"Tour of Champions" 2013

[garfield]

Not at all. It gives DCA that many more member organizations who all operate on the more or less same construct; local membership and limited performance touring. Drum corps for "fun," without spending thousands of dollars to perform to compete at the highest levels with the best college-aged musicians. OpenClass corps and DCA are already natural fits, the only question is why this re-alignment hasn't already happened.

You sound like the parents of many band programs today who question why band should be so hard. "All that practicing!". And God forbid if you discipline a slacker. "It's supposed to be fun!". And, of course, it can be - just ask the members of Surf, or frankly, any other corps in the lineup if they had fun on tour.

But those students who do drum corps don't do it because it's "fun". Just ask them. They do it because it's hard. Even at Surf, the lessons are hard - both musical and life-lessons.

Pio doesn't now compete with BD and, most years, neither does Madison or the Colts compete with BD or Cadets. But Madison is competitive WITH the Colts, and Pio is competitive WITH Academy or OC. Those kids know who they're competing against, and not having the chance to beat BD doesn't stop those corps from marching mostly-full ranks.

Your argument to shuffle all but a few corps to DCA is just a couched way of showing your support for the idea that only the "Top Corps" should be supported by the collective financial pie. It's an outgrowth of the belief that the audience demand won't support "all these corps" while failing to market to the key constituent that makes up the corps and it's buying public.

The DCI pie is not a fixed size, and the correct leader will recognize that fact. The pie CAN be bigger, for everyone to share, if the focus is on growing the demand for pie instead of reducing the supply of pie.

Edited February 24, 2013 by garfield

[cixelsyd]

It sounds like everyone at the DCI level agrees that growing the audience is a problem. But the solutions seem to come down to an either/or approach; either you focus more time and attention on the top units, promoting them as being "the act", or you try to keep moving forward on a more egalitarian, but less promotable path, where everyone in drum corps is an equal participant in Drum Corps International, and it's more like a youth athletic league than it is a type of entertainment business.

Well, it is a youth athletic league. DCI markets to youth participants based on the educational value of being a youth activity, and their staff (not just teaching, but most of the designers too) are professional educators. If you want a drum corps circuit to max out as an entertainment business, you need a circuit that drops the age rule and the education focus.

Now, before I forget - why do you presume that a more egalitarian approach is "less promotable"? Is it only because you envision an entertainment business, rather than a youth athletic league? In that case, it would make sense to entertain with only your best act, and jettison the others. As a competitive league, however, closer competition sells.

It seems that the current exec team and many of the lower-ranked corps want to go the second route, but doing so necessarily hampers the ambitions of those at the top, and (to my mind, anyway), makes it harder for DCI to hit the gym, start toning up, and relaunch themselves as an action sport that involves live music performance at the highest level.

On the contrary. DCI does not prevent any corps, or group of corps, from toning up and relaunching (see Star - Blast). Of course, if they want to relaunch as something other than a competing junior drum corps, they need to relaunch outside of DCI.

In terms of the money, you guys have to be aware that $250k for an executive with the types of credentials you need for the job is baseline - the ones who are already working at other $20-30million companies are making a lot more than that at the top. But thinking that you can defer that kind of personnel investment until some other things change is a non-starter, since nothing will change until you have an executive who has both the cred to bring in big money with her/him, and the confidence to look at the Gibbs and Hopkins of the world and tell them to focus on running their corps and to let her/him build the audience. It's a personality thing; you won't get the type of stud you want until you offer the type of stud you want the kind of money they'll expect to be paid, and studs, by definition, don't see themselves as underlings to the Board members who hire them. Does Dan A have that kind of personality?

I don't know him personally, never met him, but my instinct is that no, he doesn't. If he did, he would have met the uprising a couple years ago with a coup of his own,

How do you know he did not?

and led the other members of DCI to oust the G7 corps from DCI altogether for a year.

On what basis?

It could be that he's a peacemaker, not a fighter, and that's fine, but at a certain point, you need to understand that the true power in any negotiation belongs to the man who's willing to kill the deal.

The G7 put up a front, and the insurrection should have been handled then, rather than punted. Now, unfortunately for him, he's damaged goods until he or his team get together and pull an Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross, and start dictating to Hopkins and Gibbs, rather than the other way around. If that happens, and there's a hard and fast plan for growing audience, with actual dollar signs attached to it, he's got some hope; if he listens to certain others in drum corps, and pushes on with the idea that everyone in drum corps is equally important, there's no hope of him lasting much longer. That model is simply never going to grow anything except resentment.

Awful lot of speculation in there for someone who does not know the people involved. From what I know of them, this is off target.

[garfield]

The G7 put up a front, and the insurrection should have been handled then, rather than punted. Now, unfortunately for him, he's damaged goods until he or his team get together and pull an Alec Baldwin in Glengarry Glen Ross, and start dictating to Hopkins and Gibbs, rather than the other way around. If that happens, and there's a hard and fast plan for growing audience, with actual dollar signs attached to it, he's got some hope; if he listens to certain others in drum corps, and pushes on with the idea that everyone in drum corps is equally important, there's no hope of him lasting much longer. That model is simply never going to grow anything except resentment.

But, they are equally important, just not in the same way.

What you're talking about here is money, not importance. If no corps outside of the top 7 got a nickel from DCI you'd have no problem with leaving them in the collective. The facts of the tilted payout scheme are unimportant in your eyes. That those outside the 7 get ANY money is the focus of your argument.

Don't cloud your position with lofty and subjective diversions.

[cixelsyd]

Not at all. It gives DCA that many more member organizations who all operate on the more or less same construct; local membership and limited performance touring. Drum corps for "fun," without spending thousands of dollars to compete at the highest levels with the best college-aged musicians.

OpenClass corps and DCA are already natural fits, the only question is why this re-alignment hasn't already happened.

Are you at all familiar with DCA corps? Or the open class and less traveled world class DCI corps?

DCA is all-age. It is weekend-only, because it is all-age, and open to the possibility of working adults participating.

DCI is a youth activity, thus many participants have the summer off. Virtually all DCI corps tour, and convene on some weekdays even when not touring. The only DCI corps that even might be weekend-only are in areas where there are no weekday shows.

Open class corps are clearly better aligned with DCI, not DCA. If that were not true, they would have pursued deeper relationships with DCA already in the natural course of events.

[danielray]

DCI-Next that was presented to corps BOD's last August? Commandeered by working groups made up of the corps directors themselves. It died a quiet death and resulted in the 7 presenting their proposal to the BOD at the Janual. Many people say that DCI should be run by men with successful business experience and the corps directors should focus on running their corps - how about we start with getting the director's noses out of DCI's business? If you look around now, you'll see men who run, or ran, successful businesses dot the drum corps landscape. Several of them are directly involved with staff activities at DCI.

DCI-Next did not succeed because rather than acknowledging the fact that there are groups out there performing on radically different levels and seeking to maximize the potential of each, it was more of a lowest common denominator approach that would make the entire activity more of a regional thing.

DCI-Next could be something interesting to consider as a way forward for Open Class and a few current WC corps that might find this model a better fit.

[Slingerland]

You sound like the parents of many band programs today who question why band should be so hard. "All that practicing!". And God forbid if you discipline a slacker. "It's supposed to be fun!". And, of course, it can be - just ask the members of Surf, or frankly, any other corps in the lineup if they had fun on tour.

But those students who do drum corps don't do it because it's "fun". Just ask them. They do it because it's hard. Even at Surf, the lessons are hard - both musical and life-lessons.

Pio doesn't now compete with BD and, most years, neither does Madison or the Colts compete with BD or Cadets. But Madison is competitive WITH the Colts, and Pio is competitive WITH Academy or OC. Those kids know who they're competing against, and not having the chance to beat BD doesn't stop those corps from marching mostly-full ranks.

Your argument to shuffle all but a few corps to DCA is just a couched way of showing your support for the idea that only the "Top Corps" should be supported by the collective financial pie. It's an outgrowth of the belief that the audience demand won't support "all these corps" while failing to market to the key constituent that makes up the corps and it's buying public.

The DCI pie is not a fixed size, and the correct leader will recognize that fact. The pie CAN be bigger, for everyone to share, if the focus is on growing the demand for pie instead of reducing the supply of pie.

My support for the idea of aligning drum corps whose managements don't have the inclination or ability to raise a million dollars a year to run a national touring operation with OTHER drum corps whose don't have the interest in doing a national tour is driven by simple fact-based rationality. If you have a drum corps league out there that is geared toward limited touring and lower-budgets, than it makes sense to have those drum corps whose managements want to run those kinds of corps go compete with their peers in that league. I realize that strikes some people (it sounds like it strikes you) as "elitism", or whatever you want to call it, but it's really just looking at a situation dispassionately, and pointing out an obvious opportunity.

You yourself say that Pioneer isn't competing with Blue Devils. Well why would a business that's supposed to be a league of equals/competitors want a situation in which some teams aren't really competitive with the rest of the league? More importantly, why would a corps director who really valued the experience he or she offered their kids want their kids to be competing in a league where they were all but sure to be clobbered every night? Why wouldn't they embrace an opportunity to put their kids in a situation where the best work they can do, at their level, gives them at least a fair shot of success against others who are at the same level?

The brightest, shiniest objects in the tool box are going to be the most marketable to a wider audience (and yes, that includes the band parents, who are going to be more impressed by PR or Cavaliers than they are with some of the smaller corps who are performing simpler, smaller shows). There's absolutely nothing wrong with community-based drum corps; I think you'd find that everyone who's ever marched would be in favor of finding ways to increase overall participation, but part of that process will be finding ways for give fledgling corps and younger members something realistic to shoot for within their budgets and programming capacities. Take the adult egos out of the equation, and recognize that some drum corps are there primarily to teach the members how to do drum corps and how to handle themselves on their own, and others are there to give the most competitive college-aged musicians the chance to compete on a bigger stage. They're both valuable, but they're not "the same."

[danielray]

Are you at all familiar with DCA corps? Or the open class and less traveled world class DCI corps?

DCA is all-age. It is weekend-only, because it is all-age, and open to the possibility of working adults participating.

DCI is a youth activity, thus many participants have the summer off. Virtually all DCI corps tour, and convene on some weekdays even when not touring. The only DCI corps that even might be weekend-only are in areas where there are no weekday shows.

Open class corps are clearly better aligned with DCI, not DCA. If that were not true, they would have pursued deeper relationships with DCA already in the natural course of events.

Maybe there is an opportunity to spin out a youth-centric weekend only circuit? I imagine if this existed, maybe Cadets2 would move over and maybe some DCA groups might shift to offering youth programs?

Hmm.... If there was a new viable weekend only circuit that Open Class corps could participate in, built entirely around their needs, why wouldn't OC groups move to this? What is the benefit of them staying with DCI?

[Slingerland]

Are you at all familiar with DCA corps? Or the open class and less traveled world class DCI corps?

DCA is all-age. It is weekend-only, because it is all-age, and open to the possibility of working adults participating.

Very famliar, yes, thank you. DCA used to be "senior corps." Now it's "all ages." So, by definition it's open to junior corps. And their schedule is exactly the model that fits a junior drum corps that is locally based and isn't interested or able to support national touring. Open Class isn't about the national touring model, and the membership is local rather than international, as with most of the WC corps. The budgets are going to be in the $150-300k range, rather than $800-1.2m range. The members want to compete, but know that they're not directly competing with Blue Devils or Cadets so much as they are other OC corps with similar limitations and abilities.

In terms of goals, budgets, etc, there's actually a lot more in common between Open Class and DCA than there is between Open Class and World Class. Aside from some adult egos being bruised by having to compete in a lower-profile circuit, there's really no logical reason why this sort of re-alignment wouldn't make sense.

DCA and DCI already have some cross-promotion going on, so it's not like having Open Class moved into their own division within DCA would mean that they would disappear from the DCI radar. But it would free DCI up to focus purely on the most competitive teams in the league, promoting them without having to divert focus and resources outside of their core product. Do a better job of promoting the unique aspects of drum corps as evidenced by the most impressive teams, and you make more people curious to give it a shot. Heck, if you want to, have DCI corps adopt a policy that tells prospective members that their preference is for members who've spent some time in the OC world, and give those who are 15 or 16 and want to march in a big corps an additional incentive to go spend a summer doing OC (some would find that counter-intuitive, but to my mind, it puts WC corps into the roles of promoting marching in Open Class, something that they all give some lip service to now, but has no teeth behind it.)

Edited February 24, 2013 by Slingerland

[MikeD]

So, Dan Acheson flat out lied when he maintained that the Drum Corps International Mission Statement claims to be "a cooperative fraternity of its member drum corps"? This statement of his echos the very fabric of what a 501c3 is supposed to do on multiple levels concerning internal groups being responsible to help each other; especially the strong helping the weak.

so it meas that every hour and dollar a group possesses is supposed to be at the beck and call of DCI?

You are still just phumphering around the question without actually answering it..full of 'supposed to...' and generic bafflegab like that. You made a statement that the corps have to dedicate all of their resources to the beck and call of DCI, but then you give no real evidence that this is actually true in what they signed up for. Why? Because it is just not true. Each organization has its own mission, and membership in DCI is but one component in some cases.

BTW...no, Dan did not lie. Nothing in that statement is in opposition to corps belonging to DCI and also having other elements of their organizations.

[garfield]

They're both valuable, but they're not "the same."

Are "value", which you used above, and "important", as you used a couple of posts earlier, synonymous in your lexicon?

I agree, they are both valuable and important and, no, they are not the same.

Edited February 24, 2013 by garfield