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eric nielsen

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Profile Information

  • Your Drum Corps Experience
    1981-1986 Suncoast Sound
  • Your Favorite All Time Corps Performance (Any)
    1981 Madison Scouts
  • Your Favorite Drum Corps Season
    1980
  • Gender
    Male
  • Location
    Viera, FL

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  1. After reading Ray Fallon's post with the benefit of many years of adulthood between then and now, I understand where he is coming from. The 1984 show was something I was heavily into at the time, having been spoon-fed 10,000 different facts and opinions by our staff in order to help us 'feel' the importance of the show. Only a short time later (summer 1985) I'd already soured on most all of '84's attempts at Important Stuff Being Expressed Here and didn't even wear my MIA bracelet any more. Your effort as a performer is much better spent on executing the fundamentals of your craft and letting your music's tone, intonation, and dynamics do the work of expression for you. I think for one year, we forgot that. With the '84 staff coming at us from so many different angles and the kids being kids and not knowing what to believe in, the final result predictably radiated outward at 128 different angles. The decision to try to depict the entire decade of the 1960's in a 13-minute show was overly ambitious and without a Spartacus-style libretto or some God-awful PA system with a 19-year-old narrating from a script 2004-style, the audiences by and large had no clue what was going on. Robert himself, after finishing his brilliant '85 Florida Suite, said that looking back, Six.O.S. was "a mess". We also had a very large class of age-outs in '84, all of them bound and determined to propel our Sixties show to an altitude where it really could not fly. The big shining exception to all of this was Requiem. It's a masterpiece: musically, visually, and emotionally. People GOT that piece. I will never forget the love the DCI Finals audience gave us that night, it was an ovation that seemed to span the length of a dream. And that was very tough to snap out of, not least because more than half the corps missed the count off. I wish there was a way we could go back and build a different show around Requiem and not try to teach people a wordless history lesson because (a) it can't be done, and (b) we weren't qualified. But do I regret being of a part of that, regret trying for greatness? No!! I'm proud to have been a small part of it.
  2. So how would you all rate the sound in the Georgia Dome? I would like to see a drum corps show this year & this is the closest one. Assuming I get upper-deck, center seats, would this sound anywhere near as good as an outdoor stadium? Debating whether it is worth trading a weekend with a co-worker, putting our dogs in a kennel, and driving 14 hours round trip. Way back when, the Atlanta shows were at Georgia Tech - not exactly the concrete horseshoe at Harvard University but pretty good acoustics.
  3. I miss the Kilties, the Bridgemen, and especially the Pride of Cincinnati. That city's loss was our gain - a big chunk of the great '85 Suncoast low brass section were people that came over from Pride.
  4. Wow that is a lot of love for Suncoast Sound. For many years I had moved on and forgotten 99% of what I saw and did for 6 years in Suncoast and 3 years in Robert Smith's high school marching band. Now thanks to forums and social media a whole lot of it is coming back to me. It's nice to see how many people point to our corps as uniquely entertaining and influential to this day.
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