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The 2005 Thread


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With Jamey Thompson and Adam Sage joining for 2005, Regiment finally had a visual complement to JD Shaw and Paul Rennick. What a fantastic show.

And speaking of the step back taken by SCV, in addition to Jim Casella and the reduced role by Myron Rosander, Adam Sage also departed. Many of the drill rewrites were done by Ron Hardin. I really liked that SCV show, but the Russian Christmas closer seemed to go in slow motion both musically and visually (though the feet are moving). 

I thought the dance derby idea by BD was brilliant in concept. But they did it in reverse, right? If they hadn't made that design decision - instead presenting it in regular order from many couples to one final couple - I think it would've played a lot better. 

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On 10/6/2020 at 9:10 AM, kdaddy said:

With Jamey Thompson and Adam Sage joining for 2005, Regiment finally had a visual complement to JD Shaw and Paul Rennick. What a fantastic show.

And speaking of the step back taken by SCV, in addition to Jim Casella and the reduced role by Myron Rosander, Adam Sage also departed. Many of the drill rewrites were done by Ron Hardin. I really liked that SCV show, but the Russian Christmas closer seemed to go in slow motion both musically and visually (though the feet are moving). 

I thought the dance derby idea by BD was brilliant in concept. But they did it in reverse, right? If they hadn't made that design decision - instead presenting it in regular order from many couples to one final couple - I think it would've played a lot better. 

Agree with this, but I also question the music they chose to use. An old swing band era style dance-off with effective staging would have been a better choice. 

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  • 3 months later...

2005 was when things started to go downhill for me. I saw the dark side of drum corps and started becoming disillusioned with the activity (to some extent).

Capital Regiment had an... interesting season. "In 2004, we knocked on the door..." The corps had a ton of momentum and excitement surrounding it after getting Bb horns, fielding their first full 64 member brass section, and shooting from 19th to 14th in 2004. The idea was that we were going to improve on 2004, keep pushing higher, and eventually become perennial finalists. 

The show was called "Chiaroscuro: Symphonic Dances in Shades of Darkness and Light," which is an extremely generic fin de siècle  BOA show concept. Ok. Robert Sheldon wind ensemble piece. Again, very of its time - late 90s/early 2000s corps rep was full of wind ensemble stuff.

 

The idea was to use the "darkness and light" to portray a day, from dark, to sunrise, dawn, mid-day, and back to night. For some reason, our program coordinator (Wayne Dillon) thought the best way to do this was to incorporate a massive sundial prop into our drill, and have a featured dancer who represented the sun...I think? It probably sounded better in his head. The first movement was darkness into day, then... wait the second part is the ballad, is that the sunrise? Then a raucous, celebratory drum feature movement (party? is it day or night?), then the closer was a triumphant lead up to ... another sunrise, musically and literally in the drill. We still had Jay Bocook arrangements, Jeff Sacktig drill, and nearly all Cadet alum staff (Derek Gipson replaced Chad Pence as brass caption head). 

One of our trumpet soloists from the last year (2004) went to Cadets for his age out (2005). I felt like he had abandoned us, but by the end of the season (2005) I did the same thing. People complain about "ring chasers" but really, if you're paying that much to march, you shouldn't be shamed into marching where you want. I think the reasons people march or don't march somewhere are very personal and no one should #### on someone for going to a corps that better matches their experience level, skill, style, or whatever. 

Of course, I was also suffering from a bit of "second-year-vet" syndrome: I persevered and grown enormously my rookie year, and now felt like I was so much better than the rookies (See: "sophomore"). But, I was increasingly nervous about the season as winter camps continued; of course a 14th place corps is always going to suffer from experienced members leaving for finalist corps, but beyond that, the show and corps just wasn't seeming to gel and push for the next level the way I thought it would. The corps admin wasn't too much more than the director Rick Bays, the assistant director, and a woman who ran bingo.

We moved in to pre-season in the beginning of June, and did a week in Columbus and a week at some other place in Ohio, so only 2 weeks total, because we had a lot of high school members. This is when the wheels started to come off. 

 

 

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Our horn sargeant had a career-ending hip injury while we were learning drill. Their replacement fell and destroyed their knee. It's only two members, but losing two very experienced leaders, who could help set the tone and culture of the horn line before the season even started was a big blow. Our facilities were poor, just random high schools with chewed-up grass. The rumored (moving) prop arrived, looking ungainly, and immediately needing to be fixed and modified, which continued all season. 

Our first show, with only 3 movements on the field (no closer), we got an inauspicious 58, 7 full points under the next corps. Everything seemed like a big struggle, the music and drill were very demanding, and it seemed like we weren't making progress. All through the first part of tour, in Toledo and Evansville and Normal etc. - the old Drum Corps Midwest circuit - we seemed to be languishing. In the fifth show of the season, Rockford, we still were stuck at 58 and behind Pioneer in brass. Corps which we had easily beaten in 2004, like Colts and Soutwind, were ahead of us.

But it was off the field that things were really bad. It wasn't uncommon for the director to drive the equipment truck semi in a pinch, because we had trouble getting drivers. Our buses were from the early 80s. It was cold (upper midwest in June) and rainy. The overall mood of the corps, from members and staff both, was increasingly frustrated. Things like guard uniforms were long overdue and we were still waiting for them. When they finally came, the director had a fight with the staff over them being "too provocative." In my section specifically (tuba), we didn't have a good visual tech and there were constant attitude issues, people quitting, poor rehearsal technique, not memorizing music, not doing dotbooks, and more season-ending injuries. Inter-section bad blood escalated, as the drumline felt they were "carrying the corps" and the horns/guard weren't working hard enough. Instructors were borrowing money from food truck volunteers because they hadn't been paid.

It all kinda came to a head in Ohio around the second week of July. We had a free day at Six Flags Kentucky Kingdom, but did a little bit of work in the parking lot beforehand. Guard did a technique block, then the guard staff told the guard that they were quitting, got into a friends' car and drove away. One of our trumpets quit because he was being abused by members of the drumline for being overweight. And finally, one of our techs was caught stealing prescription medications from one of the members and locked out of the housing site and sent home (my mom told me later that during pre-season she saw him spiking his fruit drink with vodka before ensemble). 

The Prop had to be wheeled around, within the drill, by two people in color guard costumes. There were constant problems, people getting run over, etc. No one knew what the giant metal thing was supposed to be or represent. Eventually, a black and silver cloth (which my mom sewed) was added, ideally to make it look like an actual sundial arm, but it just looked like a shark fin. Then, they decided that "icons" showing sunrise, the moon, etc. should also be put on its side to tell the judges what was going on (and tried to guilt my mom into paying for the professional printing). 

Other memorable fails include: a "design consultant" showing up for one day of tour and wasting the entire visual block trying to add a weird one-count turn to the opener the day of the San Antonio regional; one of our mellophone players just disappearing, never to be seen again, after music block; and being fed cheese and crackers for lunch. One of our euphoniums fell in the shower and broke his shoulder.  Our uniforms were never altered, so they got insanely baggy. After SA, we were pretty despondent, being behind Southwind, Cascades, Mandarins, and Colts, and not far above Magic, who were having their own meltdowns. 

The design staff thought the solution was to add a tag soft ending, representing return to night, and we got as far as handing out the drill sheets before the instructional staff revolted--We couldn't perform what we had as it was! A few days later we had a full-corps "come to Jesus" because everyone was just tired, irritated, and going through the motions. Eventually, "the process" actually did work -- our show was very hard (Bocook and Sacktig, remember) so in the end of the season, when we started to be able to perform it, we came up and finished 15th - one place lower than 2004, but it could have been much worse.

Quarterfinals was miserable, a flat show after 1) a kid in my section said something racist to one of our baritone players and started a fight 2) we warmed up and walked to the stadium without any water. Semifinals was better. After our last performance, one of our visual staff said straight out "If you can survive this, you can march anywhere," encouraging us NOT to stay with Capital Regiment. We ended up 13th overall in brass, because Derek Gipson is good. 

It was a long, frustrating season, but socially the best one for me, as I became close to group of people around me on the bus and we formed our own tight little club to vent our frustration and cope with the BS through humor. I am still in touch with most of them. At finals, my friends and I watched from the upper deck with my mom, and I went down to the lower level to catch Cadets' victory run, knowing that I wanted to be one of them.

Edited by FTNK
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Wow, man - amazing story.  Good on you for making it through, but it definitely should not have been that way.  I may have also said this before, but as a former DCI corps board member, I am so glad that this is not a representative experience anymore.

Mike

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