Parades, good or bad?

[brichtimp]

Ha; I teach in that school district (my wife is actually the middle school band feeder for the HS in that video)!

When we first moved to SoCA summer of 1999 and I started teaching, a colleague talked about parade band, and I couldn't believe that was such a thing. I was absolutely FLOORED with the amount of attention to detail, and the old-school philosophy that is SCSBOA Parade Adjudication, and it still really amuses me (for reference, their visual scores are on the "tic" system, the vis. judge is on the street looking at rank/file/diagonals for perfect & other marching tics; the Music and other judges are at a table with scores of the march and the march has to be from an approved list). It took me a looooooong time to figure out the craziness of adjudicated parade at the levels of this circuit (that's right: SCSBOA is a circuit - I said it!! ) and if you dig the old school judging philosophies of the DCi tic system then you might really enjoy SCSBOA parade (often called "street" competition, a FAR more appropriate designation than parade IMO).

This video either the final year of Rancho Bernardo's band director (who opened the school and is considered one of the best in the area), or the first year or so of their new band director. Either way, this particular band is VERY well trained (note my kind-of bias though obviously they perform very well) and has an incredible marching & concert band program.

Yep....back in the stone age when I was in high school in the Anaheim school district, the street competitions were legendary; and the tick system was a given, although the music score was the highest portion of the judging in that compressed 450 foot competition zone. In essence, pick an approved march, perfect it like a concert performance and march to the standard of a top military band....deceptively difficult to perfect a block with limited rehearsal time. However, the musical concepts (blend, balance, precision, good intonation and tone) translated to concert season. The All Western Band Review in Long Beach was the ultimate end of season street competition with 70+ bands.....quite a scene back in the day before the DCI and drum corps world had any impact.

One final example...this one from 1969 with Loara High School....we could hear them coming for city blocks:-)

http://youtu.be/uP9O9x-PNUo

Edited July 6, 2014 by brichtimp

[soccerguy315]

Does anyone have any idea of how much these parades pay for a corps to play in them?

someone posted in this thread that they can pay $4000-5000 for at least certain parades.

[JimF-LowBari]

$2000 for each of the Tour de Baltimore parades was the last amount I heard few years back. No idea how the economy hit that amount as other parades in the Northeast cut back due to sponsor support going down.

[somerville]

For the corps it's good. They make big bucks. I always wonder how these small towns can afford to pay big bucks for 4th of July parades for these corps.

[somerville]

A friend of mine who teaches at Boston say they make between 5 and 10k a parade around the Boston area. My tickets were $50.00 each last night. Sometimes it's hard living in a fab city.

[MikeD]

I know it can be a major money maker for smaller corps willing to put in the time.

In past years some corps performed up to four or five parades in a single day.

(Those venues would obviously have to be pretty close together.)

Oh, yes, in my Garfield days we would do 4 or 5 on Memorial Day and July 4th. We'd hop on the busses, get to a parade, sometimes join it part-way through, hop on the busses...go to the next parade, rinse and repeat all day long.

Pretty much covered all of Bergen County.

[bluesman]

I think it is good for exposure, though some guard uniforms may not be appropriate for sensitive adults, impressionable children or small animals.

LOL..... Those small animals would really be scared by Boston this year.