Slingerland

Not accurate. Looking at the numbers for many of the top corps, member fees are still less than half of the total revenues generated, all of which are targeted toward providing the members the experience of doing the drum corps thing.

Nah bruh, just approaching this with real world experience in rebuilding companies whose owners/Boards have allowed inexperience or hubris to put their businesses into failure mode. The talking points in the vid from the current ED did nothing to dissuade experienced folks that the organization is simply in over their heads, and they're gonna need help. DCI, as a business, has a vested interest in keeping their major marquee brands on the field, hence my guess that they will take some role in helping Vanguard put together an advisory team to fix the situation.

They are, and I'm afraid the problems are past the ability of the current BOD to fix. Let's see what happens at the Januals, but I'm hopeful that the DCI Board might help Vanguard put into place a committee to work with SCV's BOD to design and implement a plan for a genuine financial turnaround. There are some good business heads around the activity, and with the right mix of personalities, they could help Vanguard identify some opportunities and inefficiencies that would allow them to rebuild with responsible financial oversight (even if, gasp, it means they have to let go some high profile staff people).

The term for that is Zero Based Budgeting. In cases where most/many expenditures are discretionary, it's incredibly useful (particularly if there are large variances year to year). I'd argue that the drum corps season, unfortunately, isn't really that changing except in cases where a tour is drastically different (any time an eastern or midwestern corps does the California tour, it's a major expense to them, and they build up to it). Like any other league sport, there's a season that is tied to a calendar, and the major players are expected to be available for the six weeks of that season. In the case of drum corps, the more useful approach would be a league-thru (all DCI corps) approach that specifically targeted budgetary containment over a multi-year process in the one area where the spending IS most discretionary - payroll on designers. With some of the bigger names getting $30k plus (in some cases, many plusses) for essentially doing ONE marching band show design for ONE caption, it's getting to the point where the biggest dogs are spending $150k plus on a small group of adults to put together their show - a number that is tens of thousands of dollars more than those same corps will reap in performance fees and the DCI split that year. Since it's not like professional sports, where winning a title brings with it new found financial powers (outside of selling a few more t-shirts), there's no financial reason why ANYone should be spending that kind of money just to try and win a band contest where there's no additional prize money.

The techs? No. The designers? Well....that's a different story. It was just a little worse at Vanguard than other places. No individual is worth $40k plus (n a few cases, MANY plusses) for creating 10 or 11 minutes worth of a band show, but that's the stupid mindset the activity is in right now. If the total cost of designing a marching band show (let's call it what it is), is more than $100k, that's money that is foolishly spent. And Vanguard was spending significantly more than that.

He's already the book writer at Troopers. Baller move would be for the SCV vets to go over there en masse.

If there are more than 10 kids in the 2023 BAC corps from Mass, I'll go back and amend the word next year. LIke everyone else, most of their members aren't locals.

No offense, but one WC corps (nominally) based in Boston doesn't maintain "stronghold" status (compared to the IL/WI/IA triangle, where you have four finalists and one past champion still active and fighting, each within 3 hours of each other). The NE could use a regularly scheduled major tour with 6 finalist corps (one being BAC) playing venues in MA, CT, NY, and NJ (not technically NE on the last two, but close enough). There's a fan base that wants some WC top level action, and it makes no sense not to service it with live shows.

There's a tour model DCI needs to consider more strongly, and that's to treat certain areas like the PNW and the Northeast (a former drum corps stronghold) as standalone major regional tour areas once every two or three years, with a group of 5 or 6 big dogs committed to appearing at a series of shows in those regions. Put together three or four events in the region over a week and bring big shows to the fanbases there in a concentrated, deliberate way. Major pop music acts don't need to hit the same cities every summer - once every couple years is usually enough to make it make sense, and DCI can consider the same. Florida, regrettably, has shown everyone the hard way how difficult it is to manage as a tour destination. Until there are more indoor stadiums, it's gotta be nope.

Take a trash can filled with money and set it on fire, and that's how the economics of the Tour Premiere event was likely shaping up. The activity is in belt-tightening and critical mission mode these days, which explains the more focused schedule: I'd imagine the future of things will look pretty much like this year with a 5 to 6 week season for most corps. But the member costs of $5k per (with the corps having to find another $6 to 8k per kid to get them on the field) are clearly not sustainable. and something is going to have to give.

Actual point of fact there isn't one from finals, because it wasn't a show Jim Jones taped that night. You can find Kingsmen, Argonne, Bridgemen, Kilts, and several others from that night. Oh, and a home movie with sync'd sound of 1972 Cavaliers at another show that summer. Just watched opener. 🙂

DVD is dead. BluRay isn't much better. Streaming is where we are, and every Finals performance is available online now, all you have to do is look. Agreed that the sync rights costs are stupid, but even if that weren't necessarily true, the cost of mastering the discs requires sales well past what is likely to happen these days, so here we are.

I believe this is largely true. With the preponderance of scoring late season now tied to decisions made by the adults on the design team (no one in a 9th or 10th place show could have performed them better and made them into a 5th place show, for example), it's the choices made in the design process that set a level for top achievement. Recruiting for 2023 is already pretty much a foregone conclusion: the kids auditioning for Bluecoats won't be the same ones auditioning for Mandarins who won't be the same ones auditioning for Pacific Crest, so the staffs have some ideas of what talent levels to expect for next summer, and will design up to that level. The challenge for the corps in the bottom tiers is to teach the members they get as well as they possibly can until they can convince judges in the execution captions to give them enough benefit of a doubt that it will reflect on the design-intensive captions and, hopefully, their designers step up their games for the following season or they make improvements with who they hire to design. What happened in the 70s and early 80s with corps like BD and SOA coming from nowhere to be contenders in 2 or 3 years will never happen again, as long as the judging community and designers are so insular, but that's the game as it is now, so yeah, the decisions made in fall really determine what happens next August.

It is not. Unrelated to anything/anyone at DCI.

Tom Aungst lands at Cavaliers as an "Ensemble Specialist". Not quite sure that that job entails, but most/all of last year's perc staff is returning, so would seem to be a plus. https://cavaliers.org/news-blog/2022/9/25/template-staff-announcement

If there were any sexual impropriety issues, they would have appeared via Reddit. What's come out (apparently) one of understanding and respecting roles within his previous organization, which would definitely be a problem, but it appears that his role is as advisor/mentor to staff and members, not an on-the-road day to to day instructor. "He wanted us rehearsing rather than sleeping" might be a concern, but not at the levels of "___ sent me a dick pic" that would get DCI-level attention. All that said, word is that a number of WC corps are hiring new people and not picking up the phone to check whether their new peeps are eligible for re-hire at their former corps. Really, people? Six years in, and you still don't get how that most cursory check works?

What's come out has to do with TA stepping out of his lane into management territory with regards to rehearsal schedules, etc. No indication of personally abusive behavior or misconduct. Obviously it was enough of a conflict that they felt better moving in a different direction, but it makes one think that DB was in a jam either way. Keep a name staffer who doesn't respect the system, or terminate him and accept the blowback. No win.

Sort of one of those buried under the headlines moments. Makes you wonder who was doing the actual staff hiring.

Coates may say he's retiring, but highly doubtful he won't be heavily involved in decision making.

Not sure why they haven't announced yet, but those are good moves for the Cali corps that picked them up. Re: Cavaliers, obviously there were bigger issues behind the scenes with the staff (with the exception of the perc guys, who kept their heads down and just did the work). Looking at the resumes of who's coming in, the level of age and experience, and the 'no drama' history they bring to the table should provide a solid basis for the newbies on the guard team to figure it out, and you'd have to believe that Saucedo is getting who he wants to get the sound out of the horns that he imagines (same as Martin did with LaBoeuf). They'll be fine.

The '04 post DCI tour was about acknowledging that Finals was a week earlier than usual, and that California needed some love. The combined corps performances were designed to make it feel more special (since the champs had already been crowned, there was no suspense left in the performances), but the hoop-do-do was definitely a model for what the original TOC shows were supposed to be. (In reality, the first gen TOC shows in 2011 were joyless when it came to instant encores, etc, and nobody really missed it when they stopped.)

It's impossible to overstate the influence he had on the art form, in both the literature and the physical approach to the instruments. His personality was pure icing on the cake. Such a huge loss.

It's good.

Great pickup for Regiment, and nice place for that team to be. Looking to see PR getting back into it sometime soon.

Very solid list. As to the original question, as noted, the FE book is a little basic compared to what’s being performed now. The battery book is fine, but perhaps not as textured as what the top 4 or 5 lines are running with today.