Take a second...

[nothingbetter]

My sophomore year I got roped into my high schools' indoor drumline by this cute girl I had crush on and thought that if I joined, I could get her to like me. I had no real prior musical education in anything and had never touched a pair of drumsticks in my life. I remember the first time she asked me to join, I looked at her like she was crazy and had no idea what a drumline even was.

haha! well that sounds familiar...

except just change the instruments to other corps affiliated equipment.

Edited December 26, 2007 by nothingbetter

[K-Swiss]

Well, since other people have told their stories involving music, I guess I'll share mine.

It started when I was in grade school at a Catholic church across the street from my town's high school. They decided to take us over to see the band one day, and i sat there in the band hall with my hands over my ears thinking "I want to do this." When I was in fourth and fifth grade, I found my uncle's old drum in my grandmother's attic. I set it up and started pounding away on it. My uncle showed me a few things like how to hold the sticks and such. Then I entered sixth grade and joined the middle school band.

The only real reason I started drumming was because I already had a drum and couldn't afford to get a horn. When I was in eighth grade, my sister showed me the 2003 DCI Finals on TV, and I thought (I'm ashamed to say) that it was kind of stupid. Then I entered HS marching band where I played bass drum and absolutely fell in love with music. The next time I saw the DCI finals was in 2005. When I saw it on TV, the only thing I could think of was how cool that would be to do. The 2006 finals sealed it for me, and I started deciding which corps I wanted to audition for.

I'm now a senior in high school, bass drum section leader and bass seargent on my HS's first ever indoor line. I decided too late this year to audition for a corps, so I'm going to attend the university here in town for a year and march with the band here. The percussion instructor here, Lonny Benoit was caption head for Phantom Regiment for a while and is the front ensemble caption manager for SCV this year, and the director, Jay Jacobs is/was on staff at the Cavaliers (not sure what he does/did, though). My plan is to work my butt off over the summer and marching season next year, then audition for and hopefully make the line at Carolina Crown (or SCV, if Lonny wants me there).

And if I don't make it onto a corps, then I'll still have my degree in Music Education when I graduate college, so no harm no foul.

[ouooga]

Colts' director Greg Orwoll said, "I do drum corps because I don't know how not to do drum corps."

That is seriously the best thing I have heard in a while. The myspace quote has been changed. Thanks Boo!

So to answer the question, well, there's plenty of places to start but I guess I'll start at high school.

I played clarinet, and had for about three years. Band camp (marching band) came, and I just remember being in awe of the discipline that the section leaders (vets) had. I had never seen a marching band in my entire life! Unfortunately, I was not good at marching band. I just did not get it, and I really cannot get good at something I do not understand.

We had a student teacher who had marched in the Cavaliers. One day during freshmen band he showed us his show (which I'm pretty sure was 91, but I'm not entirely sure) and it all made sense!...we're making SHAPES! Hence the reason we stand in line, and move in line! I was absolutely hooked from that point on.

The bad part....I played clarinet, and I had a director that told me that even if I learned a brass instrument, I would never be good enough in time to march. He refused to let me check out a horn to practice on.

So college comes, and there's an alto player from another high school that I knew a little, and we got to talking. He told me he was practicing trumpet because he wanted to be a Blue Devil. He talked me into picking up brass, and my college band let me check out a baritone. A month later I was at Pacific Crest auditions, praying to not embarrass myself. I ended up doing alright, and 2004 was a fun season at PC, and the alto guy marched with me. He and I ended up going to Blue Knights in 05 together too (that was when PC practiced every week, which is a LONG drive from Vegas to do EVERY WEEK!).

That's basically it. I remember saying though, in 04, that it really sucked driving from Vegas to Diamond Bar every week, and that kids from Las Vegas deserved the opportunity to have drum corps in their lives. It was such a foreign concept and still is in this district. Ask anyone on the bus in 04, or even at BK in 05, and they'll tell you that all I talked about was getting a corps started...and that was where Desert Fire first started! Let's see if in five years some other kids from Vegas can have some similar stories!

[TerriTroop]

I got involved in corps entirely by accident. It started out in marching band, 1982. I joined the band because I had a crush on a tenor player. I played keyboard because I could read piano music. Nothing like "Dueling Banjos" on marching bells and xylo!

In March of 1983 a friend of mine in the drum line says "hey, come to this drum corps camp." So I did, and that was the beginning of it all for me. I had never seen a corps show in my life, had never heard of drum corps, and had no idea what I was getting into. I'm just lucky my mom let me go. That was my first year in the Nighthawks. We lasted until mid season of 1984.

The night we folded - home show in Houston in 1984 - a fellow pitster from Nighthawks joined up with the Troopers to finish the season. I went home and finished the season being really sad and waiting for phone calls about finals. I did not seek out other marching opportunities for the coming season because there was nothing local and my family was broke.

May 15, 1985: same friend from Nighthawks calls me at 1:00am and says "you need to fly to Casper. There's a pit spot, and you're going to be amazed at what's happening here." I booked the flight and left the day after my high school graduation. I've never regretted that decision, even though my mom took out a loan to help me pay for it. (I paid her back that year working lots of extra odd jobs during my first year of college.)

I had a rocky rookie year with the Troopers. I wasn't even close to the perfect Trooper (who, by all accounts was my pit-mate Jim Waldorf, our corps commander and an extraordinary person) - I was a rebel and I sometimes didn't get all the traditions and I was probably a pain more often than I remember. But the Troopers was, to be totally honest, the dad I was missing in my life. I'm trying to make it up to the corps now by being more active with regional alums and hopefully starting some exciting things in terms of fundraising and sponsorship.

So, what does being a corps fan mean to me? That's hard to define. I love the pageantry. I love the faces of the kids on the field - the determination, the sheer will of being there. They aren't there because they have to be - they are there because they really, really WANT to be. That's the difference between corps and marching band that gives corps the edge. The young people out there on that field are a breed apart - and I was lucky to be one of them, oh so long ago. I sometimes wonder if they feel the ghosts of us old timers out there on the field with them. And even though corps has changed by leaps and bounds, I still recognize it as being something akin to what I experienced "back in the day."

I guess being a fan is something like repaying a debt of the heart. Or maybe it's paying it forward. I don't know how to explain it. I love the activity because of what it gave me, and I want to keep giving something of myself back to it in whatever way I can manage in my life right now. It's not much - a couple of shows a summer, some souvie purchases, and now more active alum work - but it's a start.

[Penguin]

Finals 2001. Came out of it saying, "I wanna march." :-)

Edited December 27, 2007 by Penguin