alankarls
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Posts posted by alankarls
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To get a negative for this, someone out there must be paranoid. Do you also boo good landings at the airport? Geez, get a life.
We can keep this up all day. If you have a problem with my comment, tell me. Your cowardly negatives just show that you are, indeed, a coward with self-worth issues. Go ahead an give me another negative. I'm glad I could make your day.
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I find it amusing that people would be upset and give me negative ratings for this comment. Who did I demean? All I said was that we used to value loud and that quiet meant you weren't any good. Why would anyone be upset with that, unless that person is extremely defensive about today vs. yesterday?
Come on, I didn't say anything at all about today's activity. Why would anyone be upset?
To get a negative for this, someone out there must be paranoid. Do you also boo good landings at the airport? Geez, get a life.
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I personally find it amusing that one would speak of "complete crowd silence" as a good thing. In our day, we spoke of how loud the audience got. If the crowd was quiet, it usually meant you stunk.
I find it amusing that people would be upset and give me negative ratings for this comment. Who did I demean? All I said was that we used to value loud and that quiet meant you weren't any good. Why would anyone be upset with that, unless that person is extremely defensive about today vs. yesterday?
Come on, I didn't say anything at all about today's activity. Why would anyone be upset?
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I would like drum and bugle corps today, but there are no drum and bugle corps. There are b flat trumpet bands, but no one has played a bugle in years.
The difference to me, is that it used to be an activity for kids. Now it is an activity for "designers" and "artists" who failed to achieve their broadway and hollywood dreams and are determined to realize their "artistic visions" in an activity that cannot portray such "visions" on a stage the size of a football field. On a football field, only two things work: volume and mass. No designer today understands that. They continue to see things on broadway and in musical videos and try to make those things work on a football field. The only place it works is between their ears, augmented by their ego. The only part that kids play in the activity today is as an easily replaceable moving part in someone's "artistic vision." They are chattel, secondary elements.
Drum corps used to work with and for the kids that they had. Now kids have to work with and for the trumpet bands that exist.
Now, I very much appreciate the hard work, talent, and effort of the performers. But I don't like the product they are putting out.
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We all had great performances and stinkers. There were good audiences and dead ones. What was your favorite all time audience and favorite all time crowd reaction?
I'll always remember the standing ovation my corps got in Roosevelt Stadium at 1966 VFW finals. Nothing like 30,000 people screaming under covered stands. I get chills to this day.
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Name memorable moments during a show when the crowd was utterly silent, no coughing, screaming,talking, whistling.......nothing but the corp on the field. Usually this happens during the ballad or solos. I guess I should add I work as a overnight stocker and we're allowed mp3 players ipods, so to make the time go faster I listen to drum corps on my first night back from my weekend and the last day of my work for a solid 8 hours. I've got all the finals performances from 2008 to the present, The best one I can think of is Carolina Crown 2009 the Grass is Always Greener. A little after 9 and a half minutes into the show, just the vibes or pit is playing a few notes while the players on the field were frozen during a movement, during the Somewhere Over the Rainbow bit.
I personally find it amusing that one would speak of "complete crowd silence" as a good thing. In our day, we spoke of how loud the audience got. If the crowd was quiet, it usually meant you stunk.
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As Rodney Dangerfield said, I went to a boxing match....a hockey game broke out.
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well, today, they are bands.
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Looks like some of those DM's were all set for the evening's jitterbug contest!
In those days, drum majors were peacocks who strutted bending over almost backward. The further back, the more impressive. If it rained, they'd drown.
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Racine's drum and bugle corps in 1939
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Racine Journal Times 9-5-1939
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Racine Journal Times, May 8, 1950
Just a note to remind people that Racine, WI was once the hotbed of drum corps.
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When we started utilizing cassette tapes by judges in the early 70s, nobody remembered that this had been tried over a decade earlier.
I have all the musical archives of my mentor, DCI HOFer Emil Pavlik. I decided to check out a pair of 5" reel-to-reel tapes labeled from 1959 contests in Madison and Marinette WI. I sent them to mi amigo Roy Perez in California, and he turned them over to Munson Chan for conversion to digital format. Today, I received the ensuing MP3s.
What a surprise ! There is commentary running throughout the performances, by unidentified GE judges. Apparently, this was an experiment, by either the Wisconsin All-American Judges Assn. or the fledgeling Badgerland D&B circuit.
The idea didn't catch on, probably because in 1959 virtually nobody owned a home tape recorder. They were relatively expensive [a half-month's wages] and not very portable. I know Emil never owned one (he taught me the drop-the-needle method of transcription), so today may be the first time anyone ever listened to those judges' comments.
I'd love to hear those tapes. Here are the corps and places from the two shows.
July 5 Marinette WI Drums in the North
1 Madison Scouts
2 Kilties
3 Northernaires, Menominee, MI
July 11 Madison
1 Belleville Black Knights
2 Cavaliers
3 Norwood Park Imperials
4 Kilties
5 Northernaires
6 Appleton Americanos
7 Mercury Thunderbolts
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I'm working on some research and find that I do not have copies of some Drum Corps World issues that I need. If anyone has these issues, I'd love to borrow them to scan some articles. I'll pay postage both ways and get them back to you within days.
December 1983,
June 8, 1984
July 13, 1984
August 22, 1986, part I (I have part II)
July 24, 1987
July 31, 1987
August 22, 1987
August 29, 1987
I think those are the correct dates, but DCW published irregularly, so I may be off by a few days on the date listed. I am most interested in the August 86 and 87 issues.
Thanks.
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Our first show in 1968 was a disaster. Our idiot staff had written a drill that had the drumline packed on the back sideline, and the horns at the front sideline. The drum instructor told the drums to come off with a crisp, fast pace, while the horn staff told the horns to come off smooth and controlled. We were out of sync within 8 counts. We in the color guard spent the entire first half of the show calling cadence, trying to get us back in sync. At concert, we were all looking around to see where everyone ended up and where we had to go to try to make the second half work.
What was your nightmare performance?
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]Wow you are OLD!!!! LOL
Born in the first half of the last century.
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I remember being at US Open when it was announced that Nixon had resigned.
Obviously in 1976 the Bicentennial celebrations were big.
Anyone else have any others?
off the top of my head:
Race riots: Many cities, including Los Angeles, Detroit burned
Assassinations: JFK, MLK, Bobby Kennedy
Space program and moon landing
Green Bay Packer era
first international live television broadcast
the Beatles
Viet Nam War
instant replay
communications satellites
Give me time and I'll come up with more. The baby boom lived through amazing times.
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For what it's worth:
In the discussion about the state of the drum and bugle corps activity, those who support the current environment cite the musical, visual, and athletic aspects. Those qualities can’t be denied. Today’s performers are more highly skilled and trained more intensely. The music, costuming, and moves are far beyond what existed in the 60s and 70s.
However, a better measure of the health of the activity is in the number of events and thus the number of people who witness the activity. In the 60s and 70s, there were hundreds of local events in Wisconsin and many other states at which drum corps performed: civic events, bridge openings, state and country fairs, Fourth of July, Ice cream socials, parish picnics, Memorial Day, Labor Day, Veteran’s Day, St. Patrick’s day. It was hard to avoid seeing a drum corps. If your city had a parade, there were going to be drum corps in it. If you had a county fair, there would be a parade and a contest. Cities of 5,000 hosted championship quality corps. So during that time, drum corps was out in the hustings creating fans and instilling in kids the desire to participate.
The Racine Scouts survived on these festivals. We did two a weekend and sometimes four in a day. On a Fourth of July weekend, we were always seen by over a hundred thousand people and, depending on crowd estimates, sometimes up to 250,000. And those same people saw other corps, too. On a regular weekend, we could be seen by 20,000. The Racine Fourth of July parade, in the early 60s, often had more than 15 drum corps and sometimes up to 20.
So, you could reasonably estimate that on a regular summer weekend in the mid 60s, several million people witnessed a drum and bugle corps in the United States.
How many people see drum corps today? How many kids now sit on a curb, see a drum corps and say “I want to be in that.”? How many adults see a local show and decide they want to see a big show with a lot of great corps?
Drum corps today is musically and visually excellent. But compared to the 60s, it has no audience and it is not developing one.
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I had a special moment in 1967. We were at the Kilties's show in Burlington and it was rained out, so we all crushed into the gym for a standstill. 1967 was not a good year for the Kilts. They got killed early in the year by the likes of Millstadt Crusaders and a lot of other corps that never came close to them before. Then they brought in a drum instructor who cut half the snare parts and replaced them with tuned bass drum riffs (that year, everyone had 5-8 tuned bass drums, from tiny to big ones, playing melodies), and then Ken Norman wrote the greatest chart ever written for drum corps.
I was in the hallway filled with marching members in damp wool uniforms in the damp heat of the night when I heard, for the first time, Auld Lang Syne. I, a member of a cross town and bitter rival, pushed my way into the gym, listened, and started crying. I had never heard anything so beautiful from a drum corps. Up until then, a corps' sound was pretty much dependent upon how good their leads were. Norman was the first arranger to realize that bottom was what really made a great brass sound. He was the first to understand and properly use the contra bass. Every person in drum corps has heard that arrangement and I will never forget that first time I heard it.
Kilties went on to zoom past corps that had beat them for 2/3 of the season and finish 5th at VFW. And Auld Lang Syne became the chart for all time.
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I'll Have to cast my vote for the 1965 CYO Invitational. I had been in drum corps for almost twenty years at that point. And I had seen and heard all of the great corps of the day. I had seen the Royal Airs the year before, and they had been very good. I had the recording from the Civic Opera House in Chicago from that winter. I thought I knew what to expect.
What I beheld when they stepped off the line that night in Chestnut Hill shook me to the depths of my soul. Others that night had been terrific. The Royal Airs were supernatural. My first thought was, "This just isn't fair!" Then, "How is this possible?"
To this day that night remains foremost in my memories of drum corps. The 1965 Royal Airs remain the best corps I ever saw. Period!
The funny thing was that before the July 10 CYO show, the Royal Airs had been kicked around in the midwest. They got beat by 2.5 by the Troopers, and they lost at least twice to the Cavaliers and Vanguard by 3 and 4 points both times. That's why I was so startled when I heard them in Boston. I had seen them in Kenosha when they got wallopped and took third behind Vanguard and Cavaliers. They did not impress. But in Boston, they were like a completely different corps. And once they won CYO, I don't believe they lost another show all year.
Final comment on it: listen to the record. When the Royal Airs finish Watermelon Man with the soft, quiet ending, you can hear 8 counts of bass drum and foot fall before the crowd realized that the song was over and the screaming started. The east coast had never seen a corps finish a number quietly and were simply stunned.
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we hopped in our cars and drove back to Jersey City ... thankfully, the Reveries were already sitting on the starting line so we didn't miss anything ...
:-)
You just made my point about how the entire fiasco screwed the Racine Scouts. You just said you didn't miss anything, yet you missed the Racine Scouts' performance.And we knew that there would only be 12 in 1966. 1965 was a fluke with 15 finalists, VFW tried it and didn't like it.
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We're you in the Racine Scouts the following year in '66 ? That was the year, the I.C. Reveries had their infamous " Sit Down " strike on the Starting Line at the VFW Nationals at Roosevelt Stadium in Jersey City, N.J., and your Corps was impacted by the events that transpired, and I thought if you were there, you could share from your perspective what you recall.
I was there. The one and only time I performed in Roosevelt Stadium. I've told the story before. For DCW, I did a long article about the two most unusual drum corps championships of all time, discussing 1965 and 1966. And I wrote about it in a different stream recently. I'm sure others have different views. This is what our staff told during the long hot hours we sat in the parking lot waiting to find out if we were in finals. We were given continual updates of the negotiations.
Madison was given a 2.0 penalty for undertime and finished 14th. Madison had some members cross the end line early in their show which caused execution judging to stop . (The gun went off, judges stopped ticking.) In common understanding, they were undertime: some of their members left the field before the minimum time requirement. Madison protested the penalty and cited an obscure VFW rule that gave a different understanding of minimum time requirements. VFW refused to budge for hours. Everyone knew that Madison had done it purposely to take advantage of the rules and get a higher score than they otherwise would have. Finally, with only hours to finals, VFW decided to revoke the penalty and allow Madison to perform to avoid a PR disaster (lawsuit against a veteran's group by a boy scout group). Since the VFW had already announced the Racine Scouts as the 12th place finalist, the VFW allowed Racine to compete.
I wasn't privy to the thinking of the I.C. Reveries, who placed 13th, but have read that they were incensed. They felt that if Madison was in the show, Racine shouldn't be. If Racine was in the show, then Madison shouldn't be. But since both 12th and 14th places made finals, 13th place should also make finals.
I don't know anything about how I.C. got into the stadium. I've heard the story that you cited. I just know that what Madison and I.C. did killed us that night. We were good. We beat Kilties and Madison by big spreads all year except for a couple of shows. Two days before prelims, we were within a point of Des Plaines Vanguard at a show in New York. We performed first at finals and lit up the crowd, then no other corps performed for almost two hours. After I.C., everyone, including the judges, pretty much forgot that we had been there. Both the Kilties and Madison beat us, and Vanguard beat us by ten.
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I was at the CYO Nationals in 1965 ( at Boston College stadium, Chestnut Hill, Ma. ). I recall hearing of a Corps that had awesome practices all week and were so stoked to perform. In those days, Corps lined up on the Starting Line at attention and could not help but see the Corps in front of them on the field in competition and the crowd's reaction. This particular Corps ( not BAC ) had the unfortunate performance draw to be on the Starting Line when the Corps in front of them... the Chicago Royal Airs.... performed. I'm sure this Corps knew that the Royal Airs were good from their placements in '64, but noone in this Corps had any idea that they would be THIS good... and entertaining to boot.... in '65. The Chicago Royal Airs dazzled the predominently eastern audience, and they loved them. None of the others... all quite good.... had a chance. The Chicago Royal Airs really were that dominent, and the Corps that was immediately in back of them... that had had great practices all week, were so deflated on the starting line watching the performance of the Royal Airs and the reaction of the crowd to it, that they came out completely flat that night.
The '65 Chicago Royal Airs benefitted from a couple of nearby Corps to them that folded... but they expertly put that talent to good use in '65 as that was one talented, entertaining, and dominating Drum Corps they had there.
CYO Nationals 1965 :
1) Chicago Royal Airs 81.71
2) Boston Crusaders 78.53
3) Garfield Cadets 75.60
4) St. Kevin Emerald Knights 75.58
5) St. Mary Cardinals 75.01
6) Vasella Muskateers 72. 48
7) Racine Scouts 68.76
8 ) I.C. Reveries 67. 45
9) Pittsfield Cavaliers 63.71
10 ) OLPH Ridgemen 63.16
as a postscript... BAC did come back the following year in '66 and topped the Royal Airs to win the CYO Nationals
Since we're talking CYO in 1965....The Racine Scouts went to that show with only 51 members. At the show, I.C. and Kevins both had more than 40 horns, and I believe I.C. had over 50. We, the Scouts, stood on the ready line behind Kevins. They filled the starting line side to side and had color guard and drums behind the line. Our 51 members didn't stretch from across the field. One of Kevin's horns turned around and yelled at us: "Hey, where's the rest of your corps?" Then, in retreat, Vasella stood on one side of us and was taunting the Royal Airs, who were a few corps away on the other side. They kept telling us they were going to fight the Royal Airs and wanted us to join them. Just what us boy scouts from Wisconsin wanted: to get in between a brawl between a corps from the south side of Chicago and one from the south side of Philly. We practically ran off the field to get out of there. Then the next day, we saw a brawl between St. Mary's and some other corps as we stood on the starting line. Welcome to the east coast.
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It doesn't have to be just one corps, but what were your memories of certain corps?
For me seeing Blue Rock and Anaheim Kingsmen at US Open in 1972 was a wonderful moment. Actually I think the whole event was awesome...seeing Racine Scouts, Imperials, Royal Crusaders, etc
For me, it was the 1965 Royal Airs. My recollection of them that year was being one of the many marching members who stood on the sidelines and endlines to watch them perform. In my mind's eye, whenever they performed that year, the field was ringed by members of competing corps trying to catch a glimpse. I distinctly recall them coming onto retreat at CYO Nationals, playing Ballyhoo: they entered the field through a brick archway, and their leads were under the arch when they started playing, which amplified and resonated them to brilliance. At VFW Nationals at McCormack Place, I was one of 10,000 or more who pushed and shoved to try to catch any view of them performing. In their time, there was no better corps. No one who saw them will ever forget them.
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I think we all understand why you feel bummed out. The activity IS dying. That is a fact, not an opinion. From a high water mark of over a thousand units in North America alone in the 1950s and 1960s we now have about 100 units worldwide. The community corps is gone. 90% of all kids who might be interested are now systematically excluded by current conditions. It is sad. Anyone who grew up with drum corps has to feel badly about the activity, and it's apparent lack of a viable future.
I agree. I wrote a column in DCW in the early 80s that was a faux press release from about 2015 in which drum corps was like major league baseball: a corps was trading some players to another corps and pulling up players from the minors. Even then, you could see that the small group of people who had taken over the activity realized that the fewer corps there were, the higher the salaries that those who remained with those corps could get. Early on, DCI funded the top 25 corps. Those who ran the top 12 stopped that and accumulated all the money in the hands of the top twelve. And in their own hands.
They narrowed the market, narrowed the number of people who could hold the top positions and, since they held those positions, they ensured that they would remain in the top positions and earn the big salaries that the narrowed market allowed. The irony was that DCI was formed to promote drum corps, but the main result was that DCI promoted increased salaries for a very limited number of people, and that those few people ensure that they remain where they are and get the salaries that they could not earn anywhere else for their talent level. The ultimate irony was that, as collateral damage, DCI killed the activity.
The anger I see is that those of us who saw enriched lives because drum corps took us out of our lower middle class environment, showed us the world, and gave us dreams for advancement, are sad that today's lower middle class youth have no such activity to raise them up.
I'm glad that well off music students get to have fun in the activity today. But if it were up to me, I'd give the activity back to neighborhood kids who don't have many opportunities. And force those who want to earn big money in music go to broadway or hollywood where they belong.
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Complete Crowd Silence
in DCI World Class Corps Discussions
Posted · Edited by alankarls
Well, my point was that it was a benign post discussing our attitudes 40 years ago. It did not offend or imply negativity to anyone. For someone to give a negative to that, then negative my question of why is ridiculous. I'll call out ridiculous whenever it rears its head.
And if it makes the day of some insecure people to negative me, then so be it. If it makes someone's day to negative someone in a discussion board, I'm glad to give people a reason to live.