Bleu Raeder

Bon Creole - New Iberia LA (just south of Lafayette): This place makes a po-boy that is out of this world. Magnolia Pancake House - San Antonio, TX: Reminds me of home and brunch. Wait up to 2 hours on Sunday to get in.

a lawn jockey a chrome wall snare drums through the ages bugles through the ages Carl Allison American Legion, CYO and VFW trophies and medals U.S. Open - anything and everything videos of the corps we have no videos for a parachute a blindfold a Silver Eagle bus withover a million miles on it donuts (they were all petrified, so this should be easy) generic peanut butter, 55 gallon drum albums snare leveler (yeah, right) marching tymp crank inspection sheets

I'll be on snare and agree with Roark1 - TDR's baby!

The bathroom (original bathrooms removed to add seats) on the boy's busses (trips in the dark found us segregated from the girls) was a funnel connected to a piece of surgical tubing "mounted" in the stairwell of the bus doors. The surgical tubing was routed to the outside of the bus. There was a shower curtain between the driver and the stairwell. Rookies were often surprised by the driver opening the door. Other drivers were often surprised by the driver opening the door.

Bleu Raeders (New Orleans, LA) + Homer J. Ball AL Post #5 (Emporia, KS) =

Cereal in a styrofoam bowl with lukecool milk. PB&J sandwiches. The smell of diesel (especially when it is hot outside). Stale donuts. A baseball cap so sweaty you can smell it. Muscle pain that I get now that I know is because of then.

It is true that Louisiana's cops history is very early on and features the Bleu Raeders who were in the top 12 of the first DCI finals (with 18 or 19 total shows under our collective belts) as well as making a splash in Class A while trying to survive. Several of the corps' were well ranked in VFW and AL contests before DCI. Take special note of the Golden Shields, they were an all black corps. I am unsure how many of these existed (Michael Boo may know). A couple of DCI Hall of Famers, Moe Latour and Marty Hurley, come from Louisiana and continue to contribute to the activity. Corps is alive and somewhat well in the New Orleans area in the form of the Greater New Orleans Drum Corps Association.

http://www.louisianadrumcorps.org/ Louisiana (though it seems forgotten as being part of the South thus far in this thread) has a great drum corps history.

And you only have 17 interpretations of that non visual cue, not to mention the time it takes that sound in the myriad of other sounds to travel to the furthest reaches of the battery.

I did read the arguements and I would beg to differ on tempo and staging demands. Listen to and watch drum corps of the 70's and 80's where vocalization was not allowed and you will see drill demands and tempos like those of today. I think at this point we can all agree to disagree, some do not mind them, others do and each side has valid arguements for and against.

I was listening to some CD's and found the lick when Phantom performed it in 1979. It is in the drum solo about 7 minutes into the show (I think the solo is March of the Dwarves).

Many drumlines went sans dut for decades without having this attack problem. Dutting is a crutch. ^0^

I know I am way old school but we used to march longer shows without a dut and without yard lines and hash marks. We corrected phasing problems and a grand number of other ills by properly watching the drum major. I find duts only slightly annoying. Use them in rehearsal to get it right and then train the performers to 'internally' dut for performance

Several corps tried them, the snares were tempramental at best. http://www.vistalites.com/ gives a history of the drums particularly directed at drum kits (I know that the guy running the site knows about the marching drums, but seems to ignore them for whatever reason.). You'll note some exceptionally famous drummers used the kits.

Vistalites!!!!

ROFLMAO! She is clueless.....

Any news on a DVD?

There was one lick in the triples during the drum solo that Marty wrote that nearly everyone remembers and tried to learn in the 70's. The crowd always ate it up. You can actually hear these particular bars in a drum solo that Phantom did after Marty went there, but I do not recall the year. Here is a pic of that fabulous tenor line;

Do you remeber the school that we stayed in? Completely redefined the term "cold shower".

That is too bad, wish you could have come down to the practice whether it was us or not. Lots of good corps at the time, Des Plaines, Blue Stars, Guardsmen. I think that Phantom was there a couple of times and may have won the show once. Too bad that some of these smaller contests are not on CorpsReps, it would be interesting to see. I do not recall staying at a church, so it had to be a competitior. We stayed at a high school where the water system was fed by a cistern....and the water in the showers was always frigid at best. It was so cold that we would almost run in and then run out, it would certainly take your breath away. Part of rookie initiation had to do with those very cold showers. If you put your toothbrush in your mouth too fast after running it under the water it would make your teeth hurt. I also remember some family (forgive me for not remembering their names) with a swimming pool that always hosted a party for us. I am sure we ran them broke on food those nights. Every year they would set up a movie screen and show Super 8's of the shows (those would be priceless now) out by the pool. It was awesome. We would also go to Dixon to march in a show that had a carnival...maybe a strawberry festival or something like that (the brain is a little foggy for those details) just after the Wheaton show. It was a great show.

I wish I was home....I would certainly be active in GNODCA.

Spot on, the only thing you have left out of the equation is advertising support. You will need funds from advertising to support production and it is unclear how advertising plays into the on-demand model as most users are very intolerant of advertising when they have paid for content. Some are skirting the issue with product placement in the content but the impact of product placement is not the same as the traditional advertising methods. In this type of channel there are lots of products being utilized, but some are invisible to the viewer (remember my comments about the demographic and not only advertising musical products and uni's) such as underwear, deoderant, food the corps ate on the way to the stadium, shows worn in rehearsal, etc. The traditional advertising opportunities are broad but the current less-traditional methods are unproven in content such as this. There are undoubtedly new methods being cooked up to cover this but how long before they are used and proven?

It is no more a niche market....scratch that....it is less of a niche market than the dance/cheer competitions just due to numbers. Average dance/cheer squad is thirty folks in a school. At my daughter's high school there are over 300 folks in the band and roughly 500 kids in middle school band (YMMV) but it almost every case the band personnel outnumber the dance/cheer personnel by at least 2/1. Same thing at the university level. LSU's Golden Band from Tigerland marches 325 and I would guess that 25-30% are music majors. These kinds of numbers are duplicated many times over in colleges and universities throughout the country. Bring on a premium channel. There are advertisers willing to spend the money because you don't just have to advertise music gear, uni's. You would be targeting a hot demographic, teens and those in their early 20's. Don't forget about all of the mom's dad's aunt's uncle's etc etc etc who would watch as well. how many musicians do you think there are in America? And maybe you don't limit to marching music...maybe you include concert bands, symphonies, wind ensembles, jazz bands....The Musician Channel - hear it with your eyes....

1974 Bleu Raeders & Stardusters merged to form Regiment Militaire and placed 17th (reasonably successful). The merger was dissolved and everyone went back to their repective names in 1975 and were never quite as successful thereafter.

Gawd I love guards in boots...