wanted to have the marathon of my life then be at the finish line with some type of Cold Case Kathryn Morris moment with my Mom. I was on a goal pace, incarnated August 18,1979 to finally qualify for Boston, at Mile 17 until an injury forced me to stop. I would have felt horrible just downgrading to a half marathon or 10-K. I feel as though Spirit should have done an actual competition with having July 8,1980 being the eternal highest score in DCI history. They should have taken that emotion and vowed stuff like "No one cracks a single note, no one gets out of formation, no one drops a rifle or mistimes a flag dip, or whatever percussion sections did wrong for tics.(I never played drums)" "Tonight for Jim we are going to be perfect, not just real good so that for the rest of history drum corps fans might someday be mourning the loss of All My Children while typing (on a Monday at about 1 p.m.) on their computers on this thing that will be called The Internet about the night Spirit got a 100." "Everyone remember what Jim taught us and be perfect tonight. I wouldn't have wanted to just stand there and play or like they did. I would have wanted to hear that night during retreat "And In First Place with a score of 100, The Spirit of Atlanta." If I were in Spirit that night I would have wanted to just blow the stands down, send rifles in whatever the percussion solo was called(Devil Went Down To Georgia?), up to heaven to Jim then catch them perfectly, I'd want to have played and color guarded with such precision computer generated models would use us as perfection. I would have wanted some parent to find a really quick working local sign shop or even better a plague to be installed in the ground reading "On July 8,1980 The Spirit of Atlanta achieved perfection at this site in memory of Jim Ott." After the retreat scores they could have installed it right there for generations of Band members, crowds and athletes to be inspired. For few who have done stuff there in the last 32 years probably know what happened there. Just like the few residents who live in Jersey City's Society Hill housing where The Sit Down occurred. Well, I have to get ready for a training run with Jim Ott's waiting for me when I get home. I can't decide to watch July 8th, a DVD of Birmingham or just go to DCI FAN NETWORK, which is very much worth the price.

Part I of maybe a Part II or more in the days and weeks ahead I've dealt with this subject very thoroughly in my previous articles about Saving Drum Corps and University Drum Corps International. But, to summarize. Drum Corps today just doesn't serve a social service need. By about the early 1980's there were a half million or up to a million in the 1960's who marched in a drum corps. Those "mom and pop" corps sponsored by VFW, Churches, and other local groups took millions of young musicians and gave them a direction in life that most claimed no other type of activity so does. Most of them were like Jets and Sharks before Drum Corps. But drum corps became like an Officer Krumpke who took them away from rumble situations bound for a life in and out of prison or being carried off the lot dead with a lover behind. It's quite possible that those Bridgemen in 1981 who performed West Side Story were motivated by real life experiences. By 1987 and the Sky Riders, I doubt it. My parents in I believe 1976 (maybe 1977) for an entire season, drove a gang of 20 inner city, ok African Americans, back to their horrible crime ridden areas after rehearsals. Most today are doctors, lawyers, CEO's, Social Workers etc. They all claim drum corps was the only reason they didn't just get killed like others they grew up with. One mentioned us on WEWS=TV about 5 years ago after winning some LISW award. So, I take this subject of Mom and Pop corps very seriously. And I get really offended by that term used in a negative tone. Mom and Pop Drum Corps also served the community they served performing at dozens of parades and getting those Jets and Sharks (who's perhaps only interest other than fighting was music) from turning into James Holmes (or whatever the Aurora killer is) or Columbine, Virginia Tech, Fort Hood killers. You started off being a delinquent and a few weeks later only cared about "getting that part right." Without Drum Corps and voter mentality like was in Rockford in the 1970's musicians only After School choices were go home to an empty house or hang out at the mall probably getting into trouble. I loved Phantom not just for their on field performance but the benefit they served to the Rockford Area. There weren't just a few more corps. There were thousands of more corps. This year, DCI celebrates having 43 competitive drum corps. When my beloved 1979 Phantom tragically finished second, they were better than maybe up to 2,000 corps most of which never made it to Birmingham but competed in small shows not reported in Drum Corps News. NOTE THE PHRASE MAYBE UP TO 2000, and the word MAYBE. For their were so many corps and so many hundreds of thousands of delinquents turned productive citizens by the age of 21, that Drum Corps News, nor any person could determine a complete list due to the local circuits that weren't part of DCI. On the night of "Tears I" in Birmingham, there were guaranteed a thousand corps. Today there are 43 competitive corps in the country. On the night of the IC Reveries Sit Down there were Metropolitan Areas that had 10 to 20 corps. We didn't take planes to camps. Most of us could just walk down a few streets, take bikes a few miles or public transportation. On any given summer day as recently as the late 1970's one could fill their car with a tank of gas and check out 7 to 14 local corps practicing. EVERY HIGH School and most every junior high school, most every side street had some number of people in a drum corps. My corps in 1977 had 12 members who went to Parma Senior High or Valley Forge High School. Today, we have music majors who really don't need to be in a Drum Corps and should probably be spending their summers at jobs paying for their education. It's almost impossible to call Drum Corps a Non Profit Organization anymore. It's questionable that if members who read my posts about establishing University Drum Corps haven't contacted their music deans, to have Drum Corps replace some of their other less important courses, that the members question what they are doing has value. We went to our teachers, employers, family etc. and defended what we were going to do all summer. If Drum Corps comprised almost entirely of music and performance art majors is so valuable then members should be able to state to deans why they are doing this and why others should do it. And by now, six months later my first crusade, I should be watching UDCI on ESPN. Back in the Mom and Pop days that Keith Hall degraded, our value was praised in by virtually every mayor, governor,council member, definitely school board, PTA, police department, social worker, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, Lyndon Baines Johnson, JFK, up to Ronald Reagan. And everyone else one can think of that endorses an activities social value. Drum Corps was the number one youth activity in terms of participation and overall benefit to society. Maybe more than just youth but all age. There wasn't a weekend long commercial free telethon for the Spirit of Atlanta in 1976-ish to play the best song of all time "Let It Be Me." It was broadcast, donating hours of broadcast time to help Atlanta's youth-not music majors. Jim Ott wasn't just a music instructor he was a father to hundreds. Comparing on field performance of now versus then is debatably impossible. For now has no rules. Then had rules. If you took the all star members of say, 1978-ish and formed only 43 corps, stated ticks don't matter,provided a third valve,"allowed" asymetric drills, electronics fine and don't even worry about saying AMEN, for you can sing entire songs. It might or might not be better than now. As for taking the NOW members, make them play by our 1970's rules and could they do what we did. If someone ever invents time travel we can find out. But, the mom and pop era wasn't just about on field performance. There are some really bad parts of some old DVD's. It was about off field benefit with millions of pre-George Hopkins Music major Era youths being alive and well with kids, grand kids, nephews, nieces, awards, resumes etc. Not criminal records and archived histories of Aurora style shootings. That's all for now, for I have to throw in some Birmingham, Denver DCI DVD's to calm down. Before maybe a Part II. Similar to the fact that ticks don't count. For this posting proofreading I guess won't count.

The VFW and Al had two very different criteria including show length. Have more tomorrow. But corps until DCI had to have two shows one for VFW and AL. For the biggest night in the conflict, google the phrase "I.C. Reveries Sit Down 1966" which pretty much foreshadowed an end to VFW and AL. There were many examples of asymmetric drills way before SCV 1980. It's hard to define symetric versus asymetric.