Drumcorps Season Starting Soon!

[Woochifer]

For whatever reason, this board has always attracted people who follow the drum & bugle corps scene. The drumcorps season usually starts up in earnest in June and runs through the DCI finals in mid-August. Amazing stuff that these corps put on the field. My baby girl seems to have developed a thing for drums, so I might try to see if her attention span can last out a drumcorps show this summer!

One great thing about YouTube is all of the archival stuff that long-time collectors post, and this includes vintage drumcorps performances. I found the 1992 DCI Finals performance by the Velvet Knights, which has attained an almost legendary status because of the insane crowd response that show got wherever they performed. The judges never liked them (this show only placed 10th in 1992), but the crowds loved them and typically gave them louder ovations than the higher ranked corps (a few years ago, the fans voted this show among the top 10 favorite drumcorps performances of ALL TIME). VK probably remain my personal favorite corps, simply because they did not take themselves seriously at all, and routinely lampooned the other drumcorps that tried to liken themselves to high concept performance art.

This video is the finale of their 1992 show, which features a bear, a hunter, the proverbial fat lady, a wicked witch on a bicycle, and a man-eating shark. (Earlier in the show, a guy dressed as an Energizer Bunny got pitted against an inflatable Godzilla) It's more like a 100-yard long Looney Tunes cartoon than a drumcorps show, but it worked incredibly well. The crowd response supposedly blew out one of the broadcast mics, which adds to this show's legend as the loudest ovation ever at a drumcorps show. This is NOT a typical drumcorps performance, and was probably the last time that a blatantly comedic show made it to the DCI Finals. FYI, the sign that gets unfurled at the 3:20 mark says "IT AIN'T OVER UNTIL ..." Links to Parts 1 thru 4 follow ...



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYmPeN0KwvQ (Yes, that's an inflatable blow doll that she's dancing with)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l3qmy7LnOCc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KQ4QNIEARjs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Iaeo_D-6CPk
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KB36emKMPNg

The Velvet Knights were apparently influenced by the Bayonne Bridgemen, who were the original zany drumcorps back in the day and another crowd favorite that never got respect from the judges. Sadly, the Bridgemen went belly up in the late-80s, and the Velvet Knights followed suit in the late-90s.

This video is from a 1979 Bridgemen show. The other parts are linked below. The last link is actually a Civil War reenactment (the show is in Alabama).



http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PnY8TBYYGjo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2RK0Kwf7eQ8
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YB3pYcdxcGc
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8MtXrk8qqc

More recently, here are the vids of the last two DCI champions. The first one is the 2006 Cavaliers performance (yes, Sir T used to march with them), and the second one is the 2007 Concord Blue Devils who hail from the Bay Area.