The history of the Westshoremen

[Jaminbenb]

Oh yeah, T-Schell, aka Mr. 6-8 was notorious for it and he admitted it. Will get back to 91.

I could only imagine if he had a computer program for scoring back then....you could load all his licks and then hit "random" and you'd have a viable part!

There are some great stories about Brian and how he used to write WAY back! To write bass drum parts, he used to fill glasses of water to different tones and tried things out (obviously he wasn't writing fast runs or anything crazy, it was Hershey ferkrissake!)(and 1977-78)

He also used to do grooves on his drum set and write them into parts...there was this 5/8-6/8 groove he used to LOVE to write no one could march to it, but he wrote it!

But yeah...6/8

[Jeff Ream]

Thurston told us a story once about writing a closer for the Crossmen one year...they were sitting around the table (eating, drinking and having fun) and each person would write a measure then pass it to the next. One of the instructors girlfriends was in the guard and she was at the table, when it got to her, they let her write the measure, and apparently kept her stuff in! They said it was pretty bad, but rules are rules!

I remember once being at Dan's, and Thurston calling us from the Rat ( RIP) in West Chester. he was trying to write Soup and he was so frustrated trying to read Screech's writing he was debating just writing whatever...til Dan explained to him that it wasn't in 4 the whole way thru.

I think Mark was enjoying $.10 draft night

[BigW]

Okay, back to 1981, and if yah need to, turn back a few pages to look at the song that defined the season for us.

Everyone talks about Hop asking to allow right and left handed sewer flutes on the field, and this and that about exciting innovations involving Thermins, but back in the day, DCA was kinda forward thinking when it allowed singing on the field.

We'd just survived a 1980 season when we managed to grab Sun by their ankle and tackle them, and they nearly got up and got away, and even the pigeons were against us. So, we were fellin' our oats, we knew we were moving up, and we did kind of have a quirky niche in DCA of trying stuff, sometimes really working well, sometimes, asploding all over God's creation.. Hmm. Sounds familiar. Now wondering if Hopkins was watching us when he was with Crossmen now and decided to pattern himself after that.

The idea was that we'd sing something. Westshore's Moron Tabernacle Choir was pretty good, too. The problem was that we sang and did stuff that would have had all the blue-haired Grannies faint in the stands. I'm sure our stirring rendition of Hymn 152, "Swing Low, Sweet Chariot" complete with captions for the deaf and hearing impaired would have been rather... interesting.

My guess is that DCA had thought that the corps might sing stuff like their Corps songs, like Reading's "We're All Good Men" (pretty much true, never met an Evil man in the Bucs) or the Skyliners' "Gabarina-Mazarakos!" song, which I do have to say, Sky sang their song at the top of their lungs and put everything into it when they sang it. Tried to get Bobby McCormick to sing it for me at Scranton, he laughed a lot, I really did want to hear it. Bush used an excerpt from their song a couple of years back, and really, I can't think of anyone singing extensively in DCA since the Westshoremen did it in 1981. In DCI, I can only think of one non-amped example, which was the Blue Stars a couple years back, when they had a great show (at least I liked it) and ended up 13th. BD and Crossmen chanted for like 8 to 16 counts when they used it. BD chanted in '85 and Crossmen chanted one pitch in '91. Seems like singing on the field has been doomed from the get-go or something unless you do what Crown did and create an "Up with People" moment with some wholesome and fresh-faced cheerful kids smiling and crooning away into their Karaoke mikes. Heck, I've only seen one BAND do it in like 25 years of judging. Actually, that instance was really nice, even tho it was an "Up With People" kinda thing, but classier.

Well, We already had Larry Kerchner working in conjunction with Ray on the horn book, basically recycling Bayonne's "Spanish Dreams" from 1980, and adapting it for our own uses. My guess is Larry K. came up with the idea of using "Music", and we brought in "Big Noise from Winnetka" from the Bridgemen, and taht too is another issue for me- while we used the Bridgemen arrangement as a basis and a lot was identical horn-wise, we also did some things rather differently as to make ours pretty distinctive. I could have smacked a couple SiB people who thinik ours is exactly the same. Bayonne doesn't have 5 rippin' crazy baris start the number, they didn't have Sylvia and the other mellos rip people's faces off after the baris, we don't whistle, the ending is very different, and I can go on from there. Both variants are very distinctive and decidedly molded to the character of each corps. Spanish Dreams is much more nearly identical.

Larry K. taught everyone in the corps the singing, which went pretty well. After all, we did sing a lot to begin with. the horn book at the end was pretty nice, too.

Everything looked up from the hornline's perspective. Everything seemed better than the year before for us, we liked singing and the rest of the book.

As Jeff and I have said on a couple of recent threads, one never knows what'll happen unti one makes first contact with the other corps that season, and well, we were gonna make contact quick that season. We finally got into the presitgious Clifton, NJ season opener, which had a lot of us stoked. We might have been on the bottom of the top, but we were getting the respect and notoriety we really wanted by going to shows with the Cabs and Sky more often.... (to be continued)

[schomburgr]

Now there is a mental image we didn't need!!

Ha... I have them on as we speak :)

[JimF-LowBari]

Have this in another thread but since "Da Worms" were there.....

Tip of the hat to Northern Thunder who gave me the idea.

http://news.google.com/newspapers?id=3LsyA...remen&hl=en

Link is to a newpaper article on a Miami show which had Reilly, Westshore, Madison Scouts, Cavies and 4 others in competition. Plus a few in exhibiton it appears. Sponsored by AL Post Harvey Seeds but see these corps were at the VFW Nationals (don't have book handy to check location). But there is a VFW article above....

Edited May 31, 2010 by JimF-LowBari

[Jaminbenb]

Ahh yes...the Westshoremoronttubercular Choir (and brass band!)

I remember being asked at a practice who could sing, and then since I was able to carry a tune in a bucket was amongst the first ones taught the tune.

[Jaminbenb]

One of the things that still stood out for me in 1981 was that we still had a mix of 'old guard' members and progressive newbies in the corps....I considered myself a "tweener" because I came in with the old guard, but had the bug to be progressive like junior corps were at the time. This was still a time where junior corps were just younger versions of senior corps in style of show and music selection. (although a bit more progressive in terms of drill and sound, and funny you should mention Hopkins because he was about to set the activity on it's friggin' ear in a few with Garfield)

I also seem to remember two schools of thought between the horns and the drums... the horns were progressing nicely, but the drums were still living in the past. I really think had we had Robb a year earlier we may have turned the corner in 1981. We HAD a pretty progressive show (although the whole Journey to the Center of the Earth didn't fit with the second half of the show) but we just didn't have the umph to take it one step beyond!

It was definitely a turning point year, and I remember after getting dumped in a few shows we had an anger about us! (playing the Sky and Cab's street time for instance until we finally settled upon something kind of crazy that Filipelli brought in as a "jam" walk to...probably some Al DiMeola tune knowing him)

I just think that in terms of staff we didn't have all of the right people involved, and we were ALMOST there...it was definitely a setback from 1980!

[Jaminbenb]

Speaking of the 80's....I was mucking about on Facebook....and found "The Adrians"! hahaha!!!!

After all this 80's talk, I remembered them and figured wtf....

Edited June 1, 2010 by Jaminbenb

[buzzgok]

One of the things that still stood out for me in 1981 was that we still had a mix of 'old guard' members and progressive newbies in the corps....I considered myself a "tweener" because I came in with the old guard, but had the bug to be progressive like junior corps were at the time. This was still a time where junior corps were just younger versions of senior corps in style of show and music selection. (although a bit more progressive in terms of drill and sound, and funny you should mention Hopkins because he was about to set the activity on it's friggin' ear in a few with Garfield)

I also seem to remember two schools of thought between the horns and the drums... the horns were progressing nicely, but the drums were still living in the past. I really think had we had Robb a year earlier we may have turned the corner in 1981. We HAD a pretty progressive show (although the whole Journey to the Center of the Earth didn't fit with the second half of the show) but we just didn't have the umph to take it one step beyond!

It was definitely a turning point year, and I remember after getting dumped in a few shows we had an anger about us! (playing the Sky and Cab's street time for instance until we finally settled upon something kind of crazy that Filipelli brought in as a "jam" walk to...probably some Al DiMeola tune knowing him)

I just think that in terms of staff we didn't have all of the right people involved, and we were ALMOST there...it was definitely a setback from 1980!

I thought it was from Carmin Burana

[DaveTenor]

Oh yeah though, we could go on and on about corps camp! One of the BEST stories was when we carried a very drunk Dave Santalucia up stairs (in his bed!) to where the male guard members were sleeping!! About 2-3 hours later you heard this "thump...thump...thump...." when he realized where he was, he panicked, and was pulled his bed DOWN the steps!

At least I was lucky my bunk didn't fit in the shower...