Bone-Tone Lord

A reduced number of performances of watered-down shows with extremely reduced rehearsal time is worse than no season at all. If there can't be a full, normal tour this year, then cancel the season and let the ageouts come back next year. Don't insult them by forcing this sort of substandard production to be all they get.

I heard that some church group took the stadium, but the Alamodome's website only lists events through May, so I can't confirm.

If saying that corps shouldn't abuse their members is considered disparaging, there's a HUGE problem. Arsenal did everything they should have and then some. No reasonable person would interpret that post as anything even objectionable.

Good. Field judges are a visual distraction, a danger to themselves and others, and are unavoidably going to miss aspects of the performance that they really ought to be paying attention to. If you can't tell the difference in execution from the sideline, you can't tell the difference from the stands, and what it sounds like in the stands is what actually matters.

Or that a BD social media intern is about to find themselves out of work.

I rather suspect an internship is about to end. The law is unclear on it. Whatever laws might exist against it are practically unenforceable anyway, so download away. It's what I do whenever someone posts shows I don't have access to yet. Current copyright laws exist pretty much entirely to benefit executives who had nothing to do with actually creating the art they claim as theirs, so I see no reason to obey them.

A lot of plastic horns sound at least okay up close, but they can’t project at all, which is more important here than in any other form of music. Additionally, the plastic valves and slides tend to degrade a lot faster than metal ones.

With both OC finals and the early-season show Cavaliers host there gone, I suspect the issue might be on the venue's side. I'll miss the place. Not only is there a Dairy Queen right next to the stadium, but my corps' housing site had an ice cream vending machine in it (yes, this was in a public school. Michigan City High School students are pretty lucky). I ask for a moment of silence for all the ice cream that will never be eaten this summer.

It would be nice to know the schedule before camps start, but I doubt there'll be any big revelations for my corps beyond maybe more TOC shows. I'm sure if we were doing West Coast, it would have been announced by now, and we did both mini-Western tour (just going to Denver rather than all the way to California) and East Coast/Florida pretty recently. Besides, we're spending a fair amount on new food and equipment trucks, so sticking to a typical Midwestern tour seems like the most financially sound option. As for tour as a whole, the only major change I could see happening would be the Atlanta regional getting moved due to the reported high costs of a venue, and even that seems fairly unlikely, and it would be a shame because that's one of the coolest places I've ever performed. Not only is the stadium itself rather impressive, but there's a hill covered in goats that you walk past to get to it from the lots!

DCI stopped having shows in Canada because it's become much harder to travel between the US and Canada than it once was. The single biggest change is that before 9/11, passports were not required to travel between the US and Canada. Now, they are, and making sure all 200-ish members, staff, and volunteers that might be on the road with a WC corps have passports is extremely difficult. And that's not even getting into the challenges of hauling all the corps' other stuff- a semi and a box truck full of the corps' actual performance equipment that will take a while for the border guards to inspect, a semi full of food, which is always something that gets extra scrutiny at border crossings to ensure compliance with agriculture and health laws, and most significantly, the merchandise that the corps plans to sell on the other side of the border. And that's just crossing the border itself- once on the other side, it's a lot harder to find schools willing to host drum corps rehearsals and stadiums with American football markings in Canada than the US. On top of all that, there's the simple fact that it's more expensive for corps to go so far north and that the marching arts just aren't as popular in Canada as in the US.

1. Your proposal would require either doing away with the early-season East Coast/Southeast tour, which includes the only shows in Florida, and completely getting rid of the Midwestern tour save for maybe one week of shows, or extending tour for at least a couple weeks. All the Midwestern and Eastern corps (of which there are a lot more than Western corps- this is why we have the current tour model in the first place) that host shows more than a week prior to San Antonio in the current model would be dealt a serious blow to their finances (both directly through ticket sales and indirectly through alumni and community engagement) and their recruiting by losing their home shows in the first model- to say nothing of how upset performers will be to lose performances in locations accessible to their friends and families, or how upset people in the affected regions will be to lose their shows, especially in Florida, since Florida tour just can't happen under this model. The second model would add significant financial strain to EVERYONE, in all parts of the country. Adding two more weeks even just to spring training would add on loads of additional food and housing costs, but you're talking about actually extending tour from seven weeks to nine weeks. Not only do corps have to pay to feed and house their members and staff for an extra two weeks, but they also have to pay for fuel and vehicle leases. These costs, of course, will be directly reflected in member fees, which could easily price people out of marching. So, to recap: this proposal will add financial burdens on everyone in every region, which is bad for the activity as a whole. 2. Where do you propose to find housing and show locations for 23 World Class corps, plus all the Open Class corps that might show up, making two passes through the most sparsely populated part of the country? The region between California and the Missouri River just isn't densely populated enough to support a regional season tour. Let's look at two similarly sized states as examples: Iowa (population 3.1M) and Utah (population 3.4M). Each of these states in 2018 had seven World Class corps perform in it. Utah had one show, July 11 in Ogden, where all seven of those corps performed, and no other World Class shows. Iowa had no shows where all the corps in the state performed together, but three shows spread over a four-day period (July 10 in Sioux City, July 11 in Johnston, and July 13 in Dubuque). This is because Iowa is much more densely populated than Utah. Iowa has enough people in each third of the state to fill the stands at a show, and can also draw people from neighboring states to Sioux City and Dubuque. Utah only has one area with enough people to allow a show to succeed, and having three shows in that one area would hurt all of them. It's the same situation with any other non-coastal Western state compared to any Midwestern or Eastern state. And it's not just attendance at the shows- it also means there's plenty of housing sites available. Additionally, with how close together cities in the Midwest and East are compared to the West, corps can spend much less on fuel to get between cities and get much more floor time. So, to recap: the non-coastal West is too sparsely populated to support the number of shows needed or desired for a regional season tour, or to provide enough housing sites between shows. There's really no ideal solution to make everyone happy, but keeping the majority of tour in the part of the country with the majority of the corps and the majority of the people seems like the best compromise we can get. It also helps that there's plenty of housing sites and show sites in the Midwest and East that have a strong history with drum corps and are willing to host corps.

About #### time. Pio's lack of regard for the health and well-being of its members has been an open secret for years, and more recently multiple members have taken to Reddit to confirm the horror stories and add even more. Even the ones who try to defend the organization actually reveal that it's even worse- there was a guy talking about how great their food program was because only one meal a day had to be purchased from McDonald's by the members rather than provided from the cook truck like every other corps.

Maybe if it wasn’t right during finals week, more corps would participate.

Wait, is it a grass field? That’s so weird. On a separate note, how can it take them 10+ hours to line one field when corps field liners can easily do three with 4-step ticks on the lines in 30-45 minutes?

Corps members generally have their jugs with them up until maybe 20-ish minutes before they step off, and usually either get back to the jugs, get water from show volunteers, get to Gatorades or similar drinks they keep on the buses, get to the cook truck, or some combination thereof within about 20 minutes of leaving the field. Bringing water on the field would accomplish nothing.

The electronics being out would have been the least of the issues with performing tonight. It wasn’t just rain, it was a severe thunderstorm. DCI actually has an organization-wide policy requiring corps to go either inside, on buses, or under stands if there’s lightning within 15 miles. Additionally, the kind of wind we had tonight would have made it completely impossible for guard to perform and really hard for everyone else. Finally, the rain itself was so hard that the scoreboard wasn’t visible from the gate. Ain’t nobody doing a show in that.

Or the point where DCI requires corps to submit proof of licensing for their music so DCI knows what licenses they need to get has passed, which means corps have now finalized their repertoire. I marched a show where a movement was replaced in May because Astor Piazzolla's estate took too long to get back to the staff about licensing and they replaced him with Bruckner, whose work is public domain.

I never would have wanted to march there anyway. Even before it came out that Hopkins was a rapist, they were infamous for eating and sleeping less than anyone else, and as a result having more people either getting hurt or burning out and leaving early than pretty much any other corps. And their lousy show design lately certainly didn't improve my impression of them. I do know people who left my corps to go there, but why you'd pick the Cadets as the corps you want to make finals with over literally anyone else is beyond me.

Muncie's pretty close to Indianapolis. In fact, it's close enough to be the Colts' finals housing site.

They claimed the women who marched with them in 1971 and 2005 weren't members. And my complaints were directed just as much at fans and alumni, including some on this exact thread, who claim the woman marching Madison now isn't a member as at the staff who claimed the women who marched before weren't members.

Anyone who pays fees and performs the show- at any corps- is a member. Claiming otherwise because she doesn't have the same thing between her legs as the other members is stupid at best, and outright misogynistic at worst (side note: interesting how the only corps that claim someone who pays fees and marches a show can somehow not be considered a full member are the all-male ones). Both Madison and Cavaliers should have fully integrated years ago anyway. The only positions in drum corps that actually require their performers to be a certain gender are some vocalist and actor spots. For any other position, there is absolutely no justifiable reason to restrict membership to only one gender.

As far as literally every other corps is concerned, if you've paid your fees and you're on the field, you're a member. The idea that you can somehow not be a real member of the corps despite having done that is absurd.

Parking's a nightmare for corps as well. All the buses park on one street in the park, and no one can leave until whoever's parked in front does. This is particularly annoying on Friday, when many corps want to return to their housing site early because they'll be staying there the next day and as a result have left their food trucks there. Last August, I spent an hour and a half sitting on the bus, plus another close to two hours actually driving to the housing site, with no bus box food because the next day was Walmart/laundry, and didn't have time to get the super-hyped-up funnel cake because of the super-early BIS. Most of our corps was in exactly the same situation, and the people on the buses next to ours didn't look too happy either. Allentown is a ridiculously overhyped show site in every way imaginable. Parking's a nightmare, buses, equipment trucks, warmups, and the stadium are all a million miles away from each other, there's that nightmarish hill that you have to haul props and pit up into the stadium, there's barely room for corps to enter and exit, and the stadium itself isn't significantly better than, say, Whitewater or Little Rock and is only talked up because it's the regional.

Predicting results before the season starts or either corps you're talking about has even announced their show? That's a paddlin'.

I'm pretty sure the actual purpose of these is for research on artificial lips and lungs.