ffernbus3 Posted June 29, 2004 Share Posted June 29, 2004 Agreed that Madison stepping away from the 71 show was the right thing to do, Dan, the super years of the 70s were still to come....must have told you how much I dug 74 on the DCI legacy disc....what a sound! And "Dueling Mallets" percussion ensemble work was simply brilliant in design and execution without pandering in the slightest. And the crowd loved it, too! RON HOUSLEY Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
MikeD Posted June 29, 2004 Share Posted June 29, 2004 I remember! Pete Emmons did the M&M job for the 67 Anaheim Kingsmen (Fred Sanford on percussion): we have that in common with The Cadets as well as some other stuff here and there over the years.Re: White Rabbit.....I had an arrangement of that started for the 1969 Lakewood, CA, Ambassadors but for some reason it got shelved for some other project. RON HOUSLEY Pete and Bobby Hoffman were the visual guys back then.... I'm not sure about Pete's contribution in 70, but after that he was seriously on board my other two years. I seem to remember him being around more in 72 then even 71, but that might ba a fading memory! After the 71 season the Cadets cleaned out a lot of staff...our great percussion guy George Tuthill got let go, in particular. Well, much of the 71 line quit (including me at the time) and went to march with the Cabs, where George was also percussion guru...with Larry Kirchner on brass. I decided in the fall that I'd rather go back to Garfield, but I would NOT play drums in a non-Tuthill line, plus I had brass class coming up in college, so I played baritone for Don Angelica instead of percussion for the "new guy"...Fred Sanford! Looking back, can you imagine a drummer refusing to play in a line taught by Fred Sanford (who was a VERY great guy, BTW)... ...though playing bari for Don was also a LOT of fun. Mike Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Dan Guernsey Posted June 29, 2004 Share Posted June 29, 2004 Don't forget, in addition to "Alice," "Pinnochio," and the "Seven Dwarfs," we also had a "White Rabbit" with a clock lol! . . Well, we PLAYED "White Rabbit" in 1970...our initial Peace Sign music. Mike Yeah, Mike, the stars and planets were aligned in strange ways in 1970 and 1971. Rabbit symbolism seemed to be part of the counter culture movement back then. Obviously, you had Garfield's more overt anti-war statement with the rabbit motif. But, also in a curious way, our '71 Alice show via the rabbit image fit the rebellious mood of the times. In the drum corps context, that meant rebelling against authorative rules and hierachy through subversive "kids play." Specifically what the rabbit means as a rebellious symbol I don't know. Obviously, our respective corps directors weren't trying to overthrow the American establishment: the rebellion was savely channeled within drum corps to challenge the rigidity of VFW and AL rules. Its an interesting parallel how rebellious drum corps back then reflected, in some ways, the wider culture. Interestingly, "Alice in Wonderland" was not just a popular kids story, but was also a favorite story of the radical Surrealists artists and writers of the 1930s; the Surrealists influenced the psychedelic youth culture of the 1960s and early 1970s. The early Surrealists, including its leader, Andre Breton, wanted to liberate the supressed world of dreams, fantasy, and imagination that bourgeois culture seemed to stifle. Using Freudian psychoanalysis, they wanted to regress to childhood to recover that lost realm of intuition, spontaniety, and, hence, expressive freedom. If you have ever watched the 1981 film, "My Dinner with Andre," the avant-garde theater director, Andre Gregory, did an experimental play in the early 1970s called "Alice." Gregory mentions Andre Breton in relation to "Alice," using his surrealist techniques to create a play that was highly unconventional in staging, plot, costumes, etc. Yet, again, Bill Howard was not thinking about Andre Breton, or Freud. Sorry for the dissertation. Your rabbit statement got me thinking about its wider cultural implications. Dan Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimF-LowBari Posted June 29, 2004 Share Posted June 29, 2004 Mercedes emblem........clever. Actually read somewhere that (supposedly) was the explaination given to VFW Officals in the "Make War No More"(?) part of the show. Might have been in the old "Drum Corps Trivia" Game I sold last year. Or mebbe it's another Drum Corps Urban legend. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FrankBeMe Posted June 29, 2004 Share Posted June 29, 2004 dang Dan......I did not know all that! Well I did know that we were all in our own ways, starting to rebel against the man....you guys and Cavies and Garfield took it to the extreme--well for that time period anyway....and I really don't think the audiences, most anyway, caught on to that. Remember when Tony introduced Troopers at VFW where he said "The Troopers...Go Troopers!" He didn't do that for anyone else. I always thought that was kind of special Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ffernbus3 Posted June 29, 2004 Share Posted June 29, 2004 Again with those rebellious children! No doubt Madison coming out of, well, Madison had a lot to do with it. And you think of using "Variations on Yankee Doodle" -a clever and sophisticated arrangement in any decade-- as a color pre was just enough of an "anti-establishment" rebellious youth tweak towards those stuffy old WWII-ers who didn't have a clue, etc, ad nauseum: how perceptions change with time, eh? And Dan's right, ithe whole show WAS "edgy" for as far removed as it was from the then-old school drum corps as it was....subversive is what it was, eh? All credit to the staff, but you flat out have to give plenty of props to the performers themselves (musicians, the guard....and drummers, not to be confused with musicians :P ) for literally suspending the audience's disbelief and yet not letting things get corny. And as for the stellar alignment, Dan, did it have anything to do with the Moon being in the 7th house and Jupiter aligning with Mars? Here here! Or rather HAIR-HAIR! Whoda thunk people would be still talking about the Alice show after all this time, eh? And as far as the City of Madison in general, you folks sure know how to show a California boy a good time in adult sized portions! I remember one particular knee-crawling, snot-slinging drunk evening in your fair city in 1985....well, kinda. I do remember it was the last one, that's for sure! You guys sure weaned me off the bottle! RON HOUSLEY Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lancerlady Posted June 29, 2004 Author Share Posted June 29, 2004 Don't forget, in addition to "Alice," "Pinnochio," and the "Seven Dwarfs," we also had a "White Rabbit" with a clock lol! . . Well, we PLAYED "White Rabbit" in 1970...our initial Peace Sign music. Mike Thanks Mike..Now I've had that song"Go ask Alice" by Jefferson Airplane...stuck in my head for some reason? And thanks to everyone else, this is turning into a cool post! ^OO^ Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
byline Posted June 30, 2004 Share Posted June 30, 2004 Specifically what the rabbit means as a rebellious symbol I don't know. Ask and you shall receive. Wikipedia's take on it: The White Rabbit in the Lewis Carroll classic Alice's Adventures in Wonderland has also featured prominently in the drug, hacker, and goth subcultures, because of the surreal adventures Alice enjoyed after following him. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ffernbus3 Posted June 30, 2004 Share Posted June 30, 2004 Thread sorta puts the lie to that tired cliche about "If you can remember the 60s then you weren't there," doesn't it. 1971 is close enough to the 60s and the memory of the folks here seems to be quite intact, thank you, as far as drum corps goes. Did I mention the clean double tongue passage in "Yankee Doodle? The percussion clockworks before "Wooden Soldiers?" One valve and a rotor, key of G, slung drums......and no amps or voice-overs...OK, the witch hollered out that she was melting but that had to be there... ..and crowd-riveting entertainment of the higest calibre. Pretty good for what we had to work with, I'm thinking. RON HOUSLEY Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lancerlady Posted June 30, 2004 Author Share Posted June 30, 2004 Even though I was only 6 years old then :D. I'm always trying to learn History; about the roots of Drum corps...because that's what you should do if you marched..but some don't get that...:) Oh well. Thanks for the History Lesson...now I'll see what else I can find to ask about! :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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