You know drum corps is dying when.............

[Michael Boo]

hard to read - but epic

You always put a smile on my face Mr. Boo

Aye!

[danielray]

Yeah, original poster. Go do one of these other things. Just don't dare express an opinion on the direction of an activity that you love.

What does this actually accomplish? The activity will never move back to where it was even 5 years ago, let alone 30.

The reason for it never moving back has nothing to do with DCI or G7 or anything of the sort. It has to do with keeping kids interested.

Drum corps used to be the leader that other groups followed. Drum corps would innovate, push boundaries, and bands and WGI would scramble to follow.

Because of listening to a very vocal segment of older fans, drum corps fell behind the curve and bands and WGI were innovating and drum corps were copying these programs. Kids are not only attracted to excellence, but with what is new, bold and fresh.

Anyway, complaints solve nothing, and only generate negative feelings, and negative feelings never result in positive action.

The reality is that junior drum corps is a youth activity, and must continually appeal to youth, whatever form that may take in order to appeal.

If there becomes a time where that becomes so far out of alignment with what you dig... move on... find something else you dig.

youth opinion > your opinion

Edited August 26, 2010 by danielray

[N.E. Brigand]

I've regrouped some of these by category.

My responses are in bold italics.

--You try to improve your front line sound by buying a new amp

Amps don't improve the sound directly. The kids must first play with a better sound, then use the amps to amplify the better sound.

--You feel the need to amplify your soloists.

I don't think anyone did this (except for Bluecoats, but they added effects to the baritone).

--You have to make room in your corps budget for microphones.

Heaven forbid we get better sound quality!

--Your "The Who" theme show involves smashing your amp at the end.

Wouldn't fans love to see that?

--You have more brass on the field than ever and still need amplification.

Again, the keyboard percussionists now don't have to pound to produce enough volume. Now they can play with better sound and still be heard! Or did you mean mic'd soloists (which you already complained about)?

--Your drum major doesn't use a baton or a mace but yells, "Plug it in!" to start the show.

That's pretty BA!

Here I'm in generally in agreement with Mr. Loving and opposed to all forms of amplification and electronics. Yes, sometimes it creates a nice effect, but I'd throw that baby out with the bathwater. Down with prefab! Figure out an acoustic way to approximate the electronic effect. And if you want better sounding marimbas and tympani in the pit, design marimbas and tympani that sound both better and louder. The brass instruments corps use aren't the same one used by concert ensembles; why should the percussion be any different?

But a question for anyone: were mic'd vocals banned this year? Or simply not used by choice? While I heard some prerecorded voice samples, I can't recall any live mic'd speaking or singing. (Am I forgetting something?) It's hopeful either way: an indication that corps can come to understand what's not working and reject supposed "advances". Maybe the "thunderous goo" and other synthesizer effects aren't an irreversible trend after all. Remember what G.K. Chesterton wrote:

Obviously a man ought to be saying, "I have made an electric battery. Shall I smash it, or shall I make another?" Instead of that, he seems to be bewitched by a sort of magic and stands staring at the thing as if it were a seven-headed dragon; and he can only say, "The electric battery has come. Has it come to stay?"

--You publish your repertoire and you play no recognizable songs from it.

I want just songs I know and am comfortable with! I need to be in my comfort zone at all times!

--The music you play is so obscure the composers forgot they wrote it.

Are you really not able to enjoy music you can't immediately identify?

--Your music is not recognizable -- by anyone.

All original drum corps music must be destroyed! I'm looking at you, Cavies '01, '02, '03, '06!

Suncoast Sound in 1985/89 and 1988, as well. Their "Florida Suite" is full of memorable melodies. As to corps playing music the audience doesn't know: more please. I didn't know "Malaguena" before seeing Madison's 1988 performance on VHS, ten years later (and the radio station I most often listened to then played mostly big bands! but Glenn Miller pre-eminently). As to corps rearranging familiar music so that it becomes less enjoyable. Sometimes it happens: Star's take on Respighi only sometimes evokes the original for me. But many arrangements, including more than a few this year, I thought, keep the spirit of the original very well.

--The fans are in the stands complaining that they have to wait for an “exciting” corps... and they are at the World Finals!

Then thank God I didn't sit near those Debbie Downers! Nothing but excitement near me!

--Your field show cures insomnia.

Because ever show "back in the day" was super exciting, right?

--The crowd as a whole does not yell and scream anymore during the performance.

It's because the shows always have something going on, giving the audience no time to react until the end of the ballad/show.

--The corps is concerned with conveying nuance rather than giving that “chill”

Nuances can't give chills? Did you receive no chills from Star '93? I did!

While I think corps would benefit from thinking a little more about how to allow for crowd reaction, I didn't find the Allentown audience to be bored, and it wasn't just Madison who was cheered mid-show. Lots of thrills. As for chills: Phantom's ending, for sure.

--Your drum corps auditions includes a voice lesson.

What? How could that possibly be a bad thing?

And corps have incorporated singing into their shows for more than 20 years.

--Rain cancels a show for fear of electrical problems.

So what did it used to cancel shows for?

Well, sometimes they played in the rain: most famously Madison in 1993.

They start referring to drum corps as band!

Um, drum corps is band.

I'm thinking the problem here is that "band" means different things to different people. In the 1980s, drum corps was explained to me as a superior marching band, which should be emulated by scholastic marching bands. For others, the two were obviously at odds.

[AmFlag61]

Actually, The Cavaliers '95 "Planets" did include the DNA strand in their Drill, and it was great!! IMO

[Plan9]

It may be dying to you...but to this n00bie bando it has only begun to come alive.

To that group of preteens/early teen kids, standing on the platform, after the Atlanta show, waiting for the train, talking about how they can't wait to march for BD, Cavies, etc drum corps is not dying for them.

It might not be the drum corps of your past, but it is the drum corps of their future. Will their life lessons, learned at the hands of drum corps, be any less than yours because - they played a different keyed instrument, marched in a different style, or performed a show not to your liking?

Does that mean the old drums corps is any less relevant than the new style, NO - just means all things must evolve or they die.

I hope I can age in the Drum Corps world as I am attempting to in life - with grace.

It is ok to dislike a particular show, and that does not mean you have to dislike that corps or drum corps as a whole. (ie: I loved BD's 2009 show, but not their 2010 show. I loved Cavaliers 2010 show, but not their 2009 show.)

I sure as hell hope that the DCP naysayers are paying attention to this post.

Thanks for the splash of reality.

[cowtown]

Dateline 1890

Jezebel, verily, it's been a long time betwixt writings. Gramercy if prithee you betimes shrive me and vouchsafe me your rede, wherefore, forsooth, methinks I've been lamenting the current state of our welkin drum corps activity.

The arrangers have discovered this fain whipper-snapper sirrah named John Philip Sousa, whence his palter cacophony has durst become a fardel on moe fields of green like the flood waters upon Johnstown last year. The man is out to cozen and then cap-a-pie fordo drum corps. I have a friend who works for C.G. Conn who says they are working with JP on an instrument that could replace our beloved hélicons. And the folks at Conn are belike naming the inferno creature after Sousa himself. Sousa wants corps to march only at 120 beats-per-minute, the tempo of his inferno mote marches. Fie! My heart is pained by the thought we shall not return from the new bourn.

There is also a swain cornetist by the name of Herbert L. Clarke who is haply stirring things up with the most hideous of flamboyant cornet solos. I shudder the thought of such bruit joining those of Sousa's on the field. I fear we will soon no longer hear the likes of Stephen Foster's "Old Folks at Home." If it comes to the nonce anon when I can't be humming the opening line, "Way down upon the Swanee River" as I have become wont as I leave the stadium, fay, by the rood, I don't know what I'll do with my grief in the morrow. Withal, I suspect it means Morris Dances on the field shall avaunt. It makes me see incarnadine gules. Alack, I holp ere our orisons beseech the atomies lieges of drum corps so that thine take reck. Zounds!

For every innovation or composers that is considered radical and too challenging for a general audience when newly presented and then goes onto defy the critics and audience... becomes a lasting, legacy of success….thousand more (dare say millions) will be lost in memory and in time and will have proven their initial criticism as valid as they were merely forgotten

The exception doesn’t prove the rule

most new things fail, even when pegged by those in the know as great

where is Starland Vocal Band now?

[danielray]

I was not going to respond to any of the replies. I was going to sit back and watch the response. But you have hit a nerve.

I was a member of the 1983 27th Lancers and the 1981 Pride of Cincinnati. The Lancers got us to the show, but sometimes just barely.

The Pride of Cincinnati tour in 1981 is where we lost 5 people in an accident. 3 family members and two corps members. Please don't think for a minute that I conveniently forget about the kids traveling in bad conditions. I was there surviving on PB&J, bologna, apples and cerial for weeks at a time.

My memory is NOT selective. I live with the memory everyday.

You just pretty much proved my point for me.

[garfield]

Stop being a bunch of cry babies and rid yourself of drum corps then. If drum corps was the same as it was in the 60's and 70's, this same thread would come up because people would complain there's no growth and say it's dying because it's the same old. Either deal with the fact that Drum Corps has changed many times over the last 40 years or go away and leave us who enjoy the activity to enjoy it.

Pretty big britches from a n00B who's just learning to shave with DCP shaving soap!

[bartyount]

If they saw and didn't enjoy Crown, Bluecoats, Blue Stars, or Madison, they probably weren't going to enjoy a drum corps show anyway.

Crown was the only corps in the group you mentioned that was at the show.

I was pretty bored too, so it's not that they wouldn't have enjoyed drumcorps regardless. The people that I brought have pretty diverse tastes and both generally like things like this that are sort of out of the mainstream. Also, one of them had been in, and enjoyed marching band in HS, and so is familiar with the marching music activity in general. They both were able to appreciate and were impressed by the talent and execution. It's just that nothing connected.

If there had been a better lineup, the opinion probably would have been different. But I think that with a few notable exceptions, the shows this year were pretty uninspiring.

[oldskl3rings]

What does this actually accomplish? The activity will never move back to where it was even 5 years ago, let alone 30.

The reason for it never moving back has nothing to do with DCI or G7 or anything of the sort. It has to do with keeping kids interested.

Drum corps used to be the leader that other groups followed. Drum corps would innovate, push boundaries, and bands and WGI would scramble to follow.

Because of listening to a very vocal segment of older fans, drum corps fell behind the curve and bands and WGI were innovating and drum corps were copying these programs. Kids are not only attracted to excellence, but with what is new, bold and fresh.

Anyway, complaints solve nothing, and only generate negative feelings, and negative feelings never result in positive action.

The reality is that junior drum corps is a youth activity, and must continually appeal to youth, whatever form that may take in order to appeal.

If there becomes a time where that becomes so far out of alignment with what you dig... move on... find something else you dig.

youth opinion > your opinion

What a load of crap! Kids keep playing football, basketball, little league baseball and soccer and those sports have changed very little in a century. I teach children’s theatre and the kids love to perform the classic musicals. In fact they flock to these productions and ignore the artsy new stuff. All of the changes in DC had nothing to do with attracting youth. It was and is about the egos of DC creative and instructional staffs. Back in the day DC was frowned upon or downright dismissed by the music community, especially music educators. This was a major sore spot in the DC community. Changes were made to make the activity more legit to the musical establishment, not to make it more enjoyable, attract more kids or more fans. DC is dying because costs are out of control and the fan base is stagnating or declining.