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DCI WORLD CLASS EXPANDS TO 165 MEMBERS for the 2022 TOUR


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30 minutes ago, OldSnareDrummer said:

Yeah, that's a good point and very true. So many other options for kids now.

Was on council of a city church that was going downhill (doors since closed). Went to sessions on why the problems and what can be done. Why… changes to society and the area over the decades. What can be done… nothing really. Amazing how many other activities have hit the same thing for the same reasons... including drum corps

Edited by JimF-LowBari
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My town used to have THREE huge Catholic churches.  Now, we share one church with three other towns.  My parents used to go to Saturday evening dances at the local GRANGE Hall where my grandfather was the DJ.  Now, the Grange no longer exists (around here at least).   The local Saint Louis Community Center here was just sold to a local bakery, and all five small, local drum corps here in Southern Maine vanished in the last 1960s....BEFORE DCI cast a vote.  The society, for better or worse, continues to change.

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8 minutes ago, craiga said:

My town used to have THREE huge Catholic churches.  Now, we share one church with three other towns.  My parents used to go to Saturday evening dances at the local GRANGE Hall where my grandfather was the DJ.  Now, the Grange no longer exists (around here at least).   The local Saint Louis Community Center here was just sold to a local bakery, and all five small, local drum corps here in Southern Maine vanished in the last 1960s....BEFORE DCI cast a vote.  The society, for better or worse, continues to change.

Then we have the declining number of American Legion and VFW Posts and membership. But on other DC social media sites some are saying things can be like they used to. 🙄

I can name two or three Posts where the bar and social members are keeping them going. One is the Post for a dry town but is located across the alley from the town line. Some friends of mine call it “the club”.

Edited by JimF-LowBari
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4 hours ago, craiga said:

Your "criminally inaccurate" is so over the top that it virtually negates every other thing you said.   As for the numbers in the 70's and 80's and the financial prowess of many of those smaller drum corps, I need no lectures from you about the activity then.  I spent my teen years immersed in the Massachusetts drum corps scene specifically, and very few, if any had working BODs and financial plans.  And, I am not just referring to the Braintree Braves, who had a total membership of 8 and travelled to shows in a station wagon.  Even the 27th Lancers, who were a fierce competitor at the highest levels of DCI ended up having to throw the towel in because, as George Bonfiglio told the audience at a show one  summer, the busses were simply unsafe to travel on. 

So you saw the Massachusetts drum corps scene in the 1980s, and concluded that it could be extrapolated across all other states/provinces and decades?  That explains a lot.

Eastern Massachusetts had a unique explosion of drum corps activity, the likes of which will never be duplicated anywhere.  By the time the baby boom peaked, there was a drum corps in nearly every town.  Many of these corps were established as local youth activities sponsored by churches - so many, in fact, that an entire circuit devoted to just Catholic church-sponsored corps grew to include 30 such corps.  And they were just one-third of the corps scene in the area.  This was the only place in the world, ever, where a corps could experience a full and busy season of drum corps field competition within a 15 mile radius of home.

Of course, as time went on, several of those corps sought to get much bigger, travel more widely, and equip themselves more expensively than their church sponsors were comfortable with.   Beyond just the question of money, churches who served their local communities found their sponsored corps recruiting more and more kids from out of town, out of area, and eventually from out of state.  Churches are just one example of a variety of charities who supported drum corps for awhile, but when faced with the price tag escalating and the local impact dwindling, could no longer justify the expense as appropriate to their organizational mission.

The nature of competition being what it is, more and more corps went the route of the preceding paragraph.  Spending increased while sponsorship decreased.  DCI promised to solve that for their top 25 corps, but the math only really worked for 12 to 16 of them.  And if you missed top 25, you were on your own.

What you saw in the 1980s was the aftermath of all that.  A few ambitious corps playing "last man standing" (winner = Boston Crusaders after 27th folded), and a handful of surviving local corps facing a much more expensive proposition for continued participation in a sparsely-populated activity.

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Lastly, I wasn't insulting ANY corps, simply pointing out the fact the the activity is completely different now than it was 45 years ago, and the DCI Rules Congress has had little, if any impact on the groups without money

Quoting this out of total disbelief.  Just listen to yourself.  

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DCI had nothing whatever with the old Mayflower Circuit, CYO Circuit, or the Eastern Mass Circuit folding their tents.  Any suggestion to the contrary is pure fabrication and revisionist history.

move-along-nothing-to-see-here-gif-8.gif

Edited by cixelsyd
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50 minutes ago, craiga said:

all five small, local drum corps here in Southern Maine vanished in the last 1960s....BEFORE DCI cast a vote.  

List of competing junior corps from Maine in 1972 or later:

  • 5th Maine Regiment (Portland)
  • Pine Tree Warriors (Lewiston)
  • Firettes (Portland)
  • Maine Brigade (joint venture of 5th and Warriors in 1977)
  • Northern Lites (South Portland)
  • Aurora (merger of 5th and Northern Lites in 1980)
  • The Corps (merger of all the above in 1981)
  • 20th Maine Regiment (Oakland)

Most, if not all of these, should qualify as southern Maine.

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For the record, I was one of the founding staff people for the 20th Maine, and actually lived in Oakland and it is nowhere near southern Maine. Neither is Lewiston.  But, glad I have been able to give you a convenient target. Ironically, EVERY corps listed here went away due to horrendous mismanagement, which makes my point.

The only corps from Maine to ever have any DCI involvement was 20th, and after a brief 3 year life (including 2 DCI tours, btw) they folded because the chief fundraiser turned out to be a con man from Ohio who was wanted by the FBI.

So again, DCI had NOTHING to do with these corps going away.

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14 minutes ago, craiga said:

For the record, I was one of the founding staff people for the 20th Maine, and actually lived in Oakland and it is nowhere near southern Maine. Neither is Lewiston.  But, glad I have been able to give you a convenient target. Ironically, EVERY corps listed here went away due to horrendous mismanagement, which makes my point.

The only corps from Maine to ever have any DCI involvement was 20th, and after a brief 3 year life (including 2 DCI tours, btw) they folded because the chief fundraiser turned out to be a con man from Ohio who was wanted by the FBI.

So again, DCI had NOTHING to do with these corps going away.

  • If they folded prior to 1972, DCI had nothing to do with it.  
  • If they folded 1972 or later, DCI had nothing to do with it. 

Got it!

Sincerely now, a question.  Can you name two corps no longer with us that were not "mismanaged"?  Or does their absence prove "mismanagement"?

 

 

 

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1 hour ago, craiga said:

For the record, I was one of the founding staff people for the 20th Maine, and actually lived in Oakland and it is nowhere near southern Maine. Neither is Lewiston.  But, glad I have been able to give you a convenient target. Ironically, EVERY corps listed here went away due to horrendous mismanagement, which makes my point.

The only corps from Maine to ever have any DCI involvement was 20th, and after a brief 3 year life (including 2 DCI tours, btw) they folded because the chief fundraiser turned out to be a con man from Ohio who was wanted by the FBI.

So again, DCI had NOTHING to do with these corps going away.

The belief that the changing time wasn't happening, mis management , youths changing needs etc etc is a huge part of the contribution to the failure and and eventual dimise of many things , including many corps. Denial was for sure a factor for many. 

Even today in recent history some very good people should never have been in charge of some corps and led to either temporary success fast failure or eventual failure.

 

Edited by GUARDLING
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7 hours ago, KVG_DC said:

Oh hmm.  I wonder how the BSA bankruptcy / reorganization plan thing might upend corps using BSA. 

Not sure.  At this point, it’s just raised the cost but still relatively inexpensive.  I don’t know if every corps uses BSA but I know at least two that weren’t born out of Boy Scouts that have potential members and volunteers register with BSA (the two my kid has performed with).  That also gives them access to BSAs background checking and youth protection programs.

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14 hours ago, cixelsyd said:

 

Sincerely now, a question.  Can you name two corps no longer with us that were not "mismanaged"?  Or does their absence prove "mismanagement"?

 

 

 

Not going to name names (some info cam from private conversations) but know of some Senior corps that folded late 70s/early 80s. Reasons I heard were they couldn’t keep up with rising expenses and/or low membership. Mostly from smaller towns so fund raising opportunities were limited. Some of the low membership reasons were due to bad economy people needed to work weekends or left town for work. 
Two went inactive to try to give themselves a better chance to come back later. Reason was if they would have kept floundering the red ink would keep increasing. For one of them it worked after a season of inactivity.

disagree with mismanaged 

Edited by JimF-LowBari
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