Jump to content

The 2004 Thread


Recommended Posts

2004 in Denver was a great finals venue. Since my corps didn't make finals, I watched from the top deck, with my corps friends, in my hard-earned jacket, on a perfect summer night. The season was over, the start of college was 2 weeks away, and it was maybe one of the last times I had no responsibilities or worries. Watching Cavies go into the fugue that builds into the climax of their closer was great...as was all of SCV. Really, a great top 3. 

2004 was my rookie year at Capital Regiment. It was Quite An Experience(tm). The corps was on its first year of Bb horns and second year in Div I. It was also the first time the corps fielded a full 128 members, though the hornline wasn't full until the last two weeks. Coming off 19th place in 2003, there were a lot of rookies (like myself), a lot of 16 year olds, some had never even seen a drum corps show before. 

Like most rookies, I was a bit of a mess, and I left my rehearsal shoes in the gym before we left spring training, so I had to borrow a section-mate's free day shoes, which were skater shoes 2 sizes too small for me, and caused massive blisters. On top of that, our bus broke down the night we left spring training, and my luggage was put on the staff bus, but no one told me... I was also too shy to ask about it, so I ended up wearing the same clothes for 4 days and sleeping on a borrowed sheet on the gym floor. Not ideal! I was so miserable broke down crying when I called my mom on a pay phone from the laundromat.

We were a scrappy bunch... I think most of us were just so happy to be doing drum corps that we were willing to overlook things that are insane in retrospect. Terrible housing sites, logistic nightmares, etc. The worst was that the guard bus (which I rode) broke down in Orlando and was sent to the shop... and none of us were told to get our stuff off. The bus didn't get fixed until 2 or 3 weeks 12 days (thanks DCX) later, so we were without our bus stuff--money, food, CD players, phones, wallets--for that entire time. There were also some great episodes like one of our brass techs driving the guard bus to a show in Alabama, with the front door open because there was no AC, getting cold McD's hamburgers for dinner because the food truck broke, eating pudding and old cookies for snack for a week, staff serving meals because we lacked volunteers, and rehearsing for 8 hours in a 50 degree downpour in Belding, MI (no one will ever forget that day). 

A big memory is that we were constantly wet. There was a ton of rain that year, which the staff didn't seem very concerned about having us avoid. This included a run-through in torrential rain at the end of a rehearsal day in Allentown (the same time as Glassmen did their actual show in the storm, if you recall that). We were constantly laying out our wet clothes and trying to dry our shoes. 

Competitively, CapReg had its best ever season. With Jay Bocook arrangements and Jeff Sacktig drill, Chad Pence as brass caption head, and some fresh Cadets age-outs on visual staff, we shot up from 19th to 14th. The highlight was our back-and-forth battle with Seattle Cascades: at San Antonio, we beat them by 2.5 points. The next show was in Baton Rouge, LA. We had done a 16 hour bus ride from Houston to Houma the day or so before, and then had a laundry day - which ended up being a disaster, since it was a Sunday in LA and laundromats were closed, and people had to stay up until 3am to get done. After rehearsal in July bayou conditions, we got on the buses, ended up being a 3 hour ride because we were lost. Eventually, we just put on our unis and buzzed on our mouthpieces on the way to the gate. Predictably, we had our worst show of the season and we down a tenth to Cascades.

They ended up kicking our butts all the way up the east coast -Orland; SC; Salem, VA; Lynn, MA; Utica, NY. Then we finally cleaned up and were within a tenth at Allentown, and a week later in the RCA dome in Indy (remember that???) they were nowhere - 2.5 behind. Our show was really hard, and once we started to be able to handle it (and the judges forgot about Baton Rouge) we pulled ahead for good.

TL;DR: It was a really intense experience, and every day, housing site, and show was burned into my memory for a couple of years afterward.

Edited by FTNK
  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 9/9/2020 at 6:00 PM, Continental said:

I actually liked '04 Cadets.  Here it is on high cam.

 

Bring back marching and playing! To interesting drill! I'm not so sure I prefer whatever replaced this.

Link to comment
Share on other sites

One memory I have of the Cadets show is how Hopkins regularly aired his personal tribulations on his blog that summer, and also included it in the DVD commentary. In fact, it seems like he said he named the show "Living with the Past" because of his own personal issues. 

(Not to demean that he had personal problems and found airing them to be therapeutic, but mentioning them during DVD commentary and inspiring a corps show based on their existence seems an odd choice)

Nevertheless, it was good to have Bocook back, and that show has grown on me over time. 

  • Like 1
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

16 hours ago, FTNK said:

2004 was my rookie year at Capital Regiment. It was Quite An Experience(tm)....

As a former admin/BoD member now, all I can say is 😮  😑  ☹️  😡.  I know that many many members had a similar experience back then, but that's ... wow.  Good on you guys for powering through, but man you shouldn't have had to.

Mike

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, kdaddy said:

One memory I have of the Cadets show is how Hopkins regularly aired his personal tribulations on his blog that summer, and also included it in the DVD commentary. In fact, it seems like he said he named the show "Living with the Past" because of his own personal issues. 

(Not to demean that he had personal problems and found airing them to be therapeutic, but mentioning them during DVD commentary and inspiring a corps show based on their existence seems an odd choice)

Nevertheless, it was good to have Bocook back, and that show has grown on me over time. 

if only he could do an update......

  • Like 1
  • Haha 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

(not for you) For those who don't know, the reason for the tarp was Mile High's almost paranoid insistence on protecting their turf so close to football season.  Quarters and Semis were held facing the back side of the field to even out the pit wear and tear, and they had that tarp put down so there would be no divots on the grass.

Mike

Link to comment
Share on other sites

The field itself was insanely good, the best surface I ever marched on, tied with Columbus Crew soccer stadium, where CapReg had its home show. That Columbus show was a highlight of the year - corps home show, awesome field, I saw my parents and brother and two friends from HS band who came from Pittsburgh, and the corps broke 80 points for the first time in its history.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

4 hours ago, MikeN said:

(not for you) For those who don't know, the reason for the tarp was Mile High's almost paranoid insistence on protecting their turf so close to football season.  Quarters and Semis were held facing the back side of the field to even out the pit wear and tear, and they had that tarp put down so there would be no divots on the grass.

Mike

Didn’t Foxboro do something similar?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.

Guest
Reply to this topic...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...