Brian Tuma Posted November 11, 2021 Share Posted November 11, 2021 1 hour ago, FTNK said: I believe a fuller accounting of Hopkins' activities that offseason can be found in the Lehigh County court records. I didn’t want this takedown to get lost amongst your informative post. So brutal. So deserved. 2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FTNK Posted November 11, 2021 Share Posted November 11, 2021 (edited) The first show with tweaked Rabbit was supposed to be Lincoln, NE. I distinctly remember being in the middle of ensemble, and feeling like someone had opened a refridgerator next to me. Enormous Great Plains thunderstorm - we almost got hit by lightning during horn warmups and had to take shelter (#### the uniform ettiquette, RUN!). The stands were a waterfall and the whole show was canceled. Around this time I developed a large boil just above my butt crack. The athletic trainer drained it as I lay across some seats on the bus (we had no medical staff). Another guy in the section got a cyst in his armpit. The next show was Denver, at Mile High where the awesome 2004 finals had been. It was a bit of a struggle with the dry air and altitude. We got destroyed by The Cavaliers. This was the turning point of the season. The next day, we had a free day. We met in the music room of our housing site and had a little talk, mostly with Marc Sylvester. He asked, "Who thinks we can still win this year?" I was the only person who raised their hand. We came from behind in '92, right? I was still trying to be the perfect Cadet. Sully actually cried during the little talk and told us "You're better than the show you've been given." The rest of the season was basically a salvage mission. "History Repeating" was cut completely. It turns out that a whole corps marching at 192 bpm while the pit plays at 144 is impossible. Worse, the judges took one look at us marching a different tempo than the music and said "really bad phasing." In its place, they slotted in the intro from 2005. As one of our snares said, "You unlock this door... because the design staff has run out of ideas. Next stop... 4th place." The new ending was musically largely just the old ending extended, and the drill is pretty cool, but also extremely hard. The last move for the tubas was a stop and go with a hip switch into a jazz run. Our vets were breaking down. On the long bus rides out West, some people who had marched Cadets 3 or 4 years had priority to lay down in the aisles to get some relief. We got some people who had marched in 2005 to "come out of retirement" to fill some holes. Our first show of the year with a full hornline all on the field was Allentown, 8 days before finals. There were some conflicts between vets and rookies on the bus. The tuba section had been a bit of a train wreck in terms of discipline. Unrelated, but at some point one of us had a season-ending hernia. We eventually filled that hole with a mellophone player who didn't play a single note [aged out on mello the next year]. Alumni who came to the Broken Arrow show told us we were the worst section (not just tuba section, any section) the corps had in 20 years. Recall that this was when Cadets hadn't been lower than 4th since 1991. We finally threw in the new ending around San Antonio. At that show, Hop harangued us that we were "scared" of other corps and we had to realize that our show was actually harder and better than everyone else. So, he had the entire corps go back into the Alamodome in uniform and watch the rest of the show from the endzone. The vets were furious. A week or so later, Masters of the Summer Music Games happened. Well, it actually didn't happen. Middle Tennessee was doing stadium renovations, so we were at a different venue (in Cookeville). We had a rehearsal day the day before in the show stadium, which was one of the last holdouts of old-school Astroturf--no squishy Field Turf. It was actually a really nice and productive rehearsal day, and we were feeling pretty good about things. We spent a lot of time breaking down drill and using tape to mark our dots. When we came onto the field for the show, we realized.... the tape had left residue. We could still see our dots! The show felt really good, everything was progressing well.... then it started pouring during the Mad Tea Party. The show was stopped after the drum break, but not before dozens of people ran up and flipped off wet pink benches. It was just weird, confusing and a huge letdown to just stop in the middle of a good run (of course it was the right thing to do for safety- the guard still had to do a lot of climbing on those benches in the ballad). There's video! It's probably the best capture of what all was happening during that part. Edited November 11, 2021 by FTNK 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FTNK Posted November 11, 2021 Share Posted November 11, 2021 (edited) A memorable day was a show near St. Louis, before Tennessee. I had pulled my hamstring repping the percussion feature dance the day before in Enid, OK. I could have sat out, but I didn't. To show you the mood of the corps at this point - during basics block, the staff was really hammering us. Continuous box drill at 196 bpm. One of our 4 year vets put his horn down and said "This is ####### stupid!" in the middle of the exercise. I ended up taking some perscription painkillers another guy in the section had, and powering through. That night's show was the first time I did the new ending drill right, and seeing my tech jump for joy on the track gave me a huge sense of accomplishment. At Atlanta, we were getting ready to go on - Crown or BK were performing - and the Georgia Dome broke! Anyone remember this? The end of the season was really sour. I got in a fight with my section because some of them were catcalling a high school girl as we walked back to the buses in uniform. Hop got into a screaming match with a trumpet player in the shower before the Massillon show. The next day in Allentown, he and Marc Sylvester had it out, yelling at each other behind the food truck. That day was also a full rehearsal day in J Birney Crum, and I sweated more than any time in my life - Allentown in early August. It was so humid that night that the air was a haze, we couldn't see the press box from the field. It was the first time I really felt like I did everything right in the show, and it was a massive feeling of accomplishment. The constant of the last few weeks of the season was Hop telling us that we weren't trying enough, that we were "giving up out there," and we just needed to perform better. Even though Hop said we rehearsed like crap and weren't trying, Giants Stadium was a good show. Music is Cool and it being the home show gave us bit more time, which I used to shovel brisket and sweet potatoes into my body (one of Hop's wonderful chums from the YEA board made some great food). I realized that the quality of my performance was mainly based on how much I could manage to eat that day. I had gone from 185 pounds to 150 in 2 1/2 months. Madison was fine. Our housing site was way west of Baraboo, so it was a long ride to the stadium. We rehearsed until 11pm in the rain the night before quarterfinals, for some reason. Quarterfinals was bad, Semifinals was good. Zero crowd response. People said ###### things to my mom in the stands because she had a Cadets shirt and they didn't like our show. On finals day, Hop told us he would take the "Mad Tea Party" and ballad of our show over any other drum corps show ever. Okay. Bluecoats beat us in finals by a tenth. No one really cared. Coats were jerks about it. I didn't march my age out. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk Edited November 11, 2021 by FTNK 2 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FTNK Posted November 11, 2021 Share Posted November 11, 2021 (edited) . Edited November 11, 2021 by FTNK don't try to write a book on DCP Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FTNK Posted November 11, 2021 Share Posted November 11, 2021 (edited) My girlfriend at the time took these videos. She told me she had uploaded them to YouTube, to which I said, "What is YouTube?" 😅 Hope I illuminated some of the design and behind the scenes elements of the show. Edited November 11, 2021 by FTNK Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Smug Trumpet Guy Posted November 11, 2021 Share Posted November 11, 2021 6 hours ago, FTNK said: A memorable day was a show near St. Louis, before Tennessee. I had pulled my hamstring repping the percussion feature dance the day before in Enid, OK. I could have sat out, but I didn't. To show you the mood of the corps at this point - during basics block, the staff was really hammering us. Continuous box drill at 196 bpm. One of our 4 year vets put his horn down and said "This is ####### stupid!" in the middle of the exercise. I ended up taking some perscription painkillers another guy in the section had, and powering through. That night's show was the first time I did the new ending drill right, and seeing my tech jump for joy on the track gave me a huge sense of accomplishment. At Atlanta, we were getting ready to go on - Crown or BK were performing - and the Georgia Dome broke! Anyone remember this? The end of the season was really sour. I got in a fight with my section because some of them were catcalling a high school girl as we walked back to the buses in uniform. Hop got into a screaming match with a trumpet player in the shower before the Massillon show. The next day in Allentown, he and Marc Sylvester had it out, yelling at each other behind the food truck. That day was also a full rehearsal day in J Birney Crum, and I sweated more than any time in my life - Allentown in early August. It was so humid that night that the air was a haze, we couldn't see the press box from the field. It was the first time I really felt like I did everything right in the show, and it was a massive feeling of accomplishment. The constant of the last few weeks of the season was Hop telling us that we weren't trying enough, that we were "giving up out there," and we just needed to perform better. Even though Hop said we rehearsed like crap and weren't trying, Giants Stadium was a good show. Music is Cool and it being the home show gave us bit more time, which I used to shovel brisket and sweet potatoes into my body (one of Hop's wonderful chums from the YEA board made some great food). I realized that the quality of my performance was mainly based on how much I could manage to eat that day. I had gone from 185 pounds to 150 in 2 1/2 months. Madison was fine. Our housing site was way west of Baraboo, so it was a long ride to the stadium. We rehearsed until 11pm in the rain the night before quarterfinals, for some reason. Quarterfinals was bad, Semifinals was good. Zero crowd response. People said ###### things to my mom in the stands because she had a Cadets shirt and they didn't like our show. On finals day, Hop told us he would take the "Mad Tea Party" and ballad of our show over any other drum corps show ever. Okay. Bluecoats beat us in finals by a tenth. No one really cared. Coats were jerks about it. I didn't march my age out. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk Thank you for sharing. Amazing memory if you didn’t keep a journal and remembered all of this from the top of your head. I marched a couple years after you and the whole summer is a blur to me with only a few exceptions Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Continental Posted November 11, 2021 Share Posted November 11, 2021 7 hours ago, FTNK said: My girlfriend at the time took these videos. She told me she had uploaded them to YouTube, to which I said, "What is YouTube?" 😅 Hope I illuminated some of the design and behind the scenes elements of the show. Thank you for posting what went on behind the scenes. What a great read this morning! Please don't hesitate to post more. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jurassic Lancer Posted November 11, 2021 Share Posted November 11, 2021 (edited) 13 hours ago, FTNK said: My girlfriend at the time took these videos. She told me she had uploaded them to YouTube, to which I said, "What is YouTube?" 😅 Hope I illuminated some of the design and behind the scenes elements of the show. This is a great recap of your year! I would not be able to sum up my 1979 year with anywhere near this level of detail. I do remember that George Zingali yelled at me to stop ####### up his drill. 😂 Edited November 11, 2021 by Jurassic Lancer 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FTNK Posted November 12, 2021 Share Posted November 12, 2021 15 hours ago, Continental said: Please don't hesitate to post more. I think I may have emptied my brain LoL Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeN Posted November 12, 2021 Share Posted November 12, 2021 On 11/10/2021 at 9:23 PM, FTNK said: [Almost forgot - in the middle of spring training, our nurse got into an argument with Hop and quit] Not as uncommon as one might think. Had it happen twice in two years with Guardians. O_o Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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