elphaba01 Posted May 12, 2006 Share Posted May 12, 2006 Donny, what you say may be true, but take a quick look at the 2005 Bugler's Hall of Fame Inductees. Many if not most had affiliations with both junior and senior corps. This is especially true of people in the NYC metropolitan area. How many guys went from corps like the Queensmen, Loretto, Selden, Bpt. PAL, St. Raphael's, the Warriors, and others, then went to Sky, Sun, Cabs, Hurcs, etc?This wouldn't be true about the midwest, where the number of senior corps were limited at that time. I was just speaking from my own experience. ....and Fran, as they used to say in Sun, I HEAR YA! Mark Riley "Movin' On Up": Speaking ONLY for my own generation in junior corps: Going to a 'Senior' corps was what most of us LIVED FOR. The "Big Guys" were, to us, GODS. Corps like Hawthorne, Skyliners, Sunrisers, Hurricans and people such as Joe Genero, "Pepe" Nataro, "Hy" Diietzer, Ray Ludee, John Sasso "Lefty" Mayer and Jim Costello were larger than life. Many of them worked with us in juniors, and we "Counted the days" to the time we could join them in the "Seniors". The junior corps "Base" that the senior corps relied on for replacements has been destroyed. The community drum corps (Parish, PAL, etc) are long gone, replaced by the "Tour". The "All Age" units must now rely on the high schools to pick up the slack and provide the replacements. Elphaba WWW Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
RayH Posted May 12, 2006 Share Posted May 12, 2006 The junior corps "Base" that the senior corps relied on for replacements has been destroyed. The community drum corps (Parish, PAL, etc) are long gone, replaced by the "Tour". The "All Age" units must now rely on the high schools to pick up the slack and provide the replacements. Elphaba WWW So sad, and yet, so true!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
KeithHall Posted May 12, 2006 Share Posted May 12, 2006 This is something that fascinates me, and I wonder what others think.....When I was young, there was a very different relationship between junior and senior (all age) drum corps. For many of us, the transition from marching for a junior corps to "going senior" was something we looked forward to with great anticipation. I'm talking now about the late 60s and early 70s in Connecticut, where I grew up, and in New York, where I later marched. We used to have alumni from corps I marched with come to our rehearsals and develop relationships with the better players so they would go "up the Valley" and march with the Connecticut Hurricanes. Senior corps was something that we as kids aspired to be part of (and not just for the drinking). Corps like the Hurcs, Cabs, and Skyliners used to have huge influxes of kids from corps that broke up during that period (there were many reasons for those breakups, so I'm not talking poaching here). So my question is this.... When did the relationship change? When did junior corps kids start looking at the senior experience as a step down, because it certainly wasn't that way for us. Do they get burned out marching junior, do they really think seniors are to avoided at all costs? Just a question....... Mark Riley I remember that when you aged out of junior corp some guys went to Senior corps. In the case of my corps...guys left to join Hamburg Kingsmen to wear new uni's and play music by Mike Duffy not sure if that was 73 or 74. It was a sad time for those of us who stayed because we rebuilt and never got to where we wanted to finally be. If the year was 1974, Hamburg took 13th place missing finals. I wasn't a big fan of DCA until 1990 when I marched Cru. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Donny Drum Corps Posted May 12, 2006 Share Posted May 12, 2006 OK I understand that the GSC and whatever circuit the Connecticut corps that werent excellent and all that...and I will take back my stand that was maybe only true for the circumstances I had. Some good points have been made, but we are still talking about the decades of drum corps that had 3 days of JUNIOR prelims at VFW Nationals, and no corps repeated. So there were many marginal corps that I guess would look to the seniors as what they were training for. It just wasnt the case for me. There were many class A, Class B, All- Girl, etc. corps that were the training ground for the seniors. But the farther west you went, the less it was true. And to Bill Stork...72 CRU was a monster corps!!! It was the exception to the rule. St Joes was on its last legs in 71 and CRU was amazing in 72. But if you happened to pick any other years to make that same comparison, it probably wouldnt hold up. Anyway...good discussion thread. Donny Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JimF-LowBari Posted May 12, 2006 Share Posted May 12, 2006 LOL as 1972 Cru is one of my favorites to listen to. And I never even saw the field show as I had not discovered DC yet. On topic question: Which Jr corps were "connected" to what Srs. Sounds like a St Joes to Crusaders and Muchachos to Cabs connection but who else? Wondering because theye were no Jrs to speak of around Harrisburg so Westshore was on their own. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fran Haring Posted May 13, 2006 Share Posted May 13, 2006 LOL as 1972 Cru is one of my favorites to listen to. And I never even saw the field show as I had not discovered DC yet.On topic question: Which Jr corps were "connected" to what Srs. Sounds like a St Joes to Crusaders and Muchachos to Cabs connection but who else? Wondering because theye were no Jrs to speak of around Harrisburg so Westshore was on their own. Not sure if this qualifies as a major connection, but the Sunrisers got a bunch of members (including me) from the Manville Sacred Heart Crusaders junior corps, from 1974 through 1980-81. John Arietano, Sun's soprano soloist and later their brass arranger, also arranged for Sacred Heart, starting in 1971. He recruited my brothers Lenny and Marty for the Sunrisers in 1974.... and that started the influx of Manville folks. The ex-Crusaders basically made up the heart of what came to be called Sun's Jersey Crew. Fran Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
TomPeashey Posted May 13, 2006 Share Posted May 13, 2006 Yes, interesting stuff... I'll just add a couple of points Mike Davis had a great point about kids following staff... that has always been the case in corps... i.e. the mentioned migration of St. Joe's guys (and Brigadier guys) to Crusaders for the wonderful 1972 season was without doubt more due to guys wanting to work under Corky Fabrizio than any other reason... Even I will admit that I went back to Cru from Brigs in the fall of 1971 to rejoin Corky. Now, just to keep things interesting... Jr. corps have ceased to be a major factor in filling the recruitment needs of senior corps... sadly, pretty much a fact... that occured when junior drum corps to survive became dependent on bandos... which was bound to happen... but the missing factor was "The Drum Corps Family" (I must mention that there has been much more success in the last decade with Jr. alumni doing senior corps in the "growth" areas like Renegades and CorpsVets) You no longer had kids like me whose parents EXPECTED (lol read that MADE) them to march corps as kids and then go do senior corps. It is the huge drum corps families that built the dynasties that we now refer to today when talking about the past... Whether it was Ed Peashey keeping his 3 sons in drum corps or the Dad OTT family in California.. it was this continuing family attitude that made the difference... The irony is that to a slightly lessor degree, the DCA corps had to rely on bandos to survive too... However, in the senior corps activity from the late 70's on, almost all corps realized that to survive we had to keep the "family attitude"... doing full time work, completing your education and starting a family - the important things in life - could only be combined with drum corps if that corps experience was a healthy, safe, affordable and - still - a family proposition. For the last 20 years there has been an interesting turn on that issue as the senior corps have FED the DCI corps... believe me, as a director, I can start naming names of kids who simply could not afford DCI at first or on the surface had not refined their talent enough to make a major DCI corps - after a year or two with a good DCA corps - they walk into a spot with no problem... I should mention that many senior corps have policies of doing everything they can to assist their people in getting an "age-out" slot with a DCI corps for a deserving and dedicated member. For a time, we even paid all or part of their tour fees when $$$ was more plentiful. I have also called directors and key staff members myself and made recommendations for kids. This all paid off in spades as they came back and became great performers and often staff members for our corps. so part two of the discussion should be: Is DCA a training ground for DCI? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Jeff Ream Posted May 13, 2006 Share Posted May 13, 2006 in some cases yes Tom. many kids do DCA to get their feet wet then go on. Some also stay and never go on to DCI. our philosophy at Westshore was training ground and retirement home. and thus the key....getting the kids to come back after they do DCI Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K2SMA Posted May 13, 2006 Share Posted May 13, 2006 (edited) And to Bill Stork...72 CRU was a monster corps!!! It was the exception to the rule. St Joes was on its last legs in 71 and CRU was amazing in 72. But if you happened to pick any other years to make that same comparison, it probably wouldnt hold up. Anyway...good discussion thread.Donny Donny, All I'll add here is this: "'The final blasts of Ironside reverberating into the 1st base (finish line side) stands at Roosevelt Stadium!" Whoa...! SMA Edited May 13, 2006 by K2SMA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
K2SMA Posted May 13, 2006 Share Posted May 13, 2006 (edited) Jr. corps have ceased to be a major factor in filling the recruitment needs of senior corps... sadly, pretty much a fact... that occured when junior drum corps to survive became dependent on bandos... which was bound to happen... but the missing factor was "The Drum Corps Family" (I must mention that there has been much more success in the last decade with Jr. alumni doing senior corps in the "growth" areas like Renegades and CorpsVets) Tom, Had a great 90 minute phone call with Bill Oney of White Sabers last night. One of the subjects we discussed was "drum corps families". They have them, we have them now in MCL, and many other corps do, too. And thinking about it, we had them in Sentinels, Archer-Epler, and most of the other corps in which I've marched. For obvious reasons, that's just not possible in junior corps. However, I do recognize many DCI situations with Billy marching in DCI corps "X"'s soprano line, Sis in the cymbal line, Mom serving lunch from "Miss Fridgidaire", and dear old Dad driving the equipment truck. But let's face it, not many families can take off the entire summer to do that. All-age corps, by its weekend nature, makes that scenario much more likely. Except here, Mom is in the 2nd soprano line, and Dad's lugging around a contra! Perhaps the it's thing I like best about senior (oops, I used the "S" word!) drum corps. And Billy's Mom is EVERYBODY'S Mom! SMA Edited May 13, 2006 by K2SMA Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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