Your first DCI experience

[Geneva]

In 1973 my buddy and I drove almost 20 hours straight from Massachusetts to Finals in Whitewater. When we arrived at our motel in Janesville WI they had sold our room. The guy said "hey, you never showed up, we rented the room" (no cell phones back then). We spent the first night drinking a case of beer in a field and sleeping in the car. It was all worth it the next day particularly Kingsmen, Blue Stars, Troopers and my first time seeing Santa Clara.

Hey, Paul. Your story reminds me of a trip that I made with a drum corps buddy to the World Open in 1970. We left from upstate NY on the spur of the moment, no tickets or lodging, in my mom's station wagon. We arrived at Manning Bowl parking lot the evening before the prelims and unrolled our sleeping bags to sleep in the fold down section of the car so that we would be first in line for prime seats to the prelims the next morning. Well, we were awakened in the middle of the night by the Lynn police beaming their flashlights through the windows. We feigned sleep at that point surmising that a conversation with the cops was unlikely to result in an improvement in our accommodations for the evening. The great thing was that they turned off their flashlights and left us alone! They probably figured we were just harmless drum corps nuts...Ha!

I have such great memories of the corps the next day from our 50 yard line seats. The precision of the Troopers, the rock solid horn line of 27th, and best of all the climactic OTL of the Boston Crusaders. We were in awe as Jim Centorino lit into his triple tongued solo and things just built and built to the triumphant finish of "Conquest"! Wow, I get chills up my spine just recalling this drum corps master production.

Edited April 5, 2013 by Geneva

[shawnguitarguy]

Hi everyone, this thread seemed like a perfect place for my first post on these forums. For me it was actually June 2011, when I pulled into my high school for my first ever freshman band camp, and I was very puzzled at the convoy of trailers scattered throughout the parking lot. Come to find out it was the tour fleet for Crown, and my director told us they would be staying at my school for the next three days. Now I at the time had no idea what DCI was and I will for the rest of my life regret never fully apreciating what I was seeing. I just remember walking past the front ensemble and hearing them rehearse a portion of the Paint it Black of their show on our way to watching the hornline practicing drill, and then while my schools marching band rehearsed marching techinque watching the guard practice on the adjacent field and the drumline rehearsing two fields down from us. I then a few months down the road I look into it more, and I slowly start to say "Woah, this is pretty cool" until it snowballed to an all out obsession, and last August was the first time I saw a show live, and it was Music City performing in Avon OH. I have now made it my goal to either march Bluecoats who are 40 minutes away from where I live, or Crown because they're my overall favorite.

[msumello]

Hi everyone, this thread seemed like a perfect place for my first post on these forums. For me it was actually June 2011, when I pulled into my high school for my first ever freshman band camp, and I was very puzzled at the convoy of trailers scattered throughout the parking lot. Come to find out it was the tour fleet for Crown, and my director told us they would be staying at my school for the next three days. Now I at the time had no idea what DCI was and I will for the rest of my life regret never fully apreciating what I was seeing. I just remember walking past the front ensemble and hearing them rehearse a portion of the Paint it Black of their show on our way to watching the hornline practicing drill, and then while my schools marching band rehearsed marching techinque watching the guard practice on the adjacent field and the drumline rehearsing two fields down from us. I then a few months down the road I look into it more, and I slowly start to say "Woah, this is pretty cool" until it snowballed to an all out obsession, and last August was the first time I saw a show live, and it was Music City performing in Avon OH. I have now made it my goal to either march Bluecoats who are 40 minutes away from where I live, or Crown because they're my overall favorite.

This is the first post I created, glad to see you found it! Go Crown!

[Big Bad Bari]

It was my sophomore year in high school. I had never heard of drum and bugle corps. I WAS in marching band however. I was a trombone player and was friends with the drum major. He showed me a flyer that came to the band director asking for people to attend a "Drum and Bugle Corps" rehearsal. We went along with a couple of other friends. There were about 18 of us (entire hornline) and we started rehearsal. The instructor was really tough, harsh to be exact... It was a much higher expectation that I had been exposed to. None of us knew what a real drum corps looked or sounded like, so we stayed... Rocco Oliverio was our teacher and he forged us into steel. At our first show (remember we were small) we went on first and got to watch the rest of the corps. I would say speechless would describe us best that night. We worked hard all year, came in next to last but got to watch each and every corps fair the whole year.

[koburd]

i guess I'll show my youth, my first experience was in the 8th Grade. My band director took a few of us brass players into his office and told us to gather around the computer. He showed us a video of the Blue Devils playing "When a Man Loves a Woman" we were all dumbfounded. Here we were, only playing our horns for 2 1/2 years and there are these guys on a screen doing things I can't even imagine. So of course, it sparked my curiosity and started the fire. Ever since I have been a drum corps addict. I have had the oppurtunity to attend a live show in 2011. Incredible! Phantom's low brass was blowing me away! I have a few years left till I age-out and I fully intend to. Plan on trying my luck at Crossmen auditions in November. The Blue Devils will always be close to my heart though and I hope to march with them before I age-out.