danguernsey
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Posts posted by danguernsey
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August 9, 1974--Nixon resigned the office of the presidency. We heard about it while on the road during the eastern tour, just prior to '74 CYO.
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1973--"Ballet in Brass," "God Bless the Child," "Brian's Song"
1974--"Ballet in Brass,""God Bless the Child," "Slaughter on Tenth Ave.," "Brian's Song"
1975-"Slaughter on Tenth Ave.," "MacPark," "The Way We Were"
1977--Prologue to West Side Story
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"Merger":
More like assimimilation: The old 32nd Hussars of Madison went under at the end of the 1972 season. I understand a big slug of their membership migrated over to the crosstown Madison Scouts.
Madison had suffered a "So-So" season in 1972, and failed to make the first DCI Finals. The influx of Hussar guys filled out their lines and helped propel them back into serious contention for 1973.
The Madison guys on DCP could fill out the details on this....
Elphaba
WWW
John Price, a former Madison Scouts alum of the 1950s, formed the 32nd Hussars in 1969 after the death of C.H. Beebe in 1968. Price was a member of the Scouts's VWF championship guard of the late 1950s. The membership of the Hussars was comprised of a good number of former Madison Scouts who had migrated with Price after Beebe's death. The corps struggled financially and competitively through its brief existence. Some Hussars members filtered back to the Scouts, beginning in '71 and '72. Most migrated to the Scouts after the Hussars folded before the '73 season; some went to the '73 Blue Stars. Although their numbers were small, the ex-Hussars were a constituent part of the Scouts's upsurge of 1973-1975. They were local guys and dedicated Scouts. Dan Verhussen, the DM of the Scouts in 1980, had migrated from the Hussars to the Scouts in '73. Todd Ryan, current M&M guru of the Blue Devils, had likewise migrated from the Hussars to the Scouts in '73. Good times marching with this brethren back in the day!
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L.H.O.O.Q.
They would need monkeys on stilts, three headed goats, sound poems and kittens riding kites just to get the true DADA idea started.
Yeah, anything goes. L.H.O.O.Q is the title to Duchamps's graffiti piece of the Mona Lisa with goatee and mustache. The title is a French word play that means "She [the Mona Lisa] has a hot rear end." It's an instance of Duchamps's anti-art aesthetic (i.e., subvert fine art masterpieces of the museums like the Mona Lisa). During the segment dedicated to Duchamp, BD would also need a cross dresser replicating Duchamps's female alter ego, "Rose Selavy," which is another Dada word play that phonetically sounds like in French "Eros c'est la vie," or "eros is life." It's another Dada pun on sexuality.
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Just imagine how freaked out people would be if this DADA show was actually a DADA show.
This show might have been the best that they can do (for the sake of DADA) within the conforms of DCI restraints and competition. DADA had no restraint nor boundaries or tried not to.
Exactly. That's the irony of the matter. Drum corps is too civil, socially and aesthetically, and BD is doing the best they can given the constraints of judging and competition of DCI. Yet, at the same time, it's difficult not to assess BD's show according to the aesthetic standards set by the original Dadaists. That "confusion" seems to be at the heart of the heated debates over BD's show here on DCP.
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It's not abstract at all. It's very concrete - and all about telling the viewer that everything they treasure when it comes to art, society, and religion can be turned into total nonsense with the simple flick of a wrist.
If Devils were actually trying to be Dadaist this year, they'd be making fun of the idea of drum corps' value of 'clean' by being as absolutely ridiculously filthy as they possibly could.
+1 Agree. BD's show doesn't go far enough to succeed as a Dada show. The formal aspects of the show are too tame and stylized for a Dada show, the aesthetic values the Dadaists rejected. If BD wanted an authentic Dada show, they should have had the performance spill into the stands to create mayhem with the audience in a visceral way, which is what the original Dadaists attempted to accomplish in their performance pieces--i.e., to break down the aesthetic distance between the performance and the audience. Despite the subject matter pertaining to Dada, the formal style of BD's show--the "ruptures," "fissures," and "simultaneity" of discordant sound and image--is essentially the stylized dissonance we've seen from BD on replay the past few years. "Cabaret Voltaire" is PoMo (postmodern) posturing without much substance. I'd rather see again "Midnight in Paris" for an enchanting view of the European avant-garde of the 1920s than watch BD's nightmare in Indy.
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If I have to distill quitessential shows or moments from first-hand observation from the early 70s to early 80s, my choices are,
1973 Santa Clara Vanguard, especially "Young Person's Guide to Drum Corps." In the early 70s, that piece upped the ante in terms musically sophistication and visual coordination. "Fanfare and Allegory" of 1972 and 1973 reinforced the ante. That opener, along with the opening to "Henry V" from 1971, fits in there as well. Superior musical and visual all around for SCV in the early 70s. SCV upgraded marching percussion in a serious way from 1970-1975. Fred Sanford, the man in that category!
My beloved Scouts upped the ante in brass arrangements from c. 1970 to 1975.
1983 witness the next major transformative moment of the activity, IMHO, particularly the Garfield Cadets (Zingali bringing his visual approach from 2-7). The Cadets brought to bear on the activity even more visual demand that is still with us today.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7loxbB_IaRI&feature=youtube_gdata_player
The first theme show ending VFW era and launching the new Combine DCI. And the one tee-shirts proclaimed "When drum corps died!"
(I was ctr snare. Brother was French horn)
Actually, there were two other theme shows in 1971: Scouts "Alice" show (w/ costumes) and Garfield Cadets Revolutionary War theme. Interestingly, the use of costumes and gags on the field by the '71 Scouts and Cavaliers anticipated the costumed shows of the Bridgemen a few years later.
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I'm no fan of Dadaism, but your assessment isn't completely fair. Some of the Dadaists were rich, certainly most of them were pretentious, but most of them weren't cowards. Several Dadaists went on to fight in the Spanish Civil War on the side of the Republicans, some fought in various resistance movements in WWI. Some tried to enlist but were turned away for various reasons. The movement, like all art movements at that time, was heavily German . . .
Not true--"all art movements at the time," we're not "heavily German." What is your source material? Dada was short lived (1916-1923) with many regional variations. French Dada was less political, focusing mostly on socio-cultural themes [more humorous treatment of art, sexuality (biomorphism), and marriage]. German Dada was more political/communistic in the defeated country of WWI--more "dark" (eg, Grosz). Surrealism (1924-c. 1940), a predominantly French movement, dominated the European avant-garde in the interwar period. In addition, you had Dutch De Stijl in Holland and Purism ("L'Esprit Nouveau) and Neoclassicism in France, to name a few
Additionally, many of the more serious, thoughtful responses to the war - often by men who served in the conflict - were very much influenced by Dada even if they weren't Dadaist themselves. My favorite of these is Otto Dix.He was part of the movement in Germany called "Neue Sachlichkeit" (The New Objectivity) of c. 1925-1933 (post-Dada). Dix shared some elements with Berlin Dada in mentality (pessimistic mood/anti-war), but radically different in style from the Dadaists (eg, Grosz). His works reveal a hard-edge realism in his treatment of subject matter (war vets, seedy underworld of Berlin), lacking in Dada (with some exceptions). Dix is arguably my favorite artist of the 1920s.
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In most cases, a GE judge is fundamentally asking himself or herself if the theme as portrayed on the field had a coherence to it between music, visual, guard work and so forth. In other words did the show accomplish its stated theme. The brillance of the BD staff as I see it, is that there is no requirement at all that this show have coherence or any intelligence. Coherence for the Club Volataire theme runs counterproductiove to the theme's designed essence of incongruity, confusion, nonsense, and incoherence. As such, the show can leave the judge confused, conflicted, and yet not only not be penalized, but ironically there can be credit awarded for the shows confusion, incoherence and the ultimate unconnectedness of it all to anything.. audience, judge, performer, insight, or intelligence. The Dada group was the very essence of anti intellectualism as described by even those that were in this anarchist group.
Excellent observation. I might add that the Dadaists were also radically anti-formalist. They rebelled against the prevailing notion of beauty embodied in the formalist doctrine of "art for art's sake" of the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Proponents of "art for art's sake" (eg, Whistler) believed that the formal properties of art making--line, color, form, composition--are autonomous, or self-referential in-and-of themselves, freeing art from having to serve non-aesthetic ends like religion, politics, and morality. The Dadaists subverted what they felt was the disconnect between "art and life" in formalist practice, using "collage" to confound the boundaries between the two, blurring art and non-art elements appropriated, or "borrowed," from social life (manufactured "junk" like urinals, bicycle wheels, glass, metal, newspaper, etc). This was done to satirize not only religion, bourgeois morality, and rationality, but also the elevated status of the artist--ie, the artistic genius who produces "original" masterpieces with an ennobling theme or beautiful form. For the Dadaists, in the age of industry and mass-production, the artist is no longer an "original" creator, but instead a mere "reproducer" of the manufactured world already provided for him/her. Hence, art is in constant "replay" and, along with it, artistic identity becomes machine-like.
As for BD, the vast majority of posters on the BD threads (Brasso is an exception) focus mainly on the formal elements of BD's show (ie, coordination, or lack there of, of sound and visual) with scant attention to the Dada theme. The emphasis on the formal aspects is understandable given that most drum corps folk, including staffs and judges, probably have a limited knowledge of art history. I presume that most designers and judges are music educators or from WGI. Explicating, or assessing, fully the strengths and weaknesses of BD's Dada show, formally and thematically, requires an in-depth knowledge of art history, IMHO.
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I agree. I know we also had a recording of our Milwaukee show about a week after the Racine show. We scored higher and won that night but the show in Racine was the one where we came into our own [as described earlier].
That is my sense, also. Perhaps the Fleetwood "Midwest '70" albums are a combo of the Racine and Milwaukee shows? I assume North American Nationals was Milwaukee?
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I have a recording done by audio pioneer Dale Johnson that was done at North American Nationals finals
Those scores were:
July 11, 1970
SCV---82.50
Troopers---81.55
Cavaliers---80.35
Madison---77.75
Blue Stars---76.95
Kilties---76.45
Argonne Rebels---74.85
Garfield---74.40
De La Salle---71.60
St. Paul Scouts---70.50
Thanks, Brian. I have Dale's DVD at North American. I'm niggling, but I'm almost certain that the Scout recording at North American is not the same show that appears on the Fleetwood album (drum and horn errors at NA that don't appear on Fleetwood). It's interesting that the Troopers and Blue Stars appear twice on the Fleetwood series dedicated to "Midwest '70"--Troopers on vols. 1 & 4, Blue Stars on vols. 1 & 2, making me wonder if perhaps the "Midwest '70" series is an amalgam of two different Midwest shows? Just wondering.
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July 3, 1970 Racine, WI
Troopers--- 76.00
Santa Clara---73.10
Blue Stars---72.50
Kilties---69.10
Thunderbolts---53.65
Racine Scouts---51.10
St. Patrick's Imperials---45.65
If it was Racine, where did the Scouts finish? They're on the "Midwest '70" album also.
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"Black Was the Color of My True Love's Hair" has always been one of my favorite drum corps arrangements. It is moody and deep with great use of tone clusters to propel it along. The solo soprano work showed great control and musicianship. Who were those guys? Never having seen it performed live, I did not know about the choreographic sound misdirection from the soloists. I have the Fleetwood recording with the Racine Scouts on the front (? Best of the Midwest) which I would recommend to any collector of noteworthy drum corps recordings.
"Black is the Color" was a superior piece. It was based on an old Appalachia folk song from the early 20th century that had various permutations over the decades. I also liked the Scouts's "Cherokee" from '70 (Les Brown version). IMHO, Ray's creation of the "Madison sound" of the early to mid-70s is embodied in that piece. It seems to anticipate the Big Band sound of "Ballet in Brass" of '73-'74, though the Scouts had played it in '62, which was based on a Les Brown piece as well.
I have that '70 album as well. It's "Midwest 1970" (Fleetwood). It's like 4 vols that includes SCV, Kingsmen, and Troopers. That vol reveals the moment when SCV made its presence known in the Midwest in '70. Does anyone know the particular show of that recording? Brian?
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Maybe this show is just a big dare to the judging community? It's just saying, "How weird and crazy can be we until you can't judge us anymore?" This is a staff that knows exactly what they're doing, and how to be the best year in and year out. I think they know exactly what to do to max out the sheets, without always needing the audience behind them. yes, there are years in DCI when the winning corps took GE by getting the crowd behind them, but it's not a requirement. I think that BD is just daring the judges to try and knock them for being weird and crazy.
There is perhaps some validity to this, "daring the judges/drum corps system," so to speak. Perhaps BD is taking an "anti-drum corps" stance, applying the anti-art, or anti-beauty, revolt of the original Dadaists of 1916-1923. For them, that entailed an absolute negation of not just notions of beauty in art (clarity, order, proportionality, harmony), but also the institutions that supported art and art history--ie, art museums, art academies, art criticism (reception of art). In so doing, their radical skepticism asked the ultimate question: "what IS art?" In that regard, they were similar to the Italian Futurists of the pre-World War One years (1909-1914). That is, negate the past--ie, destroy classical beauty, museums, glorify violence and dissonance, strive for Nietzsche's idea of "creation through destruction." Only open-ended anarchy of the future existed for the Futurists. The Dadaists, by contrast, not only negated the past and present social order, but also the future. They were borderline nihilists, echoing the existential mood in Europe during the 1920s and 30s. Interestingly, Marcel Duchamp took his anti-art stance to its logical conclusion: he stopped making art all together, taking up chess in the mid-1920s.
Applying Dada conceptual art to BD, perhaps BD is interrogating, or "daring," the drum corps activity in an aggressive way, including the judges or "art critics," to ask, "what is drum corps?" For BD's sake, hopefully they'll avoid Duchamp's negation of art making all together.
As for me, I learn more about Dada by going to art museums (Dada is now mainstream--post-modernism), lectures, and reading books about the movement in order to teach it to my students. Drum corps isn't educational in that regard.
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Listening again to 71 Madison at US Open I know all the songs with the exception of the beginning of the concert. Any alumni out there that could help? Sounds like a TV theme to start...
Kemo
The '71 concert was an original arrangement by Ray Baumgardt. One of my favorite concert pieces by Ray in the 70s was the Scouts's "Black is the Color of My True Love's Hair" from 1970. That piece was quite advanced for its day. Ray was on top of his game with that arrangement as well as with the entire '71 show.
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My best friend and I were supposed to carry the banner for an out-of-town American Legion color guard in our local 4th of July parade back in 1963.
We showed up in our Cub Scout uniforms, and the guys in the guard told us we would not be allowed to appear with their group, since they carried rifles, and we were in a Scout uniform.
Interesting story, Brian. Thanks much. By '73, the Scouts's ties to Boy Scouts of America were more "relaxed" than they we're in the 60s. I always wondered if that BSA regulation concerning the use of rifles contributed to the delay of the Scouts in catching up with other rifle lines during the early- to mid-70s--e.g., Kingsmen and 2-7. By the early 80s, however, the Scouts put out some of the best rifles in drum corps. Scout rifles were friggin good in '81 and '82.
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Great photo---thanks. Those were some cool uniforms. Also, I'd forgotten about those pikes their guard carried back then (instead of rifles)--up through '72, I think. Hopefully, some alum can confirm, but I think Madison's first year w/rifles was '73?
The pikes were called Quarter Staffs. I believe the Boy Scouts of America didn't allow scout organizations to use, or carry, rifles: quarter staffs were an acceptable alternative. I can't recall off hand the last year the Scouts stop using them (perhaps '67-'68?), but they definitely were not used in '70-'72. The first year the Scouts used rifles was '73.
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'72 (prelims), '73, '74, '75, '76, '77
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From my recollection, SCV's tenor line first used the fiberglass harness, worn under the tunic, in 1971. That set the standard for subsequent tenor harnesses throughout the 70s--e.g., clear plexiglass tenor harnesses worn outside the uni by Kingsmen and Kilts in 74 and Slingerland metal tubes used by many tenor lines in the 70s (corps, including Scouts, came up with variants).
SCV was the first snare line to use fiberglass harnesses (under the tunic) in 1979.
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Paul,
Thanks for sharing the list. It was interesting seeing Larry McCormick's name on the list in '55 and '56. I didn't know that Sal Ferrera played snare (early '50s). If I recall, wasn't he the principle brass arranger for the Cavaliers in the 60s?
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Not to disrespect DPEmerald, we did not use Ludwig Vistalites in 1973, 27th used Slingerland TDR-100's in 1973 and 1974. It was a clear, 3/4" thick lexan shell and they were very heavy.
In 1975 - 27th went to black Ludwig Vistalites which had a 1/4" thick lexan shell and much lighter. Many corps jumped onto the Ludwig name that year. The Vistalite drum was based on the Ludwig Classic snare trainer and it was excellent. I remember SCV and BD stuck with Slingerland in 1975, but by 1976 - almost everyone (except for SCV) went to Ludwig - either their wood or acrylic shells.
The Vistalite series was not just clear/translucent shells, Ludwig made many opaque shells as well.
Madison had the most colorful Vistalites during first tour of 1976 - I believe with a green, yellow and red stripe in their acrylic shells. I am certain Dan Guernsey might have a photo of those drums?
Yes, we had vistalites, the drums forever associated with the dreadful "disco" show. We called them "jelly beans." They were clear but with silver mylar added inside the shells. They gleamed almost like disco lights, befitting the polyester artifice of 70s disco. The pic below was taken in July '76 while we were in transition from vistalites to chrome Ludwigs. The tenors were awaiting new chrome drums when this pic was taken.
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Is that the same Ray Weiner who marched in the Bayonne Kidets (B'men feeder corps) around 1968 or '69 or so?
Fred O.
Ray marched with the St. Andrew's Bridgemen in '73--the 9-man snare line. He marched snare with the Scouts in '74, '75, and '77. I'm not sure about pre-1973.
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So very important to honor the folks that marched. I've set up a Facebook account dedicated to 27th. Uploaded over 800 photos, all sorted by year from 1868 to 1986, and the alumni corps in 1994 and 95. I have also been given many photos that I did not have. So many 2-7 alumni have helped ID the warriors that mde it possible for me to march.
Thanks Dan for naming your brothers ! Didn't Laki get into commercial graphics - wasn't he involved in the layout of the DCI Yearbook for several years?
Jim
Hey Jim, I'd like to see the facebook pics of 2-7. As for the Scouts, Laki's older brother, Chris, was a graphic designer. He designed several album covers of the DCI championship records in the late 70s and early 80s ('78, '79, and '80). If I recall, he also did some layout design for the DCI yearbooks back in the 70s. He is currently a professor of graphic design at the University of Wisconsin-Eau Claire. A talented guy.
What was the best crowd response your corps got and where?
in Historical Junior Corps Discussions
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There were many, but 1973 CYO is one that is etched in my memory--a top three moment. Others include 1975 DCI finals and the 2006 Alumni Corps at DCI finals.