What do you really want out of DCI

[Michael Boo]

I'd like them to stop making substantive alterations to the activity in the name of "innovation." MLB hasn't switched to aluminum bats for a reason. ...

Major League Baseball is still using bats in G.

[beckylynn44]

That and bring back full retreats.

AGREED

[Piper]

I'd like to see full retreats make a comeback too. Granted, if you're a marching member they're a royal pain in the butt, but if you're in the audience they look fabulous. :)

Edited March 25, 2007 by Piper

[geluf]

That is an intelligent comment. He's clearly done nothing for the progression of the activity. Kick him out!!

I think that very "progression" is the reason the poster WANTS him gone.

[geluf]

That and bring back full retreats.

Eh...I could do without seeing these come back. For big shows like Finals and the super regionals..ok, yeah, but otherwise, DM only is just fine.

Its just too big a hassal. The corps line up and one at a time start to retake the field at a mind-numbingly slow pace (and if you're PART of the corps in this, its even WORSE) as they follow the lead of a guide who doesn't actually have much of an idea what he/she is going to do with you.

Then you're placed inside your alloted field space between yard line X and Y, only to be moved down later because whoever split the field into sections can't count and there are 2 more corps then they have made space for.

So the shuffling and tweaking beings, and lasts about 10 minutes or so because it would be WAY to easy to just grab a megaphone and go "HEY! YOU ON THE END THERE! YEAH, YOU! EVERYBODY MOVE DOWN 5 YARDS NOW!". No, we all have to have it suddenly dawn on us that there is movement occurring, so we create a ripple effect down the field.

Once everyone is in place, we then wait ANOTHER 15 minutes because even though the judges sent their sheets off the to tabulators half an hour previously, they are apparantly still frantically trying to add 8 numbers together via calculator, the brain power for which must be requiring the involvement of not only the entire show staff, but several outside sources from neighboring university math departments as well (or it could be that we wait 15 minutes because the show staff like long dramatic pauses, who knows?).

Meanwhile, time is ticking away. There are food trucks to reload, uniforms to remove and store, and instruments to put away before the busses can even THINK about moving out.

[audiodb]

Parity.

[SpartacusRocks]

DCI does a terrific job and I'm thankful that it came to be when it did as the VFW/CYO, etc. were clearly losing interest and commitment. That we still have drum corps today has alot to do with DCI's eagerness to take control.

That said, I can imagine a different organization (or atleast a supplemental organization) which instead of focusing on end-result issues (types of instruments you can play, where the pit can be positioned, etc.), would focus on the general advocacy of marching brass and percussion. A group which is committed to spreading/building involvement at all levels of participation...big and small, touring and non-touring, middleclass and urban class, etc. A group which funds small corps with the simply goal of building interest. A group which gets as many kids as possible playing brass and drums and lets the creative end results fall where they may. A group which gets the kids playing and lets the resulting proliferation of corps take care of the creative details.

Of course DCI has always done this to a degree (advocacy has always been part of its activity and mission)...but I wonder about redrawing the lines. DCI has typically been concerned with exisiting corps...particularly the most competitively successful. I am not convinced that this has raised an overall interest in marching brass/percussion music and wonder if it has instead insured a proliferation of elite corps. In a sense, it has reversed the purpose of early drum corps which was much more prolitarian (i.e. drum corps as social activity to "get the kids off the streets"). Today corps is largely an uber-bourgeois activity (which I love, don't get me wrong) but it's audience is declining and we've lost the social purpose.

Edited March 25, 2007 by SpartacusRocks

[jwillis35]

I think DCI is doing just fine. They have taken drastic steps in recent years to enhance their revenue, to enhance the fan experience, especially with their web site, Season Pass and more, and the Cinecast productions; and DCI is expanding in some areas while cutting back in others that no longer fit the bill.

As for retreats, I can do without them. They take too long, most people leave before they start, and at most shows I just want to hear scores and go home. Retreats are fine for a few really big regionals and DCI Finals anf that's it. Otherwise, it's just too much pomp and circumstance for me, especially for some regular-season show in which the corps need to travel and the licensed CDL drivers need the appropriate time to get to the next city and school. The law requires that the drivers have a certain amount of time to get to the next city and rehearsal site for the corps, and that must include stops for bathroom and food. This isn't the 70s anymore and DCI needs to clean its image of how its corps used to travel in the past. While those days make for some great stories, they also do not cut it under the law today.

Times change, people change, rules change, and in an activity like this one, artistry changes. If you can't handle change or if your needs are not being met, then I suggest, as George Carlin once stated, you drop some of your needs. This sounds harsh, but only because we choose to look at it this way. In reality, the person who needs G bugles, less dance, no electronics and no amplification, no singing, no play-acting, no artsy-fartsy shows, just balls-to-the-walls brass and drums as often, as loud, as high, and as exposed as possible, is someone whose needs are not only limiting for the activity, but they become the antithesis of what DCI has been from day one. They see their needs as upholding the tradition of the activity, yet the activity has been changing since day one. Exactly where is the cutoff point for all that change for which we can hang our definition of the activity and proudly pronounce, as we pound on our chest, that this is DCI and nothing more will be accepted?

Because it is an all-inclusive activity, there will always be those who desire different aspects of the many faces it wears, and in that sense those many faces will attract people for all kinds of reasons. You can't define that or control it, nor should you, and if you find that this is the only place you can whine and mone about the decline of drum corps as you know it, then perhaps you need to seek other entertainments. If you are so inclined to really get involved to be a part of the shaping of the activity, then by all means get involved. Rome was not build in a day and DCI will not change overnight, but all of you can find more positive ways to enhance and shape the future of drum corps, little by little, by getting involved. To blame the current state of DCI on one person, providing you don't like where DCI is at the moment, is akin to blaming the President for everything that goes wrong when so many others are involved. It's really naive and misleading, and it presupposes that all one has to do is come up with a proposal to change the activity in some way and that everyone will vote for it. To that end, the person who gets involved can clearly see the connectedness to current financial needs and alternatives, to the new generation of members whose culture is vastly different from that of the 70s or 80s, and the to need for a alliance with scholastic music programs.

And to the person who clearly indicated that these artists who desire change and such are acting out of arrogance, I will suggest to you that being artistic is not an act of arrogance. It could be stated, however, that one who enforces his/her rationale for what drum corps should be is acting more out of arrogance and perhaps an inability to work with others. Artists, hence field designers, composers and arrangers, and the like are always looking for ways to enhance and create the new. This is no more arrogant than a school teacher using different methods of teaching in order to get through to a student. It's as simple as this: don't define DCI for me and I will not define it for you, but in the course of evolution and economic change there are certain realities that will alter the activity in both ways we like and don't like, and we may have little control over that. Only time can heal some of those wounds, if they really are wounds, and only those involved control the future. There will always be the bad with the good, and I suspect that was true in the 50s and 60s as well.

JW

[kevingamin]

Major League Baseball is still using bats in G.

Which means that home runs, while not as in tune as with bats in Bb, carry farther.

[SpartacusRocks]

And to the person who clearly indicated that these artists who desire change and such are acting out of arrogance, I will suggest to you that being artistic is not an act of arrogance. JW

I did not see the original comment to which you are referring so I am not defending the post you reference. However your thoughtful comments left me wondering about a few things and I share this now FYI, if you care to consider it.

The line between "confidence" and "arrogance" is not always clean and the act of creating at the very least requires confidence (in vision, in articulation...) but that process of creating is often imbued with arrogance (think Beethoven, Liszt, Mahler, Schoenberg, et al) who rejected certain aspects of the past...indeed even mocked them...and interjected their vision or version of "right" over the current paradigm or practice.

IMHO there is a certain arrogance amoung drum corps staff who create "artsy fartsy" shows at the expense of distancing their audience. As a fairly high-brow guy myself, I generally dig the "artsy fartsy" shows (long live Garfield, Blue Knights, Glassmen, Santa Clara, etc.) but that doesn't preclude an awareness that those with more ordinary tastes are being excluded.

Does drum corps--as an entertainment--have a responsibility to common tastes or is it art which has a responsibility only to itself? Every year we see examples of corps which balance this line with amazing deftness and dexterity. Clearly drum corps benefits from the visions and energies of artists, but I wonder if the medium itself is really better off in the realm of "entertainment" making the need for "creating" far less important. It becomes a question of craft, not genius...skill, not invention.