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2015 Shenandoah Sound Recruiting Booth At Woodbridge Show


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Ah, but unlike Coke or Pepsi, YEA's corps are non-profits and members of a cooperative association with an interest in seeing that association succeed as a whole. If Coke out-competes Pepsi so well that the latter goes out of business, all the better for Coke, who corners the market. If Cadets and Cadets2 succeed so well at the expense of the competition that the other drum corps go out of business,* they themselves will suffer. I don't think a summer season of Saturday shows with just those two corps competing against each other will get enough business.

*Obviously not letting other corps advertise at their shows will not by itself result in the demise of other corps--but it does seem to suggest that YEA holds a problematic view of drum corps as a whole. Also, as I've said before, I think it would be perfectly reasonable for YEA to charge other corps their regular booth fee to have a presence at their shows. It's just the idea of an outright ban that seems contrary to the spirit of DCA and DCI.

My thought is "who is doing who a favor" or who gets the benefit out of the event? Is BOA/YEA being nice by letting the local place have a BOA show. Or is the local place doing a service for BOA by hosting one of their shows. Understand the locals have to follow rules/procedures so the event doesn't reflect badly on BOA (just like DCA/DCI). But where do you draw the line? Sounds like a really "urinely" rule to me. Especially since you probably have people connected with corps working with the bands hosting shows. Just a big middle finger salute to them.....

OK Jeff who is Spring Grove connected with? A certain non-competing corps is performing there Saturday and wonder if they are allowed to talk to anyone.....

Edited by JimF-LowBari
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My thought is "who is doing who a favor" or who gets the benefit out of the event? Is BOA/YEA being nice by letting the local place have a BOA show. Or is the local place doing a service for BOA by hosting one of their shows. Understand the locals have to follow rules/procedures so the event doesn't reflect badly on BOA (just like DCA/DCI). But where do you draw the line? Sounds like a really "urinely" rule to me. Especially since you probably have people connected with corps working with the bands hosting shows. Just a big middle finger salute to them.....

OK Jeff who is Spring Grove connected with? A certain non-competing corps is performing there Saturday and wonder if they are allowed to talk to anyone.....

Spring Grove is not tied to any competitive circuit. There's a Lancaster based non competitive cooperative they may be a part of. Their indoor guard and percussion ensemble are tied to Tournament. We leave recruiting up to the hosts, we just ask that you don't have other circuits set up their stuff.

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A couple years ago, when I suggested that DC and/or Ohio corps ought to have a presence at OMEA state competitions (13,000+ students and their families), several people on DCP responded that there was no point, since marching band kids already know all about drum corps.

Gotta love people who think if they do nothing, the public will still beat a path to their door.

I don't often find myself interacting with band students, but do talk with their parents at little when I go to marching band shows....

I chatted quite a bit with the father of a performer in the very large band that was tonight's deserved grand champion at the Canton suburb of Louisville (Medina, which one regular DCP contributor knows very well). Their show has a pirate theme, complete with a large flag on a 20-foot high "mast" set right in the middle of the field. After the performance, I said that if he wanted to see another pirate show on the field, there was a show he should search for on youtube. You all know exactly which DCI performance I recommended (Scouts '97). He said he would look for it, and then he said, "And what was the band's name again?"

I can't resist sharing another example. Last night I attended a marching band contest in the little hamlet of Columbus Grove, which is a little more than an hour southwest of Toledo. There were fifteen bands competing, three of whom earned their superior rating and thus qualified for state "finals" in November. (Probably half of the rest will eventually make it; there are four weekends of local competitions left.) Northwest Ohio, by the way, has a long tradition of small schools whose bands are surprisingly large and good for their school size, regularly competing and succeeding in a higher class than they nominally qualify for: schools with an enrollment of fewer than 200 students might have 75 or more in the band and instead of competing in the lowest OMEA class of C, would regularly choose to compete as B, A, or even AA (the highest class) bands--which means they were successfully competing against bands whose schools were five times their size or more.

That era lasted from the mid-1980s until the early 2000s, and now most of those bands stick to the C category and generally show no more proficiency than bands elsewhere. There were ten C bands at last night's show, and only one (the host band, as it happens) qualified for state. Last night, I asked some parents from one school--Marion Local, who had been the most successful of the bunch (earning a superior rating at state in the top class thirteen times)--why things had changed. He said one reason was that girls' sports had become more popular: students who might have been in the band were now joining the volleyball team. Another reason I've heard is that in their bands' heydays, some of these schools had marching bands but no football teams. General trends in population may also play a part.

One band, who was at last night's show, has been bucking the decline, but they're from another part of the state entirely: Berne Union, from Sugar Grove, about 45 minutes southeast of Columbus. With just 280 in the school, they ought to be Class C, but for years they've been doing very well in Class A. However, they've found a clever way to help their numbers: 20 of the 72 band members are middle school students (though I'm sure working with students so young presents its own challenges). In any case, not only do they almost always win Class A at these local shows, but they pretty regularly beat Class AA bands as well. While last night's show doesn't name a "grand champion", Berne Union won four out of the five overall captions awarded, leaving just one for the only AA band on hand, Pickerington Central, with 192 members in the band and a school enrollment of about 1,800. They did it with good playing, excellent marching, and a strong and fairly clever design. Which brings me to my point. (At last, you say.)

Their show, "Revolution", had a bit of story, told without narration, in which the tenor player, a boy, attacked and eventually killed one of the guard members, a girl. In the end, the other guard members (all female), took the opportunity for revenge and killed him. The audience cheered. Berne Union parents sitting around me referred to the villain as the "dictator". That wasn't clear to me: my first thought was of the recent Ray Rice scandal. That naturally brought Carolina Crown's "A Second Chance" to mind. But for audience approval of just revenge against a tyrannical villain, there was an even better-known DCI production that seemed worth mentioning. So when those parents praised the band's director for coming up with something so unexpected and different, I said that if they liked this concept, they should look for video of Phantom Regiment's 2008 show, "Spartacus", which I thought they'd enjoy.

It was clear that they had no idea what I was talking about. I take that as another data point supporting the need for corps to do more outreach to bands.

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Concerning local publicity, received the following from the Business Manager of a corps that performed at a HS band show last night. Wonder how many corps have the same "they exist?" problem.

"I couldn't believe how many people had no idea that we existed and were from (town name)! I suppose that's due in part to the lack of advertising our local media is willing to do for us in ANY capacity, whether it be for ...... or anything else. We MUST change that somehow!!"
What makes it a bit more maddening is two corps members did double duty as they also marched with their band. Kudos to the band director but no one else really knows.
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"I couldn't believe how many people had no idea that we existed and were from (town name)! I suppose that's due in part to the lack of promotion our local media is willing to do for us in ANY capacity, whether it be for ...... or anything else. We MUST change that somehow!!"

Tell me about it. I work for a theatre. We've had shows run for a month without a review ever appearing in print.

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Online presence, outreach, self-promotion, all have to be done. Even in the Music industry now, the A and R people want to see your own work to develop your own audience, gigs, and promotion before they'll even think of signing you, a lot because A and R departments have been gutted.

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Going back to the recuiting ,Anthony how did it go in Woodbrigde

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Great to hear Anthony ,are you setting up at any other shows ,I know band season on Long Island goes right in to Nov, with the big Newsday Band Festival that run's 3 nights with 12 bands per night .Best to you with your recuiting love to see you guys with a full corps.

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