The Last Few Days, Part 2: Sunday

Sunday morning I woke up at 5:30, showered, dressed, and ran out to the A27 where a car awaited to take me to a drum corps show.

Despite my experiences here, I couldn't help regretting missing out on a few summer traditions back home, one of which, of course, is drum corps. But then I discovered there was a DCUK show happening in Aldershot, which, geographically speaking, isn't too far from Brighton. When I discovered there was virtually no way to make it there and back in the same day via bus or train, I went to the DCUK website and asked if anyone had any advice for me. Within an hour, I got an email from Emma Weir, the director of the Black Knights, saying that she lives in Brighton (as does most of her staff) and would be happy to give me a lift.

The corps wasn't scheduled to take the field until the afternoon, but they were meeting at the show site at 8:00 to rehearse, and I was looking forward to sitting in on that as much as I was anticipating seeing the show itself. We don't often hear about DCUK in the U.S., but I have to say that when we do, it generally isn't very positive. I didn't care, though; I didn't expect to see a dozen 135-member corps or anything. I just wanted to check it out.

Most of the corps was arriving on a chartered bus, but the staff and a few members drove on their own. Aldershot is a "military town" -- basically, as much a military base as it is a town -- and, as luck would have it, there was an air show scheduled for the same day. The weather was looking pretty miserable, and I was a little surprised by how many people grumbled about it. I'd think they'd be used to it by now. Besides, as I reminded them, it was only 8:00 in the morning and the clouds were bound to burn off by showtime. To this, they grudgingly agreed. I may have been the only optimist.

Their equipment truck was there when we arrived, parked in a huge grassy area big enough to contain several football fields. I was introduced to some of the staff and ended up talking mostly with the brass staff, which included Dan (music coordinator/brass caption head, 2003 Cadets), Simon ('91 Blue Devils), and Eoin. Eoin, though a very nice guy, seemed to be lowest on the totem pole. Actually, being very nice might explain the totem pole situation.

I noticed that there were a gas-powered portable stove and two tea kettles in the equipment truck. I thought that was pretty funny. It's the little things.

By about 8:30 or so, the members had arrived and were straggling onto the field. DCUK has some weird age-out rules. The maximum age is 25 (as opposed to 21/22 in DCI), but each corps can also have up to three members older than 25. The result: 15-year-olds marching beside the couple that'd just come back from their honeymoon. Seriously! When I remarked how odd this seemed to me, I was told that if it weren't for the "three extra" rule most corps wouldn't be able to survive. I guess I can see the logic in that. Three members might not seem like much, but three capable musicians out of 30 or even 50 is a pretty significant proportion.

Thirty or 50 members would make for a Division III drum corps in DCI (i.e., the smallest division allowed to compete, with 30 members being the minimum required to field a corps at all), but here that's as big as they get. The Black Knights were short a couple horn players on Sunday (including one of their two contras, which had to hurt), but even with them they wouldn't have had more than 20 horns. By American standards, that's pretty small; by DCUK standards, that's... well, standard.

(I should warn you now: from here on out, it's almost nothing but detailed talk about drum corps. If you're up for that, you might want to go read the Onion or something.)

The classifications differ greatly from American drum corps and, for the most part, don't seem to be based on size. The Cadet class is for very small children, usually between 8 and 12 years old, and usually very small. The Black Knight Cadets, for instance, consisted of two sopranos, two snares (playing on indoor marching snares -- light enough for a 4th-grader to wear), a couple in the pit, and a handful of guard. Junior class seems to be a sort of intermediate category, still with younger members, but definitely with more of them. Open class corps are the top of the heap, but again, the biggest corps around on Sunday only had approximately 55 members on the field. Don't get me wrong; I would've killed for 55 members at Alliance. Sadly, I never got the chance.

After they were well and truly stretched out, the horns got down to visual warmups, which was when things started getting interesting. I should point out how some other standards of rehearsal etiquette are definitely different here. For example, the prevalence and generally increased acceptance of smoking means (apparently) that members can more or less smoke during rehearsal (and, as I was horrified to witness later, in uniform!). I find this ridiculous, personally. Just looks so crazily unprofessional, not to mention the damage it does. Plus, horn players smoking during rehearsal? They're probably losing 20% of their volume right there. Ill-advised. But then again, most of the staff smokes, so what do they care?

Anyway, I was talking about visual basics. I thought it was pretty cool that they did what I consider to be staples of any basic block, but I guess that's not especially surprising considering their staff has Cadets and BD experience. Unfortunately, I couldn't help mentally critiquing their technique. Timing's pretty good, but inconsistencies in technique between individuals is holding them back. I don't want to get into it.

When that was over, they tried to clean a little drill before the music guys took over.




See those horns? That's a new set of Dynasty brass to go with their new Dynasty drums. The sponsorship thing's working out for them. I believe it's no small reason why they sound as good as they do, although it's clear the quality instruction they receive is nothing to sneeze at. When they played their first note, I jerked my head up in surprise. Nice round, dark sound, clean attack, in tune... very impressive. And loud. Unfortunately, my tiny little microphone couldn't pick all of that up, but take my word for it.

(If you're really into this kind of thing, I recommend checking our their timing and slurring/tonguing exercises. I think they sound pretty great, even with my lousy mic.)

(They also ran through some show music: parts of the opener and the closer.)

It's a Danny Elfman show, which ran its course in DCI in the early '90s, but, y'know, they perform it well, so who am I to judge? Half of it's older Elfman ("Beetlejuice," "Edward Scissorhands") and the other half's new ("Sleepy Hollow," "Spiderman 2"). The arrangements, however, were markedly different from what I'm used to. The opener, for example, ends on a decrescendo to a mezzo-forte. I can see ending on piano. I can see ending on fortissimo even more. But somewhere in the middle? It's just a completely different aesthetic. Likewise, within the tunes there were a surprising number of sustained chords with written descrescendi, which would be, in my experience as an arranger, somewhat unusual in DCI. American drum corps tends more towards extremes. That said, it all totally worked.

They did some ensemble rehearsal with everyone on the field, but frankly, I was so tired that I nodded off. Nothing against them; I just didn't get enough sleep. I feel asleep everywhere that day: in rehearsal, in the stands (with my head resting on one hand), lying down in the grass next to the stadium after the show... everywhere but the car, really. It was just like being on tour again.

Abruptly, they put down their horns and left the field under Emma's direction. Their cadet corps was about to perform, so I followed them into the stadium.

I say "stadium," but they call it an "arena." In reality, it's a rugby field. I'd had a vague feeling that there was something inherently weird to me about drum corps in a country that doesn't play American football, and when I got into the stands I was able to put my finger on just what it was: no yard lines. They painted the field, of course, but there's no other time in the history of the Aldershot Rugby Ground when it has yard lines other than when the drum corps come to town. It just seems ironic that they have to turn a field intended for one sport into a field for another sport -- and then instead of playing that sport, they have a drum corps show.

Maybe it's just me.

I missed a couple cadet corps while standing in line for food. I couldn't figure out why the line was moving so slowly until I got up there myself. It took this woman forever to add 3.80 and .70. Literally a minute or two of thinking, checking, re-checking, asking someone else, checking again.... How hard is it? At any rate, thanks to her math skills (or "maths skills"), I missed 37th Kingswood Cadets and possibly one or two others. I got into the stands in time to see the the Junior class, which kicked off with the Staffordshire Knights, whose distinctive dotted uniforms made me chuckle a bit.

They played music from "Aladdin" about on the level of the Blue Saints or another lower-ranked Div. III corps.

Up next were the Squires, a fine example of good intentions gone wrong.

This corps consisted of a trumpet, a baritone, a contra, a drum major/trumpet, one snare, and three guard (two of whom sat out most of the show). They played music from the "Rocky" movies. It was absolute torture. The drum major was probably in his 40s and definitely the only competent musician among them, and the kids were probably in junior high. The "snare" drum seemed to lack an actual snare, and thanks to that and its tuning (way too high), it sounded like the kid was beating on a shoebox. On the plus side, I was able to get all of them but one into a single picture. On the minus side... everything. I understand wanting to give kids something to do in the summer. In this case, a drum corps isn't it. Start a Pop Warner cricket team or whatever they do here. I found out later that the Squires used to be huge, and now they're down to this. Time to shut down and re-organize. This was just painful to sit through. "Theme to Rocky" just kept going and going and going. To my utter disbelief, after their show a woman behind me said, "They're quite good." I'm sorry, but there's no one on the planet who could truly consider this group "quite good." Just being honest here.

Thankfully, the next corps, Stateside (this name makes no sense to me...) was miles better.

They played a bunch of random stuff, including "If I Were A Rich Man" and "Favorite Things." There was some kind of theme involved, apparently, but I couldn't really make out what it was. This group has a lot of potential. Based on what I saw, they should be able to get it together and move up a class one of these days.

Up next was the interval.

Last of all were the Open-class corps. I have videos of all of these. First up were 37th Kingswood, who I'd heard rehearsing before the show. From a distance, their battery sounded pretty good. Up close, they were pretty fantastic. They really laid down some notes with a confidence and attitude that no other drumline that day had. Their (10) horns sounded good too, but the battery was where it was at.

Kingswood were a hard act to follow, as the Stafford Lancers were soon to discover. I really didn't like the look of this corps. The grey and blue jackets aren't distinct enough, and the blue lines running diagonally across the torso make everyone look too wide. Every bit of pit equipment had an attached splash or ride cymbal, and more than once during the show every pit player was banging or rolling on those thing simultaneously as hard as they could. The effect was just white noise. White noise and discomfort. They easily overpowered the entire rest of the corps, especially in that tiny stadium. On the whole, the talent level was lower in this corps, though they were bigger than Kingswood or Black Knights. Apparently, it's not the size, but how you use it.

The Black Knights were the final judged corps of the day. I've already written plenty about them, but here's part of their show.

As if it hadn't been clear before, after their performance it was obvious that the show would come down to Black Knights's hornline versus Kingswood's drumline. At that point, I was predicting that the latter would come out on top, although there was no way I would've said that aloud.

The Senators were supposed to have gone on after the interval, but they had some kind of problem in transit, so they ended up going last. Later, Emma referred to them as a "show band." I guess "show band" must translate to "really good," because they were pretty awesome. It's not like any of these corps were doing heavyweight concept shows, but the Senators were clearly the Madison Scouts of the day: all about the crowd. If they'd been in competition, I expect they would've won. I would've given them first place just for playing Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now." (This is a bit of a longish clip -- about two minutes -- so it may take a little longer to load.)

Then it was time for retreat. The Cadence Cadet Corps played everyone onto the field. Sort of. They played, and corps got onto the field, but there seemed to be no real relationship between the corps' feet and the eight-on-a-hand the eight-year-olds were playing as a cadence. I felt sure of the outcome.

Scores were announced, and lo and behold, the Black Knights won... with a nine-point margin. That is officially crazy. I can buy them winning, but by nine points? I thought it was much closer than that.

Instead of a standstill victory concert, they did another full performance, like it was DCI Finals. Must've been tough for them, considering they'd spent the morning rehearsing and then already played a show, but they pulled it off admirably.

We cleared out of the stadium by 4:15, after Emma talked to the corps about their upcoming trip to Holland for DCE. That's "Europe," not "East." They have a full month off from shows to rehearse. Crazy. Their competitive season goes for a month, then stops for a month, then continues for another month before ending near the end of September with DCUK Championships. I expect the Black Knights to do very well.

I told Emma, and meant it, that they, the Senators, or 37th Kingswood could reasonably win Div. III if they chose to compete in DCI for a summer. She was flattered by that, but it's the truth. I love Div. I drum corps, don't get me wrong, but I also love small, elite units like these. That's what I wanted for the San Diego Alliance before we folded, and it's good to see that concept alive and well here. However, I also heard that DCUK membership is way down. There used to be more and bigger corps only a few years ago, but things have quickly started to change. Just as in DCI, no one's exactly sure why membership is down and corps have died out, but it's clearly worrying the staff I talked to. They predict that soon, all DCUK corps will be all-age groups, with no age maximum. That would be something to see. In the meantime, in case there's a British kid reading this wondering if he should check out DCUK, I say yes, check it out. It's good stuff.

Anyway, a fun day, and really great to see drum corps again. I got home at 6:00 or so and immediately started writing drill.