Where and when was your first live corps show?

[Terri Schehr]

4 hours ago, Terri Schehr said:

We both marched that prelim show. And You saw my last show in junior corps. 

@greg_orangecounty was there too and won the whole #### thing.

[Ashontheinternet]

my first live dci event was corps encore 2022! im a youngin!!!

[Will]

My first live drum corps show was 1999 Drums on the Ohio, Evansville, Indiana. I was a junior in high school and we left band camp early to drive up from Kentucky to watch the show. 

Cadets, Glassmen, Carolina Crown, Southwind, Mandarins, Les Etoiles, Kiwanis Kavaliers. 
 

I vividly remember Les Etoiles climbing all over scaffolding props during their Ice Storm show and I was obsessed! 
Kiwanis and their jazzy music was fun; great guard.  The small but mighty Mandarins let me know that quality over quantity rules the day (at least for me). 

The color guards in all the groups blew me away but Glassmen in particular were just incredible!  And then the Jekyl & Hyde show from Crown and that gorgeous ballad 😍

Cadets music was phenomenal; show itself is somewhat forgettable BUT they were firing on all cylinders, which led into their 2000 show. 

Being a Kentucky native, Southwind was fabulous and that’s still one of my favorite shows. 

Edited September 5, 2025 by Will

[ranintothedoor]

Salem, 1999.  

Very first show - Yamato, "BUGZ"  

I saw Madison, Cadets, and SCV there... all amazing shows that year.  Changed my life forever.  🙂  

[greg_orangecounty]

5 hours ago, Terri Schehr said:

@greg_orangecounty was there too and won the whole #### thing.

Yup.  We found out we won on the bus.  It was wild. 

[OldCorpsGuy]

LaCrosse WI. 1981. 

[Mad Mello]

My dad was a band director and drum corps nut so it was definitely sometime in the 80s that I don't remember in Ohio or West Virginia.

[MikeD]

9/15/1963 in Livingston NJ at the Hilltoppers show. I was in the Hilltoppers feeder corps as a 10-year-old. I sat in a folding chair on the HS field sideline and was a runner for a judge. After each corps I would run up to my assigned judge, grab the completed sheet, and we'd take turns running them into the school where the tabulators were.

 

Position	Corps	Score
	1	Blessed Sacrament Golden Knights	87.623
	2	Saint Kevin's Emerald Knights	85.430
	3	Garfield Cadets	84.266
	4	Selden Cadets	78.443
	5	Bracken Cavaliers	75.036
	6	Belles of St. Mary's (NJ)	69.190
Exhibition	0	Hawthorne Caballeros
Exhibition	0	Hilltoppers

[leed17]

21 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:

what a show....back to back prelims and finals...tears then tears of laughter

Yes, definitely!  Bad part of it was - if we had known any better, we would have gotten there much earlier and caught SCV, Cadets, Madison, etc. in prelims.  There was no internet back then, and we were all so uninformed, we just arrived at that time to beat the traffic for finals, not really even knowing a schedule of the day.  Rest assured, the next year in 88 we got there plenty early to catch all of prelims 🙂

But seeing Sky and then VK was really a perfect way to see DCI live for the first time.

[Sideways]

1993 Port Huron…BD encore in a stadium with no track.