Tenoris4Jazz
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Posts posted by Tenoris4Jazz
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I couldn't help but think of VMAPA this evening while discussing responsibilities with my 14 yr old daughter. She keeps trying to impress upon me that practicing guitar is more important than folding clean laundry.
"But, we have to have 2 new trucks for tour!"
But if you buy them now, you won't HAVE A TOUR!!!
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3 hours ago, scheherazadesghost said:
Woof. Scorched earth. I'm sad but not surprised. I know many an angry alum. Makes me at the same time glad that I'm not on popular social media and sad that I can't be in dialogue with yet another of my brothers/sisters.
This is what can happen when you limit open discussion, whether bc of fear or something else. The guilt I feel is real.
Edit to add: And let me be clear, any alum who needs to get something off their chest publicly or privately has my support. I was bullied by a DCPer as recently as December for including part of my story in the SCV 2023 announcement thread. Of all people, I was essentially called insensitive for bringing my baggage to the party during such a somber moment. There's a reason we don't speak up. So I'm not critical of this alum... just sad.
Given what you're been through and the lengths to which you have tried to help, anyone trying to hush you should be banned from the forum. We disagree a lot, but we don't tolerate suppressing people around here. The first amendment carries a lot of weight with us old folks.
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3 hours ago, IllianaLancerContra said:
This is true, and I, for one, would be curious how the afford to do it. Why do they seem to have their house in order when another Corps, just down the road, is a dumpster fire?
It all depends who's running the show and how strict they are with the checkbook.
Wanna know how Alabama and Georgia always have a Top 3 recruiting class in football? They spend over $5 million on recruiting. But they have a budget that allows for that and expects that. Other schools whine about the money spent recruiting HS talent, but they fritter away $$$ left and right until they don't have anything left to work with. I think we're seeing that SCV made 1 year of poor decisions financially and now they're inactive. Likewise, lots of colleges had to cut non-revenue generating sports (tennis, wrestling, golf, etc...) because the well ran dry in football and men's basketball.
A lot of people bet big on crypto... and went bankrupt. Just like the rest of the US, drum corps has organizations that know how to handle operations, and some that don't.
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31 minutes ago, karuna said:
We’ll agree to disagree ( if we do disagree and I’m not sure we do) . Percussion by its very nature is supportive and subservient to the wind ensemble. Klesch is always respectful of the original composition. Hannum fit this writing like a glove but there’s no way his writing can be competitive in today’s DCI. Anyway I agree 1000% that Jackson’s approach is very musical. But it’s not me you need to convince!
As a long time crown honk, I’d gladly have traded a few Otts for a few rings. The rest of the corps deserved it multiple times but the musical design and its impact on the score made it seem like the percussion was letting the corps down. Frequently that was not the case at all. Off my my soap box. Let’s give this new team a chance!
It's not unprecedented to have the percussion trailing behind everything else, even in a championship level group. The '81 Blue Devils finished 2nd by 0.3 points with a 9th place percussion caption. They were 1.6 points behind Vanguard (2nd) and 2 full points behind The Bridgemen in 1st. If they had just finished 5th in technical percussion (BD was 2nd in drums GE), they would have beaten SCV by 0.7 points for the title and won 4 titles in a row (1979-1982). The brass line, meanwhile, didn't drop a sub-caption during those 4 years.
It's also not unprecedented to have the brass line trailing behind. Check this out:
Vanguard
Year Brass Placement in Finals
1973 8 1
1974 5 1
1978 7 1
1981 4 1
Bottom line is: there are four scoring areas, you need to nail GE and finish high in two of the remaining three.
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6 hours ago, cixelsyd said:
Then that could not have been just DCI championship week. DCI has never had 100 competing corps at a DCI championship. Biggest years were 1981 and 1982, both 98.
That makes perfect sense, because the Canadian corps could all go to Montreal without the diplomatic issues of crossing the border.
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5 hours ago, IllianaLancerContra said:
There was a year Bayonne (also a Delucia line) had something like 2 ticks. I remember bunch of our drummers listening to recording over & over trying to find them.
The best was when people were listening to Garfield '87 trying to find a single mistake so they could claim "Nyet!" on the perfect percussions scores. smh
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2 hours ago, ContraFart said:
I remember playing at the Lone Star Brewery in 99. I would have to imagine that was paid. Also Micro Magic did a couple of corporate gigs. I played one of them. It was weird to play in a ball room with a bunch of suits.
My HS jazz band played at some type of event at our local Arts Guild. Played outdoors in the parking lot. If we got paid for that gig, I didn't see a dime, and I was playing lead tenor sax, so I had several solos and features. I imagine the band was "asked" or "invited" to play instead of having a DJ playing Beethoven's hits.
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26 minutes ago, Boss Anova said:
Yes, they do have Culver's in Florida. One is located just about a 1 1/2 away from us too. I have never eaten there before. I have heard they are pretty good for fast food. I might check them out one of these days.
They are in Georgia as well. There's one about 4 miles from my house. Good burger, you pay what you would expect. They even realize you'll have to wait on your food to cook so they have designated wait areas in the drive thru lane. I prefer the custard at Freddie's, but Culver's is okay.
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On 1/14/2023 at 12:08 AM, Jeff Ream said:
correct. i think the total score was 19.7
I found a recap for 8/11/75, CYO Nationals in Boston. They got a 19.6 and 19.4 for an overall of 19.5
Finished 2nd behind Madison 90.55 to 88.70
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21 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:
i was just asking the person that made the claim. i couldnt find anything supporting that claim before i typed.
i know many didn't do finals week, but since he gave that specific timeline i had to ask
Back in 1982, I bought a copy of Drum Corps World at the show in Atlanta. It had a two page chart of every year of DCI and every corps that marched in that year. One year in the mid 70's, it listed over 200 units that competed that year (I want to say 234, but I can't say that with any certainty). I was new to DCI at the time and even then I was amazed at how many corps went away by '82. Looking back on it, "marching Finals week" was the wrong verbiage, but there were over 200 on that list.
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On 1/13/2023 at 11:51 AM, scheherazadesghost said:
This has nothing to do with my age or any presumed naivete associated with it. I'm well aware of my corps history and witnessed enough instances of the complaints levied in this thread firsthand. Expressing frustrations from the outside can definitely be helpful, but only to a point when you literally can't know all the components.
Isn't it possible that I became a dance educator and arts admin because I experienced these issues firsthand as a young person and wanted to make sure I could be part of the solution?
I did not intend to offend you. I am wholeheartedly sorry if I did that. What I am trying to convey is that this issue of trying to manage a non-profit drum corps and achieve a balance between maximizing 1) the competitive ability 2) the MM's experience 3) the sustainability of success and 4) the sustainability of the organization has been going on for decades, and there have been close to 100 failures for every success. DCI once had over 200 members competing during a single year. Now they're down to less than 35, and that number seems to gets smaller every year. Blue Devils, Bluecoats, and to some degree Blue Stars have managed to accomplish all 4 fairly well, and now we can add Boston to that list. (Maybe everyone should change their name to start with a B????) DCI is a copycat world, except where it comes to financial management, which is the first place that success should be copied around.
We're all just incredibly frustrated that we see what's been coming, have been sounding the alarm on finances and abuse for years and years, and yet the people who can actually DO SOMETHING have their heads stuck in the sand and refuse to change. I applaud you for choosing to get involved and try to help, but I imagine it's only frustrated and traumatized you even more to see how little has changed in 50 years.
SCV is kind of like everyone's favorite grandpa, except he's losing his home because he just kept trying to make a fortune selling Amway, even when everyone told him it wouldn't work.
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55 minutes ago, scheherazadesghost said:
Listen, few folks are tougher on this corps than me. I attended the alumni meeting where they explained as much as they could. Pretty much confirmed what I already knew: it's complicated and, as far as I can tell, no one on DCP is informed enough to so hardly judge their decisions, not that I can do anything about it. I get that everyone's mad about decisions made, but dang, there seem to be few solutions this group finds acceptable. I won't be sharing any of the others proposed in the meeting.
I appreciate what you are saying, but this goes back to before you were born. The details specific to Vanguard's failures are varied, I'm sure. But this has been a contention among those of us who have been looking at the financial aspects of DCI since we first got involved, back to DCI's origin in some cases. Ballet companies and orchestras don't have backup dancers and cellists handling the finances, and the prima ballerina or the principle conductor don't get the final say on how money is spent. The CEO and CFO of these NP's should be telling the corps director and design team what they are allowed to spend and then design a show that fits into that profile, not the other way around. The BoD isn't supposed to be a rubber stamp for the artistic director. Too many people have been trying to turn what was once a military veterans backed drum and bugle corps show for their annual conferences into a two-month long off-Broadway musical production lasting only 11 minutes. The entire business model should have changed along with the show designs and judging criteria during the '80s and '90s, but it didn't.
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On 6/30/2017 at 11:43 AM, Tim K said:
If you stop and analyze this thread, we only have a handful of stories about people being asked to leave a corps during a season, and only a few are for behavior. Do people realize how rare this is? Just about any other activity involving young people between 16 and 22 has horror stories of drug use, alcohol abuse, belligerence, leaving sites without permission, unwanted sexual advances, etc. This says something about the kids involved in drum corps and those who recruit and select them.
Boy, this didn't age well...
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1 minute ago, scheherazadesghost said:
I'm under the impression that they have started a rental program for the rigs. Apparently there are other groups who do this too. Leaving them unused for most of the year would be problematic for numerous, obvious reasons.
That was the genius of Bill Cook's plan to fund Star. Use the buses and trucks for 3 months and then have someone else pay for them the other 9 months and fund the corps' operations. It took a few years, but by the time they made a push for a title, they were self sustaining financially.
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3 minutes ago, Jeff Ream said:
could also be a contractual decision.
Which would make the decision to buy the trucks even worse. Ugh... after 25 years of corporate finance, hearing about people doing these things just makes me want to start punching people left and right.
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3 minutes ago, Jeff Ream said:
thats right the drums got zeroed in Suck
Going the opposite way... does anyone recall the show where Muchachos percussion got a zero-tick score? I want to say it was late in '75.
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2 minutes ago, Jeff Ream said:
they don't want the designers to go elsewhere.
If they are willing to risk the viability of the entire operation just to keep their design staff, that tells me they needed to fail. There is a HARD reset needed in the attitude out there.
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On 1/6/2023 at 11:41 PM, Land_Surfer said:
Correct
1987 was quite possibly their best horn line ever. One of the best contra lines I've ever heard.
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20 hours ago, Terri Schehr said:
It also signaled that now you can play that long open roll.
On the DCI historical cd collection for 1983 the 11.5 minute guns were edited out of every performance. It must have been done to the original masters because the '83 albums still included them. They literally just cut the fraction of a second or so out of the recordings. What an utter shame.
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9 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:
may have been for electronics taking forever
i think in 16 BD got hit at quarters for timing due to electronics taking too long to boot up.
but for undertime, it's been decades
It was '15 and the penalty was for amplifying their metronome signal so loud that it could be heard next to the stadium. Oregon got the same penalty earlier that day.
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17 hours ago, OldSnareDrummer said:
I remember shows being 11.5 minutes min to 13 minutes max with execution judging stopping at 11.5 (followed by the requisite double starting gun blast). Not sure when that changed.
1984 The switch to 100% subjective judging raised the scores and eliminated the 11.5 minute guns
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7 hours ago, JimF-LowBari said:
They WERE registered for years but from what I caught (board never spelled out how they screwed up) what they claimed to be doing didn’t match what they were doing. One year PA looked at their paperwork and… nope. Took them years to get NP back. Finally had to actually give money 😱 to a school to match the “educational” claims they made.
And (thinking of DCI) they had been “doing it this way for years” so why change. And why get someone from the outside (like lawyers who deal with NP) to check. Plus same board members for years (just rotate thru the offices) so no one had a clue what was really going on. Don’t think any board member had any legal expertise but they tried to handle it themselves 🤦♂️Not drum corps, but a very similar thing happened with my neighborhood HOA before and after we moved in. A guy with no financial background or training was the board treasurer. He filed the HOA taxes for 7 years... as a FOR PROFIT ENTITY. He paid himself between $100 and $350 each year to cost the HOA upwards of $50,000. It wasn't until someone else took over as treasurer and she asked me to look at the paperwork for the HOA. I solved the issue in 10 minutes over lunch with the Director of Tax for my company. It cost the HOA a 1 pound cheeseburger from Fuddruckers to file amended taxes for the last 3 yeas and get over $20,000 back.
NP's have a lot of rules to follow and deadlines to meet, but the benefits of being tax-exempt are worth spending $300/hr on a CPA or tax attorney to handle it.
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40 minutes ago, C.Holland said:
That only works if you’re not starting out below 15% contingency.
The two concerns (with world class specifically) are the known money in. You know at least 95% of the money coming in from member dues. You then have to gamble that plus whatever else the board raises and your other revenue streams bring in against costs of food, travel, housing, which you many not know the full costs of (or at least 90%) until 90-120 days out from tour start. I have a feeling that the overall shortened tour (without seeing reduced member dues) is how the corps are forcing contingency money into the overall season budget.
Maybe it's the accountant in me, but if I'm the CFO of a drum corps, we don't tour without the cash in the bank to pay for the season. If that's impossible to do now, then the entire business model of DCI needs to go in the trash. If the local food bank runs out of money, they just don't feed people. If a corps runs out of money, they do what the Bridgemen did... leave people stranded next to a crashed bus with no idea how to get home. There is no excuse for that. I might be harsh in saying this, but DCI has gone so far beyond what drum corps was supposed to be that it's coming back to bite them in the ###... and I think they deserve it. Banks were "too big to fail" back in '07... well, so was Vanguard.
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11 hours ago, GUARDLING said:
Yes, there is teaching, even at a higher level BUT it's teaching the way their staff member wants things done. Which isn't a bad thing for a top level.
Actual teaching (from scratch) happens much more at the OC level.
I hate to pull this one up, but... Jim Ott. He never taught SOA's horn line to play scales or arpeggios. He taught them how to breathe, how to hear the ensemble, and how to crank it when it was called for. He also carried a baritone bugle around and played in the arc on a regular basis. Spirit's '77 horn line wasn't anything special. They came in 17th in brass, and they didn't get a ton of high end talent in '78 to come in, but Jim elevated that group to God-status come finals night in 1978. They scored a 14/15 in brass ensemble... and Devils came in 2nd with a 13... a full point behind. They won High Brass a year after finishing 17th. That's teaching.
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Carolina Crown 2023
in DCI World Class Corps Discussions
Posted
Let's face it... for several years now the formula has been if you could take GE and Visual, it didn't matter if you didn't have a 1st place sound technically. GE/Visual/Music Analysis make up 80% of the score. Actual playing only counts for 20%.