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Santa Clara Vanguard 2023 Announcement Thread


Toby

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36 minutes ago, JimF-LowBari said:

On another SM have a guy who claims DCI is the almost sole reason for decline in corps. Even has a chart on number of corps that “for some reason” only goes back to 1972. All I have to do is bring up Senior corps had a great loss also and 🤬🤬🤬🤬
 

Yep hundreds of corps and hundreds of reasons

There are a lot of reasons.  It takes a special person to do this one season  now. You’re gone all summer.  I wouldn’t do it. For one thing, there is no way my family could have afforded it.  For another thing, I had to work.

I give them a lot of credit. 

Edited by Terri Schehr
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1 hour ago, IllianaLancerContra said:

Yes, but the curve isn’t straight.  There have been times when rate of folding was high, other times less so.  

What line is ever straight in statistics?

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22 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:

Agree. Especially for food there’s gotta be some bulk deals out there 

I know NOTHING about any of this, but i have to believe that if DCI and the member corps contracted as a whole with a company like Sodexo, they could get a better rate on food than each corps buying for themselves?  Maybe they already do this?  But if DCI committed that each corps would buy a minimum $$ from them over a set period of time, i think they may have more buying power?

just my two cents.

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21 minutes ago, Terri Schehr said:

There are a lot of reasons.  It takes a special person to do this one season of this  now. You’re gone all summer.  I wouldn’t do it. For one thing, there is no way my family could have afforded it.  For another thing, I had to work.

I give them a lot of credit. 

20 years ago my dad was surprised the activity still existed. His reasons were cost and time involved for the members. For a guy who never graduated high school (joined the army) he could see things very clearly.

Edited by JimF-LowBari
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1 hour ago, MarimbaManiac said:

...seriously? It's pageantry. That's kind of the purpose. What other section has singular instruments doing something independently besides brief soloists? The entire point is that you're pulling together large groups of people doing things together. 

 

You have multiple brass playing the same parts because you need to hear it from 50 yards away, unamplified. You also need the body count for the "visual" pageantry stuff (formerly known as marching). If you have amplified pit instruments playing the same part, you don't need multiple to be "heard" because you're amplified and you're not contributing much to the visual package.

Point is almost for every suggestion people say "oh that's not a big expense in the grand scheme of things/compared to <whatever>" so leave it alone, but you end up with a dozen things that individually aren't that big an expense but together start to make a dent.

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23 minutes ago, scheherazadesghost said:

Or your young body broke, due to their mishandling, and you raged out instead of aging out the only way you were groomed to believe was acceptable. Then they were really done with you. And not just the org, but fellow alum too. This is not even close to just my story at SCV.

It's just not right in any case. Still there's crickets from virtually every organization (and all individuals) involved because they skipped the apology and went straight to safeguarding the current membership... it makes sense. But it's not wise at this point, especially given the successes at other corps that emerged from leveraging the expertise of qualified alum via volunteer, fan, or employee. Alumni cultivation is better than nepotism, obviously.

I demand no such work be done now by SCV. Skeleton crews get my compassion: I want them to do triage right now. But it sure would be nice to reconcile with them some day. If that happened, I'd be willing to do the hard work of shepherding back those alum who were hurt worse than me, should they be willing. 😞

I don’t think I could say it any better than that. 🙌👏👏👏

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4 minutes ago, frachel said:

You have multiple brass playing the same parts because you need to hear it from 50 yards away, unamplified. You also need the body count for the "visual" pageantry stuff (formerly known as marching). If you have amplified pit instruments playing the same part, you don't need multiple to be "heard" because you're amplified and you're not contributing much to the visual package.

Point is almost for every suggestion people say "oh that's not a big expense in the grand scheme of things/compared to <whatever>" so leave it alone, but you end up with a dozen things that individually aren't that big an expense but together start to make a dent.

Who says they aren't adding to the visual package? Maybe to you. However I promise the pit spends just as much time trying to look a specific way, as they do trying to SOUND a specific way, and it definitely adds to the overall package. Again, the instruments are basically free, the mallets are HEAVILY subsidized if not free, and they get to collect $3500 in tour fees from 15 additional members. Also again, the 5 marimbas are playing different parts for the majority of the show, which people just seem to gloss over, and doing so in synchronization while looking exactly the same adds to demand. There is literally no substance to the argument that one marimba will have the same overall effect as five. 

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I am not an alumnus of SCV, only affiliation are my cousins that still revere their shield som any decades later. But i have great empathy to the alumni, current MM's, and those that got contracts as early as last Sunday. The corps I mostly marched with, loved my time with, and still keep up with my fellow alum nearly 30 years later...folded before I could age out...the rug was pulled from under our feet right before we were going to do great things as early as 1997, and great things were going to happen. I went on elsewhere to finish up, but it wasnt the same. We had a great run in the mid 90's and could've been a Mandarins, or an Academy, we had some great staff that are still doing great things in other places...but sadly finances became an issue then just like they are now with other corps. 

I look back fondly at those years and think about the old saying, "don't be sad it's over, be happy that it happened." I am a pessimistic optimist, i truly hope Vanguard can comeback strong in 2024, but am pessimistic at  the long term future of the activity as we know it today.

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