Puppet Posted June 16, 2011 Share Posted June 16, 2011 (edited) Our corps was founded in 1971, but 'leaned old school'. We hated the idea of keyboards when we learned about that in 1974. Until we added them in 76 and our awesome xylophone player (Doug Greenhalgh - RIP) won DCI individuals!! As for marching in the honor guard - I had a friend who wanted to march in the corps so bad, but was SO uncoordinated, she could not even make the honor guard squad. I felt bad for her, but to the corps' credit, they let her travel with us to help out during the summer. She would have thought that carrying the American flag would have been a GREAT honor! Food truck??? Our ONLY corps truck could not carry 1/4 of today's pit! We thought we made the big-time in 1978 when we bought a 4th bus that carried people (members and staff) plus the drums underneath because we outgrew the box truck! Favorite story: During 1978, my last year marching in Wausau Story, I also drove bus (multi-tasking). We were moving the (empty) buses from one parking location to another in the Wausau WI area and pulled into a McDonald's to grab some food. The four drivers walked in to see the staff & grills going nuts thinking there was going to be big rush of people...nope - just us. Love the McDonald's story! I may have mentioned this one before but we were on our Mid West Tour to Kenosha & Racine, WI in 1969 and stopped at a Howard Johnson's in Warren, OH on the way. Well the folks in Warren had never seen such a mixed collection of kids like us before. The Brassmen were mixed in every single kinda way you could possibly imagine. A regular United Nations that was really the face of New York City. The staff was startled but it was our comportment and the fact that we all had our own money and knew how to order that stood us in good stead. On our way out, the horn line (all 30 of us!) purchased kazoos and gave the crowd in the parking lot a review of our entire rep to their astonishment and we were rewarded with cheers and applause. It really did make us feel good to be ambassadors. The Kenosha show, BTW was our first witness of the awesome Anaheim Kingsmen. They beat us by like just under two points and the St. Paul Scouts beat us by a tenth. The next day in Racine (You'll see where I'm going with this considering your post adjedrummer and the previous one) we got lambasted by non other than the Troopers and the Kilties: The scores - and remember, this was during the "tic" era: 1 Troopers 73.550 2 Kilties 70.400 3 Anaheim Kingsmen 68.750 4 Des Plaines Vanguard 67.050 5 Blue Stars 66.550 6 St. Rita's Brassmen 64.500 7 Santa Clara Vanguard 63.300 8 Boys of '76 62.550 9 Kenosha Queensmen 48.300 10 St. Francis Sancians 44.450. What a tour that was for a bunch of inner city kids 41 years and 10 months ago. But who's counting? Puppet Edited June 16, 2011 by Puppet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Puppet Posted June 16, 2011 Share Posted June 16, 2011 Just so i won't bore everybody to tears with some of my ramblings - a while back I started a blog about my memories of life during the way back days when I marched. If you like, you can check some of those postings out @ My link It's aptly named Drum Corps Memories. Times of which I am fond. Enjoy and comment if you like. I will get back to it - there are so many more stories to tell and Michael Boo doesn't have them all - Love ya, Mike! Puppet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JonW Posted June 22, 2011 Share Posted June 22, 2011 No worries Puppet, these kind of ramblings are no where near boring. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
caper Posted June 23, 2011 Share Posted June 23, 2011 Inspection, THE Starting Line, "Ticks", Flag Presentation (with American Flag), Concert, THE Finish Line, Trooping the Fans & Winners after Grand Finale, "competing" in the Parking Lot after Shows, low or no "Dues", cross country bus trips with NO air conditioning or toilets, Parades before Shows, post 21 "ageouts, contests AFTER Nationals through Labor Day, 2 weeks off after last show - then starting work on next year's show, Corps Halls, "Neighborhood/Parish" Corps. and competing Senior Corps at the same shows as Juniors. Any more you can think of? How about the starting gun and the gun shot 3/4 of the way through the exit. Tilted bass drums that the snare drummers would play on.Mostly senior corps. Those were the days. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.