TomPeashey Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 OK we've had amusing threads on what stadium you liked and what kind of field surface you preferred... how about the STRANGEST place you ever competed (legitimate contest)? I'll start with 3 Throughout the 40's, 50's and 60's, there was a show every year on the parade grounds at Ft. Ontario in Oswego NY. The show was FREE and would attract tens of thousands to jam into the open area. There was NO stadium. You played to a steep hill full of people with the judges on a flatbed on top of the 50... Whatever direction you played - you faced thousands of people... Only negative was marching a very long and hot parade before the show... being my hometown - it meant a lot to me... Also in Oswego, in 1958 we tried to upgrade the show. So we (Mexico Gray Barons as host) held it at the prestigeous Oswego Speedway... in the infield... car ruts gravel and all... and what most would remember was that to keep the front side as close to the audience as possible they brought it all the way up to the back of the racetrack... PROBLEM... about 25 feet in right on the 50 was a HUGE boulder. It was not going anywhere... I think it was Alden Miller Sr as chief judge who suggested we paint the rock... so it could be seen... we spray painted the rock and then wrote in giant letters "R O C K" on it... this was so all the General Kosiusko people in Brigs would be sure to know it was a ROCK... I still remember most of the line up... Brigs, Grey Knights, Crusaders, Appleknockers, Utica Black Hawks, Princess of Wales (Kingston Grenadiers), 2nd Signal (Toronto Ambassadeurs), Tri County (Brockport) Cavaliers (Vince Bruni's original corps in the 40's) and a few more... good show... Finally, in the seventies... maybe 73 (could be 74... DCA scheduled a contest at famed Saratoga Raceway... ON THE TRACK... which was probably about 125 feet wide - not 160... even then we had pulled the show design closer to the audience so it wasn't horrible, but execution won it for Cru over Hurcs... truth is, we just did a better job of "baby stepping" than they did... That was also the day we debuted our "pajama" uniforms ... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DCASouth Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 HA .. beat me to it Tom. I was going to start with Saratoga also.. 1974. A dust bowl if ever there was one. Baby steps thru the show and we stopped in the middle of the circus medley to reset further back to finish the rotatong circles that evolved in the company front coming to the sideline!! I coughed up ddirt for three days ! The other two would be 1977/1978 Madison Square Garden .. another baby step show, then to top it off...we lost our bus drivers to Times Square! peep shows. :) I believe in 1978 we also did a show at the Providence Civic Center! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Skylinersop16 Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 Number 1 would have to be Waterbury for me. There was the football field and the baseball field and how much rain that day determined which field the show would be on. Next was Syracuse just because they used the 3rd base line as the front sideline and it was not parallel to the stands. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimF-LowBari Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 HA .. beat me to it Tom.I was going to start with Saratoga also.. 1974. A dust bowl if ever there was one. Baby steps thru the show and we stopped in the middle of the circus medley to reset further back to finish the rotatong circles that evolved in the company front coming to the sideline!! I coughed up ddirt for three days ! The other two would be 1977/1978 Madison Square Garden .. another baby step show, then to top it off...we lost our bus drivers to Times Square! peep shows. :) I believe in 1978 we also did a show at the Providence Civic Center! LOL, never marched it but the Interstate (Sr) Circuit had it's championships one year in the mid-1960s inside at the Harrisburg Farm Show. According to a DCN article in NanciDs blog the sponsors had a problem finding a site so using the Farm Show was hyped as something unique. Have heard from people who did the show and said company fronts were half steps and sure the acoustics were horrible (sound echos really bad in the whole complex). Sadly don't think the scores ever surfaced.... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Roger Ellis Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 HA .. beat me to it Tom.I was going to start with Saratoga also.. 1974. A dust bowl if ever there was one. Baby steps thru the show and we stopped in the middle of the circus medley to reset further back to finish the rotatong circles that evolved in the company front coming to the sideline!! I coughed up ddirt for three days ! Hi Tom. You and I had this discussion a while ago in a previous thread, and you and Vic both beat me to the punch - the Saratoga race track was the worst in my experience by a mile. I marched this one as a member of the Hamburg Kingsmen. Not only was the field undersize, but the track composition was such that you were marching in sand and dirt up to your ankles. Plus, the temperature was around 100 degrees F and humid! To put the icing on the cake, we never practiced on the smaller field - we were just told "take small steps" and went out on the field that day. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
doppeljr Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 In 1986 we had a show scheduled in Rhode Island. It rained all day and the competition was eventually moved inside a hockey arena, with no ice. It was really odd. I think that they dropped the visual caption that night as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbriggs Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 if you don't mind a fan's perspective, Ft Edwards/Glens Falls baseball field. corps play in the outfield, facing away from the infield. the stands/bleachers run only from the 50 to the end. prime seats at one end of the stands. and they are not parallel to the field; closest at the 50 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bossop Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 OK we've had amusing threads on what stadium you liked and what kind of field surface you preferred... how about the STRANGEST place you ever competed (legitimate contest)?I'll start with 3 Throughout the 40's, 50's and 60's, there was a show every year on the parade grounds at Ft. Ontario in Oswego NY. The show was FREE and would attract tens of thousands to jam into the open area. There was NO stadium. You played to a steep hill full of people with the judges on a flatbed on top of the 50... Whatever direction you played - you faced thousands of people... Only negative was marching a very long and hot parade before the show... being my hometown - it meant a lot to me... Also in Oswego, in 1958 we tried to upgrade the show. So we (Mexico Gray Barons as host) held it at the prestigeous Oswego Speedway... in the infield... car ruts gravel and all... and what most would remember was that to keep the front side as close to the audience as possible they brought it all the way up to the back of the racetrack... PROBLEM... about 25 feet in right on the 50 was a HUGE boulder. It was not going anywhere... I think it was Alden Miller Sr as chief judge who suggested we paint the rock... so it could be seen... we spray painted the rock and then wrote in giant letters "R O C K" on it... this was so all the General Kosiusko people in Brigs would be sure to know it was a ROCK... I still remember most of the line up... Brigs, Grey Knights, Crusaders, Appleknockers, Utica Black Hawks, Princess of Wales (Kingston Grenadiers), 2nd Signal (Toronto Ambassadeurs), Tri County (Brockport) Cavaliers (Vince Bruni's original corps in the 40's) and a few more... good show... Finally, in the seventies... maybe 73 (could be 74... DCA scheduled a contest at famed Saratoga Raceway... ON THE TRACK... which was probably about 125 feet wide - not 160... even then we had pulled the show design closer to the audience so it wasn't horrible, but execution won it for Cru over Hurcs... truth is, we just did a better job of "baby stepping" than they did... That was also the day we debuted our "pajama" uniforms ... Since alumni corps don't compete, except in the minds of the performers, I'll consider exhibitions as well as competitions to submit my response. In the 1990's an effort was made to recreate the famous Drumfest show that was annually hosted by the Lt. Norman Prince corps of Boston. The original Drumfest was an indoor competition featuring the top Boston area corps along with a few outstanding out-of-state corps. It was held in Boston Arena, an ice rink that had its surface covered with plywood. This reincarnation was held in the same venue, though the rink has been renamed Matthews Arena, and the show was now an exhibition featuring many of the top alumni corps of the day. Unfortunately, this time, instead of a plywood surface, the ice was partly covered with styrofoam panels, and partly covered with strips of red carpeting. After the first couple of units performed, the carpeting started to bunch up and form wrinkles a few inches high. As my Boston Crusaders marched down the "floor", one of our melophone players, the late Neil Connolly, tripped on a wrinkle, and landed on his horn, the bell of which was now bent at a 45 degree angle. When he got up and stepped back into line, the other melophone players burst into laughter when they saw the sight of his horn. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
rgil67 Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 Frontier Field - Rochester - DCA Championships 1996 - anyone that was there knows what I mean. Crowd was another football field away at least Springfield, Mass I think - Minor League baseball stadium - Jr. and Sr. Corps shows there - same deal as frontier except LOWER STANDS. Someplace in CT in 1996 I think - DCA show where the crowd sat on the side of a hill and the judges stood on top of the hill. I am sure there are more in my memory somewhere - but that is it for now! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Scooter Pirtle Posted July 27, 2009 Share Posted July 27, 2009 Great topic! I had the privilege of performing with the Black Knights the State Fair in Springfield, Illinois. It was on a dirt track and we had to (somewhat!) compress the drill front to back. I can recall the staff matter of factly instructing us to cut any step size that moved you toward or away from the front sideline by half. All other step sizes remained the same. Yikes! It was a VFW sanctioned show (or was it American Legion?), so there was the obligatory chalk line inspection. Judges with rulers measuring the drummers' hair and taking mouthpieces off the horns and looking down them for any crude. If memory serves, we entered into the performance area in the dark with spotlights on us. The best part of any track show is proceeding through your company front toward a large fence with reinforced steel cabling. Probably the closet thing a corps can come to the chicken wire at Bob's Country Bunker. The worst locale for us that season was on an unmowed, unlined field immediately adjacent to a tractor pull. The judges were seated in folding chairs supported by the forks of percariously placed forklift. Midway through the show, a jet-engine equipped tractor rained dirt onto the entire field and audience. Gotta love Class A! We always got the best gigs!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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