ingots

Rather than start a new thread, let me just add that: Ticketmaster is Evil!!! Out of the zillions of available seats in any THIRD of the stadium (street, terrace or upper tier level, or some similar set of categories...), you get only ONE seating choice. I won't even get into the various fees, like the one that generously allows you to print your tickets at home. I'll put up with that for the ability to actually choose my own seats, rather than the ones THEY decide you want. How novel. Kind of like Clearchannel deciding what 10 songs your radio market is going to hear. More Coldplay, anyone?

Musically, I think In.Trance.It is one of the most underrated Crown shows. I was not at all familiar with the source music beforehand. Now I have both Richard Danielpour's "Calastial Night" and Crown's In.Trance.It on my home stereo rotation. Good stuff.

What's up with the massive head wound look in the X-men guard? Kinda gross, if you ask me.

The Cure. - I can just hear the contras belting out the bass line of "Love Cats" - "Why Can't I Be You?" already had some great horn parts - Plenty of darker stuff to pull a ballad from.

This is a great thread! Did anybody notice the more subtle changes in the Crown headgear? The shako brim has changed from gold to a nice, shiny silver. The chains have also made the same gold-to-silver transition (thanks in part to the labor of yours truly). You're talkin' a big heap o' tangled silver chain! For the truely eagle-eyed, the buttons on the shakos and the jackets now have reflective, eye-catching, prismatic stickers. How these hold up to life on the road has yet to be determined. Heck, their visibility beyond 10 yards has yet to be determined. Who says excellence is easy? Bob

I'm in a similar situation. I'm a runner, so I have the lungs for tuba but not the body to handle a contra. Already tried that, Crown '04... now I'm learning baritone too. For me, the hardest thing is to get more tone than tounge in the low range and not crack in the high range. No matter how much my arms shake, it feels better than the contra's crush. What bothers me is my left hand...There's like no room to grab the horn, and the weight squeezes my hand no matter how I hold it. I'd "tough it out", but I don't want to hurt my left hand because I play bass guitar.

Yeah, I guess. It's bad to be forcefully distracted from the real action. But I remember seeing my first live Drum Corps show, and my eyes kept getting drawn to the guy in the green polo shirt and khaki shorts that kept running around the field dodging the performers. It was like watching for a train wreck that was about to happen - you just knew that guy was eventually going to get clobbered. It never happened - that percussion judge was quicker that he looked! But I felt at the time he couldn't be more obnoxious, obvious and out of place had he been wearing a clown suit. So... The only thing worse than forcefully distracted from the real action is to be voluntarily distyracted! I eventually learned to ignore the judges.

Cliff, You're probably right on the whole synth thing. I just can't help thinking that there are these scores of extremely talented musicians floating around the country NOT playing, hovering just off the radar screen, mallets gathering dust since the day they aged out of DCI... From a totally non-musical standpoint, I would think a mallet player would have a lot more visual impact onstage than yet another gutarist or keyboardist. I didn't consider the amplification issues. I was thinking you could treat the instrument like you would treat a minimally mic'ed drum set (you know - kick, snare, hi-hat, and get the rest with a pair of condensers). You must run into volume balance problems when using 4 or 5 mics. The Frankenmarimba sounds extremely cool. I love the idea. Guitarists OUT! Percussionists IN! Great website you have there, by the way! I get the feeling there are not many gamelons in Union County, NC. Bob

Hi Rob. You mean they become - gasp! - regular people? I'm just outside Charlotte. Looks like it's about 300 miles to Ahoskie. There's always FirstBeat and NightBeat, or maybe a DCI show closer to you. Ahoskie is a great place name, by the way. How is that pronounced? I may may commandeer it for this band. That is if i can find a mallet pers..., er, I mean "percussionist". Bob

If this off topic, please do bounce it to another forum or otherwise chastise me! As strange as it may seem, after 46 years of living on earth and seeking out new and interesting music in at least a semi-active manner, last year was my first exposure to Drum Corp. I have a son who marched contra with Crown. Needless to say, I was quite impressed with the whole scene - the music, the dedication, the shows (yadda, yadda, heaping praises on you all!) One on the things that stands out to me is the pits. Each corp has 15 or so musicians cranking out this cool, incredibly complex, fascinating music (while the brass and drumline and color guard take the visual glory) My question is this: Where do all these mallet people go once they age out of Drum Corp? I would think the world would be full of ex-DCI pit people running around. I guess this shows my ignorance - I'm not even sure what someone who plays marimba or vibes or xylophone even calls themselves. My small, shriveled brain can only think of several possible answers to the "Where do they go?" question. Do they: - switch to different instruments? - get music degrees and become middle school band directors? - slide into the world of jazz? - disappear from the face of the earth altogether? Why I ask: Shameless self-promotion. Well, not really. My personal musical background is as a rock/blues bassist. You know, the thumpin' electric stringed instruments, not the big honkin' drums. Lately I've been working on putting together kind of a groove/jazz/jam/ambient band as a musical side project (sorry about the fuzzy description...). B) Now, I would absolutely LOVE to have someone playing marimba or vibes or Mallet Kat in this band. There's nothing wrong with guitarists in general (heh, heh, heh), but having more that one in a band just leads to ego and volume wars. Let's face it: if you as a percussionist were putting together a small ensemble, how may squealing trumpets -- or should I say sops when posting on a Drum Corp board? -- would YOU invite? Anyway, I would think the places I go to hook up with other musicians (local musician search forums, music store bulletin boards, local arts newspapers, etc) would be filled with messages like "Vibraphonist available". Instead, I've seen, well, nearly one. Maybe I'm just looking in all the wrong places... Bob in North Carolina Bassist for Ginsu Jukebox

Thanks, everyone, for your feedback and concern. Here's an update on my contra-playing son and his winged scapula problem: After 10 weeks of Physical Therapy, he is finally showing definite, measureable signs of recovery. Whew! I know it's general knowledge that nerves heal slowly, but it sure seemed like a long time with no real progress. He had an MRI done, mainly to be sure there was nothing else strange happening where the nerves exit the spine. Everything looked normal, except some atrophy in the seratus muscle (that's the one that stabilizes the scapula). My GUESS is that this would have been worse without the PT. He also had an EMG - even the neurologists called it the "needle test". They use needle electrodes to check the nerve/muscle function throughout the shoulder region and all the way down to the fingers. Again, everything looked normal, except for some signals that indicated neuraplaxia in the long thoracic nerve (the one that controls that seratus muscle). Neuraplaxia is defined as: "Injury to a nerve resulting in paralysis without degeneration and followed by rapid and complete recovery of function." The neurologist said it was likely that the nerve sheath was injured, but the main signal-conducting part of the nerve was intact. Kind of like an electrical wire that looses it's insulation. But we sure like that "rapid and complete recovery" part! So our plan is to keep up the PT for a few more weeks, keep an eye on his progress in general, and stay out from under a Contra (or a heavy backpack, or a squat machine) for a while. John - apparently the steroid/anti-inflammatory route is not part of the general approach to treating this kind of injury. I guess that makes sense - the scalene muscle that the LTN passes thru was not inflamed. At least we got past the "looks like a duck, smells like a duck" phase, and verified that the thing following us around and quacking really was indeed a duck! Any moral to the story? Geez... Pay attention to your body (but you knew that). Tough it out if you are fatigued, uncomfortable, or just plain tired. But take action if you are losing range of motion, if sore areas aren't recovering, you have numbness, etc. In this case, the season ended before the injury became REALLY serious. There's nothing wrong with switching to baritone for a while...

Hey, all - thanks for the replies. From this very informal survey, it looks like this kind of condition is NOT widespread in the contra world. I think word of something like this would travel fast in such a tight community, and quickly become general knowledge. Or at least some kind of "urban legend". That's good news. Dave- I don't think Crown holds their horns significantly different that the rest of the Corps, at least not by design. John - Yeah, we're REALLY early in analysis stage here. We've been to see his GP once, and to PT for a few weeks. We haven't yet seen a neurologist, or any other specialist, for that matter. This diagnosis is coming from the physical therapist and me (and like they say, "I'm NOT a real doctor"). I would put our evidence strictly in the "Looks like a duck, quacks like a duck..." category, which is admittedly very non-scientific! Thanks for your input and good wishes. I'll let you know how things work out. Bob

My son marched Drum Corps for the first time this summer. He played contra with Carolina Crown. He had a great experience, but developed a fairly serious medical condition because of it. I was wondering if other contra players out there have seen this, or know of someone else who has had this. If so, how did you/they resolve it? Have you brass staff people seen this? Here’s the layman’s description, with proper medical terms in parenthesis for those in the know: The nerve (long thoracic nerve) that controls the muscles that hold the shoulder blade (scapula) in place runs through that muscle on top of your shoulder/neck area (middle scalene muscle). If this nerve is damaged, those scapula-controlling muscles don’t fire. Without those muscles working, you can hold your arms straight out in front of you, and the shoulder blade will poke out backwards, instead of sliding nicely along your back like it’s supposed to. They call this a “winging scapula”. It’s, umm, somewhat alarming to see. They say longer term symptoms can be: limited range of shoulder motion , chronic shoulder instability, back problems brought on by an asymmetric upper body, and the usual pain. This nerve injury is often seen in bodybuilders who do lots of overhead presses. I think they used to call this exercise a “military press”. Just the repetitive muscle flexing is enough damage that nerve. Now put a 30+ pound contra on top of that flexed muscle, and run around rehearsing for 12 hours a day all summer long. I don’t think I could design an activity better suited to whack that nerve! Now throw in the “tough it out” culture that you need for something as difficult and intense as Drum Corps, and, well, you know where I’m going… FWIW, my son’s cross-country coach noticed the winging a few weeks ago when the team was running shirtless in practice. (My son is the kind of kid who never complains about any kind of physical problem. Sigh.) He’s been in physical therapy for 2 weeks. If there’s no progress in a few more weeks, the next step is to see a neurologist. They say this injury often heals itself – but nerves regenerate very slowly. But in many cases, it never goes away on it’s own. There’s a micro-surgical procedure that essentially cuts into that muscle and re-routes that nerve so it can heal. It’s relatively new, and may even still be considered experimental. So if therapy and time don’t work, there is still some hope of recovery. Some resources I’ve found: http://www.drnathwingingscapula.com/injury/index.asp http://freespace.virgin.net/steven.fromm So… Anyone out there have any advice? Similar war stories? Comments if any kind? Thanks! Bob