Methods of Madness

[SuperSmashBrothers]

THe drum line was talking while the visual guys were working with the hornline. Drum line ended up tracking for about 3 hours. through grape vineyard... Not through the paths in the middle. through the bushes and plants. THe line game was always fun too. Start on the goal line run to the 5 run back run to the 10 back, 15, etc. only had to do that a couple times. made it to the 30 though... not fun...

I can't call that a method of madness at all... my nephews and nieces do "suicides" (as the running you are referring to is called) in their pee-wee soccer practices all the time. If a drum corps made of men and women can't handle SUICIDES a COUPLE of TIMES... what is this activity coming to? [This question is not meant to be debated. It is merely for effect]

I know Drum Corps now-a-days is tougher than THAT.

[Kekkles]

fun fact, the stick trick where you lift your hand up, swing your stick around opposite of where it normally is, then drop and catch is also called a suicide

>_>

[piperguy]

Back in the 70's when I was with the Blue Stars, the hornline had this thing we called "Chop Suey." We always did it after rehearsing all day. Definately a character building excersize

[Register]

Ed Warren at 210 in Jacksonville on Turf

Edited April 12, 2008 by Register

[dallasburgess]

All I know is that 1st of the month basics ALWAYS sucked (you know, "time to take it to the next level"), and there always seemed to be a fresh track around.......and lot's of 'box height".

[tizzizzailslf04]

My Favorite Blue Devils show!

..oh wait...that's not what this thread is about

[SCVsopAaron]

Tall grass sucks.

[trumpet1cs]

hahaha. ahh.

"chop suey"? interesting. care to explain if possible? :)

one of my Cascades friends had us do "ball of fire" for character building before a performance. works for me.

Edited April 12, 2008 by trumpet1cs

[mad_scotty]

2 things come to mind. first, the marching staff at madison had a great character building exercise they used to do. once everydays started, and on early tour they would take the weakest rookie on the line and the entire staff would pick on him all day. horn sagging, feet dragging, off the pace or out of place in the slightest and someone would completely ream you. everyone watching like a hawk and not letting you do anything but stand up straight, carry your horn and march with perfect style. it was very effective, because it's easy to straighten up when a staff member is working with you, but sustaining it through an entire days worth of rehearsals is very hard. when the whole staff is on you it doesn't feel good, but you get tight on the small stuff and maintain all day long quick. the only problem with this was that some rookies were better than others from the start. if you were like me, a pasty doughboy weakling sissy from day one, you were accustomed to receiving a lot of encouragement from the staff to straighten up, and a little extra was no big deal. if you were an above average rookie though, you went through camps and everydays thinking you were somehow superior to all other rookies and above being yelled at. but your day would come, everyone got a turn, and i mean everyone, and the looks of shock on some of the guys who thought they were bulletproof was pretty funny, at times.

hardest thing ever was end zone to end zone basics. picture this. from first camp at madison back in the day all you hear about is how much tougher the basics are than at any other corps, how hard you have to work to put on the superman suit and look like a scout, and how much harder we are on ourselves than any other corps when it comes to marching with style. one day on tour, a staff member who shall be unnamed announces to us that they have actually been taking it easy on us, because a former staff member (who shall also be unnamed) used to run a much tougher basics than we've ever seen or heard of. but they have a treat for us, he's at the school we're staying at, and he's going to run our basics today. no circle drill, line it up in a square and get to attention. we get the mark time command and start going.

fast forward a little more than 45 minutes later. we're still going, and we have been at attention with our feet moving the entire time. no resting the horns, carrying them either up or at attention, marking time during the rare pauses. no one has fallen out; its midsummer, we're madison, we're strong. but we we're definitely in a new place here. sweat is just pouring off of us, and i mean pouring, when we mark time we leave a damp patch on the ground. guys mouths are hanging open and they are just panting, trembling from exhaustion, barely hanging in and keeping in line. i don't know what that sounds like to most people but if you marched madison back in the day its a pretty shocking statement. people from other corps don't quite understand just what marching style means to scouts. i mean, i know every corps stresses style, and works like madmen all summer to build it, but it's different at madison. it isn't what you do, it becomes who you are. toes are always pointing up, every horn is always perfect, heads never bobble no matter how crazy the drill gets. the goal is for every marching member to maintain perfect style constantly, so that if someone takes a picture of you in your superman suit at any point in any show they can put it on next years program and everyone who sees it will know that this is what a madison scout is supposed to look like. a high bar to reach, and for every scout maintaining that level is a deeply personal commitment. mouths hanging open, people panting, i don't think any of us, even the staff guys had ever seen this before.

and it was wrong. we were beat down, and in pain, and barely hanging in there, but still, it was just wrong. scouts don't look like that, not ever, no matter how tough things are going. horns were drooping, bells wilting like the dead summer grass we were marching on. it was worst in the euphs and contras of course. i will admit freely that the bell of my contra was tilting down a good 15 degrees, and i was worried i might drop it, since i couldn't feel my arms anymore. without communicating you knew the whole hornline was aware of how we looked and was deeply disturbed. something had to give, and something finally did. i don't know who the first guy to growl and fight back was, but you could feel it come off him like a wave before you could hear that low menacing sound coming out of the back of his throat. he straightened his horn and back, and started looking like a scout again. he was in as bad of shape as the rest of us by then, and it took a feat of superhuman strength and concentration, but somehow he did it. and it emanated through the whole hornline from him. guys took the energy he was pushing and made it their own, and in a few seconds everyone is standing straight and proud, horns tight, and most of us are growling, low, till the whole corps is rumbling with it like a big motor.

i haven't seen much that i could call actual shock and awe in my life, but for a brief second on a football field in the summer of 93 i saw it flash across a grown mans face as he beat a couple of drumsticks and paused between commands. he had just figured something out, well, two things actually: basics was running very very long, and he was seeing some real drum corps. he had finally brought us to a point where we were pushing back, and it felt great. he didn't stop us right off, a moment like this needs to be savored, lived in a little, so we went a couple more minutes before he finally called the first and only halt of basics. when we finally stopped our contra section leader extended his arms straight out. all of us matched him, to this day i have no idea how. personally, i was shaking like a leaf and on the edge of total collapse but somehow i extended my arms and got my horn out from my body at a proper angle. we had been running for over 50 minutes.

our staff guys and power vets all agreed it was the toughest basics any of them had ever seen. we timed our breaks in those days with cigarettes- it has been scientifically proven that it takes a proper smoker exactly 5 minutes to smoke one standard sized cigarettes while watering up. this day a lot of us had enough time to smoke a second before we started visual rehearsal. it turned out it was all a mistake. we were only supposed to go half that long, but the guy running basics didn't have a watch on. he kept waiting on the rest of the staff guys to call time, they kept watching him wondering why he hadn't stopped yet, and well, the rest is history.

in some ways 93 was a hard year for the scouts. we had a great 5 o'clock hornline, and felt like we could outplay anyone that year in an arc (and did at a couple of rainouts), but we were inconsistent on the field, and knew it. if you go back to the dvd's or cd's we sound really good 1/3 of the time, like a great preview of the 95 corps 1/3 of the time, and just a little out of tune and out of sorts 1/3 of the time. coming off that hot 92 show, marching in line with vets from 88 it worried us at times. were we living up to our corps history? were we marching and playing like scouts? but during our extra long break after basics that day, lazing in the sun on the sidelines, talking to the staff and power vets about the old days and what a crazy basics session we'd just marched, we knew that we were madison, and standing right in line with the green gods from days of old and times to come, and we felt great. it was summer, we were the scouts, and we were gonna play soup that night in front of a stadium full of screaming maniacs and smoke the place.

[JayM]

Scotty,

You just described what we would call "Fiedler Basics". When we did it in 2004 in Michigan, there was a div 2/3 corps marching on a field nearby. They must have thought we were nuts.

It's not by accident that the Cavaliers consistently win the field visual caption.