How did you discover DCI?

[DCIfan90]

I was a member of one before I really even knew what it was.

Long story short, I was pi$$ed at the work ethic of my high school marching band. I did some research into "professional marching band" or something, I don't remember exactly. I eventually got information about an audition for this thing. I went. I made it. Had fun, and learned about drum corps while being a part of it.

Edited August 18, 2011 by DCIfan90

[CuriousMe]

Didn't discover it as much as it discovered me.

I grew up with drum corps and as early as I can remember had drum corps records interspersed through my collection. My parents had both marched and met in corps; I was likely carried to my first shows.

Once I started taking trumpet lessons in grade school, I started regularly harassing my parents to let me march, they finally gave in and found a small local corps for me to start in.

[N.E. Brigand]

My high school's marching band competed in the Ohio educational circuit. I remember our director explaining that we were a "corps" band rather than a "show" band, but while I could see the distinction in style between our performances and those of some other bands in our football conference, I didn't understand why the term "corps" was used. That was 1986.

In 1987, our director opened the doors to a pair of recruiters from something called the Bluecoats, located about 50 miles away in Canton. Their presentation was not terribly effective. I gathered that the Bluecoats were a kind of summer marching band, and I liked marching band, so that sounded interesting. But you had to pay to participate, and it sounded pretty expensive. And you apparently had to learn a whole new fingering system, becuase the "bugles" only had two valves. (And as a clarinetist turned bassoonist who played sousaphone in marching band only, I figured I had no chance of passing any auditions.) One of the recruiters tried to demonstrate that it was easy to switch from conventional brass instruments to the bugle, but he actually proved the nearly the opposite: he played some scales on a baritone bugle, and then a brilliant version of "Sweet Georgia Brown" on the trombone. Anyway, no one from our band ever tried out, so far as I know.

"Band camp" at our school wasn't an overnight affair, just three weeks at the high school all day in August. Thanks to Corpsreps, I can report that it was Aug. 1, 1988 when we reported at about nine o'clock to find that there were some buses in the parking lot (which is where we did most of our marching rehearsals: our dots would be spray-painted on the asphalt) and a bunch of kids just waking up on the gym floor. They'd arrived in the middle of the night, and they were the Garfield Cadets. They were from New Jersey, so we were told, but they spent the summer traveling the country, rehearsing every day, competing every night, then driving until the wee hours, when they finally caught some sleep then started all over again. What I noticed was that while they started later than we did, they apparently didn't take a lunch break. And the guys rehearsed shirtless. That was odd!

Corpsreps says they competed that night in Cleveland, but it was actually Byers Field in Parma. For some reason, I couldn't go, but some of our members did. The next day they couldn't stop talking about the show: not about Garfield, but rather about something called the Santa Clara Vanguard, and Phantom of the Opera.

Next year those Cadets were back! It was Aug. 8, 1989, my senior year. This time I watched a bit more of their rehearsal during our lunch break. Intense. And that evening I was able to join friends in Parma to see my first drum corps show. I was blown away. Granted, the first group, L'Insolite,* didn't seem so much better than the best marching bands I'd seen, but the groups just kept getting better: Florida Wave,* Boston Crusaders,* Freelancers, Bluecoats (or did they go on last? I can't remember), Madison Scouts, and Garfield Cadets. How loud they all were. How fast they all marched. How precise their movements: all through that marching band season, I tried to point my toes like the corps had done. I didn't know any of the music (though later that year, our concert band would play selections from Les Miserables, and I'd also take a chorus part in Babes in Arms, which musical includes both "My Funny Valentine" and "Johnny One Note", and hold on a minute: Crusaders played "Whiter Shade of Pale"? I certainly knew that song). But it didn't matter: I loved all of it. Most clearly etched in my mind is the sheer joy of the Bluecoats performance, particularly the section in "Sing Sing Sing" when the soprano players crossed their legs and rested their arms on one another's shoulders, and the control that Cadets had over the crowd, especially one moment when the entire audience waited with anticipation and then gasped -- it must have been the silent drill and flag toss that follow the ballad. The Cadets won that night, but someone there said he'd heard that the Santa Clara group was really good that year, and playing Phantom of the Opera again. I thought that was strange.

However, as skywhopper has observed, it wasn't so easy to find out more about the corps then. It was at least five years before I discovered that the finals were sometimes shown on PBS. I only learned about the local show next summer because when I was leaving work at Burger King, down the way from the high school, I heard music from that direction. It would not have been our band, not at that distance. It was the Cavaliers, and I saw them and Phantom for the first time that night. I saw Phantom beat Cadets in 1991, but after that, the local shows moved from Parma, and I would only see corps every other year or so through the 1990s -- sometimes live, sometimes abridged on TV. There were actually a couple corps members in my college marching band, a snare drummer from the Bluecoats and a horn player from Star of Indiana, but I wasn't personally close to either of them, and all I grasped was that participation in the college band was decidedly slumming it. I did see Star once, when they won in Mentor (though again Corpsreps lists the show as Cleveland) in 1992. I thought they were fantastic (they seem less so on that year's DVD) but what most struck me was how the encore format had changed. Cadets and Cavaliers had marched and played, as I recall, but Star just formed a big arc. I continued to enjoy the shows, when I saw them, but what kept my interest for most of the 1990s was a double CD set I found in 1991 in a second-hand record store, of the 1989 finals. (Or semi-finals, in the case of the Blue Devils.) I had no idea that such a recording existed! Or hope of finding another one, though I returned to the store regularly for that reason. I must have listened to it hundreds of times, and I know those disks by heart. But it wasn't until I saw the Cavaliers win the Massillon show in 1999, and then saw them take third place on PBS (having retired to my hotel room in Wheeling after attending a half-Catholic half-Hindu wedding), which was the first time I ever saw a show twice, that I thought that this newly-popular thing called the internet might help me to find video of those performances. I bought VHS tapes for 1999, 1988, 1989, and 1990. And a little later the "Brass Roots" video, which includes short clips of all the first-place shows. Of those snippets, Phantom 1996 impressed me the most, so I bought that year's videos as well. I attended a performance of Blast!, and even wrote a scolding note to the local theatre critic who gave it a negative review for all the wrong reasons.

But then my work kicked into high gear, and soon what free time I had was being devoted to my reborn interest in Tolkien (because of the Lord of the Rings films, which I disliked), and I didn't see another live DCI show for ten years. (I did go to Massillon in 2003, but it was rained out.) I might never have done so, if not for "Spartacus". Somehow I had learned, in 2004, that there was to be a cinema-cast of the Quarterfinals competition, and with friends I went to see it -- the very theater I was in actually got a shout-out from the announcers during the program because someone of importance was in the audience. (Wow. Could it have been Frederick Fennell? That would be rather sad, if so: Wikipedia says he died four months later.) But I came away with very mixed feelings. The top three shows, particularly Cavaliers "007", were very impressive, but microphones? Really? And singing? And bad poetry? Ugh. Plus there were some problems with the video: poor contrast, or white uniforms that looked like ghostly blobs, not to mention a frequent problem I had noticed on the older VHS tapes, that had not gone away: the camera was often looking at the wrong place. In fact, as I recall, the announcers specifically advised audiences to look for one visual effect that the camera crew proceeded not to show. So I stayed away for a few years. Then in 2008, I don't know why, I gave the broadcast another chance. And again the camera views made the shows, which seemed a bit more challenging than I recalled from earlier years, often frustrating to watch. "Finis" was pretty, true. But I simply could not understand from that viewing why "Samurai" and "Constantly Risking Absurdity" were so highly rated, though subsequent high-camera viewings have convinced me that the former represents the Cavaliers' supreme visual design, and that the latter is a near-masterpiece. "Pursuit of Happiness" was abominable -- though the Cadets sure could march and play when they weren't being talked over. "The Knockout" also had silly narration, but of much less quantity and annoyance; and it also had "The Boxer". (I found a clip of the brass hit online the next day and sent it to all my friends.) And "Spartacus", now, well: how utterly improbable and wonderful. I was really concerned during the preshow. Didn't Phantom Regiment, my favorite corps for years because of their 1989 and 1996 performances, realize that drum corps is not a storytelling medium? Couldn't they see how the actions of little figures amidst all that pageantry just seemed ridiculous and over-literal and--wait a minute, that's a lovely ballad; and whoa! the murder of the heroine is beautifully performed; and what a clever and daring battle scene that is, and oh my God he's spearing the drum major! How on earth is this in third place?

And that convinced me to attend a show in 2009, and then the QF broadcast, and then desiring to learn more, to DCP. And to buy all the DVDs, and what CDs were still available. And to Allentown, twice. And aren't you sorry you asked!

*Will DCI ever get these older non-Finalist shows on the Fan Network, do you think? Obviously the video exists. I'd pay extra to be able to access more older shows.

[CuriousMe]

LOL....see I learned something about you N. E. Brigand. I didn't know that I slept on your HS gym floor for two nights back in the late 80's :0)

<snip>

"Band camp" at our school wasn't an overnight affair, just three weeks at the high school all day in August. Thanks to Corpsreps, I can report that it was Aug. 1, 1988 when we reported at about nine o'clock to find that there were some buses in the parking lot (which is where we did most of our marching rehearsals: our dots would be spray-painted on the asphalt) and a bunch of kids just waking up on the gym floor. They'd arrived in the middle of the night, and they were the Garfield Cadets. They were from New Jersey, so we were told, but they spent the summer traveling the country, rehearsing every day, competing every night, then driving until the wee hours, when they finally caught some sleep then started all over again. What I noticed was that while they started later than we did, they apparently didn't take a lunch break. And the guys rehearsed shirtless. That was odd!

Corpsreps says they competed that night in Cleveland, but it was actually Byers Field in Parma. For some reason, I couldn't go, but some of our members did. The next day they couldn't stop talking about the show: not about Garfield, but rather about something called the Santa Clara Vanguard, and Phantom of the Opera.

Next year those Cadets were back! It was Aug. 8, 1989, my senior year. This time I watched a bit more of their rehearsal during our lunch break. Intense. And that evening I was able to join friends in Parma to see my first drum corps show. I was blown away. Granted, the first group, L'Insolite,* didn't seem so much better than the best marching bands I'd seen, but the groups just kept getting better: Florida Wave,* Boston Crusaders,* Freelancers, Bluecoats (or did they go on last? I can't remember), Madison Scouts, and Garfield Cadets. How loud they all were. How fast they all marched. How precise their movements: all through that marching band season, I tried to point my toes like the corps had done. I didn't know any of the music (though later that year, our concert band would play selections from Les Miserables, and I'd also take a chorus part in Babes in Arms, which musical includes both "My Funny Valentine" and "Johnny One Note", and hold on a minute: Crusaders played "Whiter Shade of Pale"? I certainly knew that song). But it didn't matter: I loved all of it. Most clearly etched in my mind is the sheer joy of the Bluecoats performance, particularly the section in "Sing Sing Sing" when the soprano players crossed their legs and rested their arms on one another's shoulders, and the control that Cadets had over the crowd, especially one moment when the entire audience waited with anticipation and then gasped -- it must have been the silent drill and flag toss that follow the ballad. The Cadets won that night, but someone there said he'd heard that the Santa Clara group was really good that year, and playing Phantom of the Opera again. I thought that was strange.

<snip>

[Noname]

I finished my first year of marching band as a freshmen, then was taken to the 2006 Stockton show by my parents. I loved it and thought it was really cool, but never considered joining. Then a month or so later, I was bored on the internet, and looked into the Mandarins (they were my favorite show at Stockton, and they were close). Saw a bunch of the multimedia on their website which really got me into listening to the shows. I auditioned, made it, and marched a great year in 2007. I had never seen another corps until we got into Texas that year I believe. Then I heard BK do their very loud warmup facing the backstands (where I was watching). I was stunned, and ever since then I realized the importance to sit in between the 40s to really get the sound of the show. Saw a few more shows that year, including semis and finals. I got so into it.

Actually, my very first exposure was at the beginning of my first marching band season. But it was the TV showing for 2005. At least I think. I don't know, I remember almost nothing about it. I thought it was cool but hardly cared.

[JonW]

During a family gathering in the spring of '72, some relatives (members in both VFW and AL and familiar with drum corps) learned that one of my brothers and I were learning to play music - he on drums and trumpet for me. They suggested my dad take us down to our valley's own drum corps practice, just to check it out. I think we were signed up that day - although I was still a bit too young (12 years) but if they wanted my brother, they had to take me too, hehe!

I was handed a soprano and shooed off into the line... by all the gods, I was in love. That horn was beautiful - a bright, sassy silver with a powerful sound that left my pale gold trumpet smoldering in the corner. The best part was I didn't need to use my right hand fingers!*

A handful of years of competing had passed before our corps folded, but the time in drum corps was easily the best of my teenage life. Attended some of the biggest shows of the time, met kids from the biggest names of the time (to me, both Santa Clara and Phantom had the friendliest groups. Kilties would pound you on the field, then hand you a beer afterward, hehe!)- but it was some of the little shows with some of the little corps that were the greatest, you actually got to sit and spend some time (not much!) with other members after the shows.

Ah well, it's late and I'm rambling, memories keep popping in. Best gift my Grandma ever gave me was drum corps.

*My right hand sustained some damage and the knuckle of my middle finger would frequently lock, making the 2nd valve often difficult. The p/r sop completly eliminated that - I needed only my thumb!

[skywhopper]

How many youth today will never find out about drum corps, because there effectively are no broadcasts? So where will the MMs come from?

I know that there are VODs from DCI. But if you don't know the first thing about DCI, how will you download a VOD?

I think things have changed enough in the last fifteen years that the value of a PBS broadcast would be greatly diminished. And compared to my experience of going to a show as a kid and then not having any real way to find out more except to randomly catch the PBS broadcast until I was in college, I think it's actually easier today. If you hear about drum corps and have the least interest, you Google it and DCI comes up. Search for DCI on YouTube and you get hooked into thousands of videos including highlights, official promo material, full shows from every era, rehearsals.

That all doesn't necessarily inspire kids to get off their butts and into tryouts, but I think this is a great time to discover drum corps!

Edited August 18, 2011 by skywhopper

[G-Rott]

I was always a big fan of our local high school marching band...they were very competitve. In 1974 when I was in high school, the band director showed us a video of Santa Clara playing Young Person's Guide...which we were playing that coming fall in our show...that was it...been stuck ever since....

[Sam98]

My high school band director used to play footage (mainly the PBS broadcasts) in the mornings before practice and throughout the day whenever the bandroom was open. I think the first show I saw on tape was either 1984 Garfield or 1980 Blue Devils. I was instantly hooked.

Thank you, Mr. Heinrichs, wherever you are!

[Liahona]

My very first introduction to drum corps was from the PBS broadcast in 1986 at the age of 16 listening to the TROOPERS!!!!! I was hooked ever since after listening to their rendition of Silverado. I thought to myself then that these guys made my high school marching band look like a complete joke and I thought my school was pretty good to boot.

Unfortunately I didn't end up marching drum corps until 1990 and that was with the Boston Crusaders. I wish I started earlier. I can't remember which band show I was attending, but I think it was in Trumbull, CT where a guy named Andy from Boston Crusaders had a booth set up with a TV playing clips from the Boston Crusaders show from previous years. I thought to myself...WOW...these guys sure can march their freaking tails off and I absolutely LOVED their aggressive style and technique...I loved marching band in HS and I had already planned on moving to Boston for college, so it was a good fit for me at the time...I really wanted to join an awesome group like Boston for the experience...and I did just that the very next season...One of the best decisions I made in my life.