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.