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....once DCI started, and the National Touring Model was implemented, these Corps could not find a suitable sponsorship for such touring...

I've seen this point brought up a few times, but there was no expectation or demand that non-Finalists corps engage on a national tour. The national tour was only required for Finalist corps - corps who finished 30th in prelims back in the day were free to keep doing whatever they wanted to do, with no demand from DCI that they add any additional costs to their bottom line with touring.

The only way the national tour might have had an effect on those smaller corps was as an additional incentive for their members to go audition for a Finalist organization. Since the travel aspect of drum corps was always one of the big appeals (and still is, I imagine), having the chance to spend a summer traveling extensively would have been more appealing to the members than just staying at mom and dad's during the week, and doing a 100 mile road trip on the weekend to a couple of shows.

No disagreement that the demise of the veterans posts had some effect, but on reflection, the little corps I marched with in the midwest in the mid-70s got next to no financial support from their AL and VFW sponsors, maybe $1,000 a year from each.

Here's an historical element, see how this fits all of our various narratives. In the early 70s, if you could read music in drum corps, you were the exception, not the rule. By the early 80s, not being to read at least at a 7th grade level (for horns) or a high school level (for drums) would have made it very difficult to get a spot. So which came first - the influx of trained musicians who forced the musically illiterate out of the activity, or the demand from drum corps themselves that if you didn't read, you didn't have a place here?

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which came first - the influx of trained musicians who forced the musically illiterate out of the activity, or the demand from drum corps themselves that if you didn't read, you didn't have a place here?

I would think that both events happened perhaps simultaneously.

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... there was no expectation or demand that non-Finalists corps engage on a national tour. The national tour was only required for Finalist corps...

I 'highly' disagree, and here is why: Your scenario only yields the same Finalist corps every year because they would be the only ones competing with each other all summer each season. A 13th place corps, if they want a realistic shot at Finals the next season, has to also do the national tour the next season or kiss the idea of ever being in Finals goodbye. The 14th place corps, needing to keep pace with the 13th place corps, must then follow suit. This domino effect of 'required' national touring to keep pace certainly does occur down the line, not by a 30th place corps. but at least to the 15th or 16th place corps.

Edited by Stu
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I'd be curious if DCI or anyone else has ever done any polling to see what, if anything, the public thinks when they hear "drum corps.". If they did, and we all found out that the general public viewed us as something similar to "Civil War re-enactors", would that be a reason to consider a major rebranding of the activity? The faux-military vibe, while not nearly as common as it was 30 or 40 years ago, seems a little out of step these days (no pun), especially when some of these same faux-mlitary units show up with color guards who clearly didn't get the 'military" memo.

Garfield, re: your tennis/badminton/ping pong, question, the better analogy might be racquetball vs squash. To the untrained eye, there are more similarities in the two sports than there are differences, being played in very similar environments, using implements that are similar, and with the basic elements of the two games being pretty closely aligned. Squash is the older of the two games - when racquetball first caught on in the 70s and 80s, I always figured it was because no one my age wanted to be caught dead playing squash. tongue.gif

So which is drum corps in that analogy - the old school traditional game, or the less-restrictive modernized game?

honestly, DCI's done little market research

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Why the confusion over definitions? Drum Corps is a subset of Marching Band, not the other way around. DC is a type of marching band. All Drum Corps are Marching Bands, but not all Marching Bands are Drum Corps. This is purely technical...a band that marches. Who can argue with that? "Band" is the overall group. Even an Orchestra is a Band. It's a certain type of band, that uses strings. Drum Corps is a marching band that limits its instrumentation to bell-front, 3 piston valve brass.

However, the "Essence of Drum Corps" is completely unique, and has LITTLE to do with instrumentation, IMO. The Essence of Drum Corps is in the tour, the competition, the consecutive 16-hr days of move-ins, the constant drive to perfection, the long bus rides, the huge crowds, the impressiveness of loud, the excellence achieved by all. The result of all that changes lives. That is the Essence of Drum Corps.

I'd agree on all but instrumentation...I really think the all brass, no woodwind sound has appeal

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I 'highly' disagree, and here is why: Your scenario would only yield the same Finalist corps every year because they would be the only ones competing with each other all summer each season. A 13th place corps, if they want a realistic shot at Finals the next season, has to also do the national tour the next season or kiss the idea of ever being in Finals goodbye.

yes, but the "national tour" then consisted of two tours of about two weeks each, for everyone but BD and SCV, who could afford to do more. The middle of the season was spent close to home, competing in DCM or DCE or whatever. If you were a good DCM corps, you could certainly take a run at Finals (as Geneseo did in the early 80s) even without spending weeks and weeks away from home.

I don't think that some corps who never got closer to making finals than 24th at DCI Midwest prelims folded because they had to fund a national tour. It's more likely they folded because they became more or less irrelevant.

Edited by Slingerland
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There are around 25,000 HS in the US; the market is nowhere near maxed out. Sure, there will always be some directors who see MB as a distasteful chore, who think that an evening of drum corps is worse than an evening of getting a root canal.

Mike,

with all of the marketing sent out....how many directors even hang the stuff up for kids to see? You need real outreach, not flyers sent to directors that usually end up in file 13. I'm an administrator for TOB in my area. I cover 9 counties. Over half of the schools compete in some form, but of those that do not, it's been made clear don't waste your time marketing to us, we even throw the drum corps stuff away. When I talk to directors that do compete, heck even they throw DCI marketing away, don't read Halftime Magazine, etc. Maybe the market hasn't been maxed out, but it hasn't been worked properly for the 16 years now of super emphasis on schools.

And still, band kids come and go, as do their parents. Which means every 4-6 years, new faces come in and hopefully replace old ones ( I see many schools band programs getting smaller because of a myriad of issues). So if you're constantly churning kids in and out, and more older fans leave for whatever reason...where's the growth? More recent alumni have not shown near the fanaticism alumni for your era through mine have. hell, I know a large majority of the people I marched with don't even follow scores online anymore.

Going after kids exclusively has not worked, and will continue to not work. The problem is.....what has DCI done to try and build the base otherwise? A smart business retains customers while they add them. Continuously shuffling folks in and out doesn't spell success......especially if you're losing older customers

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devil.gif

yes, but the "national tour" then consisted of two tours of about two weeks each, for everyone but BD and SCV, who could afford to do more. The middle of the season was spent close to home, competing in DCM or DCE or whatever. If you were a good DCM corps, you could certainly take a run at Finals (as Geneseo did in the early 80s) even without spending weeks and weeks away from home.

I don't think that some corps who never got closer to making finals than 24th at DCI Midwest prelims folded because they had to fund a national tour. It's more likely they folded because they became more or less irrelevant.

Check out how many shows the 12th place corps competed in each season (say 2007 - 2012) and compare that to the 13th, 14th, 15th, corps on down the line. You will discover that the ave number of shows to make Finals by the 12th place corps was 30 or above (Spirit, Madison, Glassmen, and Crossmen), while The Academy, for instance, averaged only around 22 shows per season from 2007 - 2012 (sometimes taking off weeks at a time in the summer) and bounced around from 13th to 15th never making Finals. This indicates that a corps 'has' to do a national tour to have a chance at Finals.

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Check out how many shows the 12th place corps competed in each season (say 2007 - 2012) and compare that to the 13th, 14th, 15th, corps on down the line. You will discover that the ave number of shows to make Finals by the 12th place corps was 30 or above (Spirit, Madison, Glassmen, and Crossmen), while The Academy, for instance, averaged only around 22 shows per season from 2007 - 2012 (sometimes taking off weeks at a time in the summer) and bounced around from 13th to 15th never making Finals. This indicates that a corps 'has' to do a national tour to have a chance at Finals.

Maybe there's our disconnect; I'm talking about the era when corps were dying off by handfuls, not the recent decade or two, where the activity has been relatively stable.

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Maybe there's our disconnect; I'm talking about the era when corps were dying off by handfuls, not the recent decade or two, where the activity has been relatively stable.

No disconnect. A correlation, if not a cause/effect, certainly exists even within historical context in that once national touring was established, and especially once the regional circuits were gone, national touring was/is 'required' to have a shot at making Finals. And due to that tour increase push the near-finalists 'had' to begin going on national tour or give up hope at ever making it to Saturday; and due to that the lower corps could not keep up with that tour pace; and due to that many lower corps either folded trying to go national or folded because they were not financially able to keep up competitively. Again, no disconnect.

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