The Star of Indiana Phenomenon

[Medeabrass]

Mingusmonk makes some great points. As Star alums, we may not have the same corps we marched with to cheer for, but in a way, it's kind of cool to go out the way we did. Now I get to pull for all of the corps that my fellow alums are teaching, which probably makes me a pretty #### good fan of drum corps, considering how many groups that includes. Good thing there aren't too many outward "identifiers" of their lineage....lol!

I feel the same way Clark. It's funny, but I think I enjoy drum corps a lot more now without having a home team to root for...there's no "home team" colored lenses to watch through.

[mingusmonk]

Mmmm, Anaheim Kingsmen, 1975

Duly noted. Thanks for the correction.

[Medeabrass]

Yeah, I get that you took what I said personally because it’s the corps you were involved with at one point but really, it wasn’t meant to be personal, it wasn’t really that bad and it wasn’t even that harsh, it was just from the other side

Still not jealous of Star, never was, don’t recall getting beat by Star either. Never got cut but did get dissed by their guard. Never booed them and was never hostile to them. In fact, that post was not meant to be hostile; it was rather a flippant breakdown, caricature, of some of the attitudes that were going around then, I’d be surprised if you haven’t heard them before. And I never really thought of myself as anti-Star, but I understood why people were. I was not on their band wagon and I just didn’t like most of their shows but I do still wish they were around. I never said Star didn’t perform well on the field, that Star wasn’t talented or that you didn’t try as hard as or even harder than others. I did have frequent issues with Star though, more so with their fans in the later years.

But many of you Star folks just proved my point, way to make it personal. I offered an opinion, you didn’t agree and now you take shots at my height, dating ability and my very being saying I should not be born. This is exactly the Star I recall, can’t take criticism and use it as an excuse to circle and attack in the most nasty and personal fashion. I figure the arrogance and the ‘my way or I’ll destroy you’ attitude was top down and due to Cook but I don’t really know or care. But really, if you think my post was in bad form how does that allow you to post in even worse form? It doesn’t but hey, it’s Star, we all must be jealous of their goodness which seems to be on constant display.

But anyway, thanks guys. I’m glad I could be there for you.

Enjoy

OK, I get it. You are allowed to call us "wankers," "condescending," "snotty," "poachers" and yet we're supposed to just laugh it off? That's not personal? Am I supposed to slap you on the back and say "good one CowPie?" Then you hide your opinion behind "oh that's not what I think...that's just what everyone else was thinking...c'mon guys I was joking." That's fine if that's your opinion. I'm not a fan of escalating tough guy internet talk but what else do you expect? I'm also not a fan of calling all of our detractors jealous either. But, when you talk with the tone you established, man up and be ready for the rebuttal to be returned in the same cutting fashion. Others on here have disagreed without being railed on because they were respectful.

You obviously don't know Bill Cook either. You can rail on Mason all you want (and I'll probably join in to a certain extent), but Cook is one of the most humble down to earth people you'll ever have the privilege of meeting.

Lastly, who wouldn't stand up for their drum corps if they thought it was being wrongfully besmirched?

[starmello]

Yeah, I get that you took what I said personally because it’s the corps you were involved with at one point but really, it wasn’t meant to be personal, it wasn’t really that bad and it wasn’t even that harsh, it was just from the other side

Still not jealous of Star, never was, don’t recall getting beat by Star either. Never got cut but did get dissed by their guard. Never booed them and was never hostile to them. In fact, that post was not meant to be hostile; it was rather a flippant breakdown, caricature, of some of the attitudes that were going around then, I’d be surprised if you haven’t heard them before. And I never really thought of myself as anti-Star, but I understood why people were. I was not on their band wagon and I just didn’t like most of their shows but I do still wish they were around. I never said Star didn’t perform well on the field, that Star wasn’t talented or that you didn’t try as hard as or even harder than others. I did have frequent issues with Star though, more so with their fans in the later years.

But many of you Star folks just proved my point, way to make it personal. I offered an opinion, you didn’t agree and now you take shots at my height, dating ability and my very being saying I should not be born. This is exactly the Star I recall, can’t take criticism and use it as an excuse to circle and attack in the most nasty and personal fashion. I figure the arrogance and the ‘my way or I’ll destroy you’ attitude was top down and due to Cook but I don’t really know or care. But really, if you think my post was in bad form how does that allow you to post in even worse form? It doesn’t but hey, it’s Star, we all must be jealous of their goodness which seems to be on constant display.

But anyway, thanks guys. I’m glad I could be there for you.

Enjoy

You can't REALLY believe that you can give a year-by-year smashing of all things Star and not have Star alums get alittle antsy, can you? As has already

been said, if you give that kind of "opinion", at least man-up and take the heat. I have no problem with someone not liking Star, heck, there is one corps out

there that I really have no love for and if I posted the crap that you did, I would be surprised if I wasn't corrected. Noone said that you have to "drink the Star

coolaide", but have the nuts to take what you dish out.

Oh and about being dissed by a member of our guard. Let it go, get over it, go on with life.

Glad we can be here for you. Still.

Tony

[Medeabrass]

But you are.

It came to this when some of your corpsmates (maybe you) tried to revise history by positioning Star as average in both finances and talent. Maybe y’all believe so. Maybe y’all believe it was so because Mason and others told you so. But it doesn’t bear up to scrutiny. And it puts you in a position in this thread – either specifically or by implication – of asserting something that reinforces the very prejudice that you’d rather avoid.

Hey Glory, you make some valid points. So, in an interest to assuage the unintended negative implications, I'll fill in my insider's 2 cents...I can only speak to why I came to the "less talented" perception so I'm not sure if this is why others feel the same. In actuality, I thought I was the only one in Star who felt that way. I almost felt bad typing it here 'cuz I didn't want to offend any of my cohorts.

Here are a few reasons I at least perceived us to be less talented. This may be totally untrue, but I remember hearing about the ungodly number of people who auditioned for many of the more popular corps...how could they not get more talent from those larger pools? Second, we didn't have the screaming sopranos that a lot of these corps had. It always seemed that our cool high notes were always taken down an octave because our guys couldn't hit them. Third, my buddy Rob Carmical made the line in '92 without going to any camps (I'm saying this tongue in cheek, but all those who knew Rob know what I'm talking about...love ya' Rob ), fourth, my high school region band had more talent. Fifth, we had a hell of a time filling out our line. I know that many corps struggle with this, but I wonder how many have this problem the season after a championship. I wouldn't be surprised if many people shied away from auditioning because of our lack of popularity.

Most of these things probably were not unique to Star but that's just how I perceived them. I remember going to our first show in '92 thinking we were going to let down our legacy...I really really thought we sucked. I didn't realize that the talent that year was about on par for every year. I don't want to claim that we worked harder than everyone else. I just felt our brass staff were some of the best at utilizing our strengths and diminishing our weaknesses. They were the ones who had talent in spades IMO.

As far as finances, it's very true that we could always feel secure in our backing. There was no way we would go belly up unless Bill decided to pull the plug. We didn't have to worry about fund raisers and the like and our fees were much less than everyone else. If a bus turned into a POS, there wasn't a problem getting a new one. There's no denying that these are definitely advantages. It's also true that our summer operating expenses were near the top, but not the highest in drum corps year in and year out.

Edited April 18, 2008 by Medeabrass

[cowtown]

Some of those opinions of Star I do share, like the poaching of other corps staff (= poachers) others I don’t. Although I’m a fan of 27th, I don’t think anyone owns Crown Imperial and was glad to hear it, I think someone is playing it again this year. Maybe I should have posted a (tic) so I could be snotty but not really snotty. I was indifferent to Star most of the time, although I did hate their 93 show, I got what they were saying to us and even if I didn't, many of your fans made sure the point was understood.

I just get sick of seeing Star deified while Midwest drum corps fans are crucified, it goes both ways, Star and their fans created a lot of their own ill. And in this thread , after I posted, is the first time I have seen anyone from Star own up to the possibly that maybe they brought a tiny bit of it upon themselves, Thank you for that. Typically, it more along the lines of you dare not to love Star, you should have never been born. And if you really think that is replying in kind to my tone and my post than you are text book Star with your moral relativism

No, I don’t know Bill Cook, I was introduced to him and chatted with him a few times, if you want to pin it on Mason, fine, as I said ‘I don’t know or care’.

I see my corps besmirched here daily, I’m use to and I know it’s just other people’s opinion, some valid, most not. I’m secure enough about myself and my corps that I don’t leap to their defense, in fact I stay out of those thread so that I don't say something knee-jerk and stupid

[jwillis35]

Lots of great points here. If you read the OP carefully, though, he mentions that Star is perhaps the most talked about "inactive" corps, and to some extent that is true. Are they the most influential corps of all time? NO. Are they the most influential corps that is inactive? Could be.

One of the things that makes them influential even today is the overall way they were run, funded, managed, and built from the ground up. Clearly they gave us a model of how this can be done, a different view point on how a corps can be managed and funded. That model is an important one and continues to be discussed as much as it is with corps like BD and SCV who have been very successful in their operations.

The quality of Star of Indiana is also why we remember them so well. They had the great staff (many of the former 80s Garfield folks), and they recruited excellent talent. Their shows were good to great, with the later 4 years being right on par with some of the very best we have ever seen. What they did in 1990, 1991, and 1993 continue to serve as a model for show designers of today. And the performance levels were through the roof, so yes, we do remember.

When one talks influential it is easy to generalize and to only remember that which is most recent. In reality, we know there have been many influential corps and shows. I think about the Chicago Royal Aires 1965, the early 70s Troopers, the 70s and 80s Vangaurd, and the implementation of the Blue Devils special brand of jazz voicing and driving charts that changed the activity (not to mention their excellent performance levels). Then we had Garfield in the 80s basically do a re-write of what was possible (although SCV and Suncoast must be mentioned here: one for their broadway-like design and the other for their use of guard and radical and interesting show themes). The 90s saw Star and Cavaliers give us a new level of visual sequencing (Cavies mainly) and an unreal level of performance (Star). The Blue Devils changed things quite drastically with their 1994 show, and Cadets challenged us with their intricacies in their 1997 that saw more notes and rhythms fly by faster than one could blink. The 21st Century has been mainly a Cavalier-led visual highlight reel, yet Cadets and Blue Devils continue to push and perform with amazing efficiency. But now other corps are joining the fray, corps like Bluecoats and Carolina Crown, and who knows what is around the corner.

But I do think Star, more than any other corps, is the most admired and spoken of when it comes to inactive corps (at least on here). As many have said so well, we lost them at their peak, and we see how well they have done with Brass Theater and Blast! and we are in awe of their success and their ability to really produce amazing things. In a way, today's drum corps benefit from productions like Blast! That show has been the inspiration for many ideas put on the field, with more to come. So perhaps because they are still out there, if you will, also helps their popularity and it keeps them on the cutting edge of this art form.

JW

[starmello]

Some of those opinions of Star I do share, like the poaching of other corps staff (= poachers) others I don’t. Although I’m a fan of 27th, I don’t think anyone owns Crown Imperial and was glad to hear it, I think someone is playing it again this year. Maybe I should have posted a (tic) so I could be snotty but not really snotty. I was indifferent to Star most of the time, although I did hate their 93 show, I got what they were saying to us and even if I didn't, many of your fans made sure the point was understood.

I just get sick of seeing Star deified while Midwest drum corps fans are crucified, it goes both ways, Star and their fans created a lot of their own ill. And in this thread , after I posted, is the first time I have seen anyone from Star own up to the possibly that maybe they brought a tiny bit of it upon themselves, Thank you for that. Typically, it more along the lines of you dare not to love Star, you should have never been born. And if you really think that is replying in kind to my tone and my post than you are text book Star with your moral relativism

No, I don’t know Bill Cook, I was introduced to him and chatted with him a few times, if you want to pin it on Mason, fine, as I said ‘I don’t know or care’.

I see my corps besmirched here daily, I’m use to and I know it’s just other people’s opinion, some valid, most not. I’m secure enough about myself and my corps that I don’t leap to their defense, in fact I stay out of those thread so that I don't say something knee-jerk and stupid

Would you care to let us know who you marched with?

tony

[84BDsop]

Would you care to let us know who you marched with?

tony

Cadets, probably....they DO take more heat than almost any other corps out there...

I never had the pleasure of meeting Bill Cook....although I passed him and his top hat on the way to the bathroom at a California show in 88.

I DID, however, have a rather nice conversation with Jim Mason in 94 or so when he brought Star out during the Canadien Brass years. Jeff Davis (Rocketman) and I were trying to get Nightfire going and were using public access tv as one of the vehicles. We set up a recruting booth at the Hollywood Bowl concert, and Jim very graciously took time away from his busy schedule to answer some on-camera questions.

The only thing I remember was him saying that he spent the first 3 years frantically shoring up the foundation of the organization. Sure they had a large chunk of seed money and business experience from Bill...but the foundation was just a bit weak.

I DO get tired of people slamming Bill Cook for having the resources to do what EVERY ONE OF US says they'd do if they ever hit the lottery big time...hipocracy....your table is ready.

[starmello]

Cadets, probably....they DO take more heat than almost any other corps out there...

I never had the pleasure of meeting Bill Cook....although I passed him and his top hat on the way to the bathroom at a California show in 88.

I DID, however, have a rather nice conversation with Jim Mason in 94 or so when he brought Star out during the Canadien Brass years. Jeff Davis (Rocketman) and I were trying to get Nightfire going and were using public access tv as one of the vehicles. We set up a recruting booth at the Hollywood Bowl concert, and Jim very graciously took time away from his busy schedule to answer some on-camera questions.

The only thing I remember was him saying that he spent the first 3 years frantically shoring up the foundation of the organization. Sure they had a large chunk of seed money and business experience from Bill...but the foundation was just a bit weak.

I DO get tired of people slamming Bill Cook for having the resources to do what EVERY ONE OF US says they'd do if they ever hit the lottery big time...hipocracy....your table is ready.

If he did march Cadets then I find it really ironic that he would so and say what he did about another corps and not expect some sort of

return. Oh, I forgot, he's SECUUUUUURE in himself. However, he's still bruised about being dissed ?years ago by a girl in the Star guard.

later,

tony