If your MB competed - why did you join?

[Shadow_7]

Factor in that a number of places now have year round school. You can't march drumcorps because you're not available for it. You don't want to march drumcrops because there is no void to fill, and you're never without access to your school instrument and therefor the ability to play throughout the summer without owning anything more than a mouthpiece.

Factors for me to venture outside of my region to do corps as a teen:

- It was as close as I was ever going to come to a professional model instrument until after college. That old DEG might not have been tops, but it was a far cry from my Bundy. Or the slew of barely working student model horns that the school had to choose from.

- It was one way to ensure that I kept my chops up over the summer.

- For the same costs of going on tour with the marching band for ONE WEEKEND to someplace IN STATE, I could tour most of the United States and parts of Canada for almost THREE MONTHS.

- Other people were doing it, thus making it somewhat conveinent. No drivers license and all. Between the various people doing it, Ma and Pa only had to make the trip themselves a couple of times a year, if at all. BITD (circa 1988-1992)

[baritone530]

Band..we compete locally, we are not corps style or show band, we are just a band. Now I love my band and we do well, very well. Marched corps cause of 1) commitment of every single member 2) the crowd was not a bunch of band parents...simple.

[fourouttheforty]

1) commitment of every single member

This by a mile. Drum corps are one of the few organizations where this is almost always going to be true. It's no one's day job, no one does it for the money, no one does it to impress anyone or slap it on a resume. Everyone from the members to the staff to the volunteers want to be there and are all-in toward the effort.

[oldsoprano]

My high school marching band was very competitive, and was, in the mid-70s, one of the top band programs in the Southeast. Each summer, my band director would take a bus load of students to DCI Midwest or another big DCI show to experience drum corps (this was before the first DCI tour into the deep South). The summer after I graduated (1976), my high school band's booster club sponsored the first DCI show in Atlanta, at Georgia Tech's Grant Field. If I remember correctly, there were about 16,000 people in the audience.

The year after that, my high school band director founded Spirit of Atlanta, where I marched my final three years of eligibility. I'd guess that about 25 percent of the 1977 Spirit of Atlanta were students of Freddy's from South Cobb High School.

Edited January 12, 2010 by oldsoprano

[azul]

I was a woodwind player. Started on flute in middle school and went to saxophone. Saw a drum corps video of 2001 and 2002 champs my freshman year band camp (2003) and noticed how everyone, especially the drummers were so intrigued by it and seemed to look up to the corps members marching in the shows. My brand new and young band director, who was a drummer, always idolized a section/aspect from each corps from that past summer season. (i.e phantoms brass, cadets battery, cavies visual ensemble, vanguards intensity and blue devils swagger ) I wanted to be looked up to as one of the few who have done corps. So I picked up trumpet my sophomore year, started marching Pacific Crest the summer after my junior year (06). Continued marching there two more seasons until I figured out where I wanted to march at after wards which was a toss up between SCV, Phantom, Crown and Bluecoats. I've settled at Bluecoats now. I've joined a so called "legacy" at my high school among a Tuba player from Blue Devils 05-06,08-09 and a Bass Drummer that marched Vanguard 08 and Phantom 09. All of us started at Pacific Crest at different times but went to high school with each other at the same time.

Now I continue to do corps because of that feeling you get after an amazing performance, the member commitment, and world wide fans.

A note on the current lack of so called interest in marching. If you've noticed anything about todays youth and the lack of interest in marching corps the biggest culprit is everything that has nothing to do with it directly.

1. The economy is currently bad therefore a lack of $$$ is causing current and new members to not be able to march. Yes there's sponsorships and scholorships but the member has to want it bad enough to get that done and a lot of the youth today likes nothing more to do than have some one else do it for them (guilty of this).

2. To go along with #1 my band director put it the best way. "You are the push button generation. You push a button and something is done for you almost instantly." The bottom line is, the youth today really doesn't want to work at something unless A) They can get good really fast and not over the time span of a summer plus several winter camps. And B) If it doesn't get them into college or fast money. Yay the way the world is run right? =/ At least that's the way down here in socal.

[AlanAndreasen]

In the UK there are no high school marching bands and at my school (at least) if you played an instrument you had to be a real geek and were teased mercilessly. So I joined my scout troop's marching band. That was back in 71. The band played Bb no valve bugles, snares, scottish style tenors, cymbals and one bass. Eventually, we evolved into trumpets, mellos, baris, tubas, quads, pitched bases, key boards and timpani. There was a surge corps in the late 70 and 80's but they've been dying off slowly since. Some friends at a scout band convention had just got back from finals in Atlanta and couldn't stop raving about it. The first corps I ever heard was a pirated DCA 1980 finals tape. That was it, I was hooked. I flew out to Miami in 83 and the rest is history. Oh, I never got to march corps as I discovered it when I was 22.

[Piper]

For all of us who are old enough to remember, Drum Corps has changed a lot over the years. Way back when I marched there were band kids and there were Drum Corps kids, and we rarely socialized with each other. The bandos were the geeks and we were tough and hard (at least in our own minds). The Corps was like our private club and it was "invitation only". Fast foward to today and it's hard to find a kid who did NOT start out in band. I think a lot of it has to do with the fact that there are many more musical educators in the school systems with Drum Corps experience. No complaints - just an historical opinion.