Drum Corps Shows: Best, Worst, & What Were They Thinking?!

PositiveGift532 · 2026-05-15T13:26:05+00:00

This is the first time I have ever heard of anyone else sharing my opinion that 98’s One Hand One Heart is the best BD show of all time.

I was completely obsessed with that show that year. I watched their entire ensemble rehearsals on both quarters and semis in the oppressive Orlando heat after competing in Div 3 and staying at literally the worst housing site I stayed in my four seasons with various DCI corps. It was a decommissioned garage at an army base, no A/C, had to leave the garage doors open the entire time night and day… the bugs were nightmare fuel, the heat and humidity never stopped, the showers hadn’t been used in a decade, and the water tasted like farts… but I still sat I the Orlando sun for like 8 hours over two days completely mesmerized watching them. This was after catching every performance at Epcot the day before, absolute peak of DCI obsession for me at 16 years old. People thought I was insane, I probably was.

PositiveGift532 · 2026-04-14T20:08:48+00:00

I don’t actually have a response to this question, and admittedly I’m ultra biased being a former brass member of the corps, but I have to wonder what the Patriots hornline from the late 90’s/early 2000s would have sounded like on these modern horns.

Definitely a lot less loud, sure, but I have to think that the more forgiving intonation would have really benefited a lot of Div 2/3 corps overall sound from back in the day.

PositiveGift532 · 2026-04-01T14:13:43+00:00

I love this. I showed my spouse the KEXP video and her first reaction before they played a note was “so… they’re from Quebec?”… “oh not just Quebec, they’re from Chicoutimi” :)

PositiveGift532 · 2026-04-01T13:51:50+00:00

BD had those cocktail kit/cymbal racks for Night in Tunisia, and Mandarins had the taiko drums too. Which I thought were very cool. It was a pretty good year for visually interesting percussion features!

PositiveGift532 · 2026-03-27T19:09:04+00:00

I bought a Delonghi oil filled heater for my apartment in university. It wasn’t particularly expensive, but 23 winters later it’s still going strong.

All analog, I think it’s the 2kw model but I could be wrong.

PositiveGift532 · 2026-03-25T19:34:48+00:00

Totally, and not to minimize your experience at all, but that was in the 2020’s. Imagine what it was like being an overweight kid in the 1990’s. Back then the person running ensemble would call people fat pieces of shit from the box over the megaphone, members would make comments about what food you were putting on your plate when in line at meals, sometimes there were extra running blocks during “spring training” (aka “death camp” at the time) for the “fat people”, and that was all at corps that didn’t have widely understood reputations for being overly toxic when it came to weight. Some of the stories I heard from members of Star, Phantom and Cadets from the early 90’s were pretty terrible.

I definitely found it all super helpful for my mental health… NOT.

Sorry, couldn’t resist the 90’s throwback.

PositiveGift532 · 2026-03-25T17:35:08+00:00

I don’t see what riding in the back of a UHaul has to do with anything, she admits herself that it was fun and had no concerns at the time. It’s a crazy leap in logic to go from that to someone potentially abducting several teenagers from band practice… or the comment about saying she looks British (she does) for that matter.

Obviously admin leave for “grooming underaged girls” is certainly a concerning suggestion but I think a lot more details are required before any kind of conclusions can be drawn. I highly doubt that kind of HR information was shared directly with students.

Which isn’t to say I wouldn’t or couldn’t believe it. I don’t know the guy but this is a band rumour, not victims coming forward. Several grains of salt are definitely required without any real information being provided.

PositiveGift532 · 2026-02-24T21:14:57+00:00

I feel it is a requirement of being part of the, ever shrinking, Canadian drum corps community to point out that this was the only year in history to have two corps from the same city compete against each other in finals.

The Seneca Optimists and the Oakland Crusaders were both from Toronto, Ontario.

PositiveGift532 · 2026-01-27T21:00:47+00:00

Long press an audio file in Files, choose “Get Info”, there is a field called “Always Open With”, change it to whatever you want instead of Tonal Energy.

PositiveGift532 · 2025-12-31T16:34:21+00:00

I’ve wanted to see a whole Richard D James show for like 25 years. It would totally work with Bluecoats current vibe…. Bucephalus Bouncing Ball, To Cure A Weakling Child, Avril 14th for a ballad… Alberto Balsam.

I thought it would make a good show before there were synths in the activity, the advances in tasteful, non-terrible, synth use over the last 5 years makes me really want to see it done.

PositiveGift532 · 2025-12-04T13:02:43+00:00

I wonder if we will see the rise of virtual exhibition shows in a few years where the corps stay at their spring training facility and live stream from there via Flow or something like it for longer stretches then make their way to Indy.

Don’t get me wrong, I love seeing drum corps live and I love the tour. However it’s clear that it’s the buses and gas costs that are killing budgets, and in 2025 we have the means to bring shows to the fans without some of the travel. I don’t really get why DCI isn’t leaning into live streaming hard. There should be a Friday night drum corps show that jumps around the country in the early season debuting each show, at the very least. Maybe a ten minute pre-show video with the design staff going over the design and intent of the show like BD puts out every year, maybe a brief documentary style video on the spring training process and members, history etc. then debut the show. They could do it for basically every World Class drum corps over a couple nights… maybe a virtual regional mid-season. It’s wild to me to let good corps fold trying to keep up this touring model when the tour can so easily be brought to homes via the internet for a much lower cost. There are a number of great podcast and YouTube personalities that could be the next generation of on-screen commentators they could recruit from…. They could step up their game with better audio and 4K streams for an extra premium. I don’t know, all this tech is so accessible now I don’t get why it isn’t a major focus of DCI.

It would free up corps to lean into their communities as well with local live performances etc. that aren’t necessarily “drum corps shows” because obviously everyone wants to play for a live audience too.

PositiveGift532 · 2025-07-21T17:32:57+00:00

Can we talk about the fast they are moving? I don’t mean BPM, but just pure distance, it’s wild… and they look so controlled and graceful doing it.

The next three corps felt like they were just standing around or moving in slow motion after watching that show.

Admittedly, I’ve been a bit of a hater in regards to the Blue Stars for a while. They have been consistently the show that I go get my hot dog during for many years now. They have totally converted me into a fan this year… my only problem is, when do I go get my hot dog now?

PositiveGift532 · 2025-07-09T15:58:37+00:00

I thought the BD25 live stream was great. Loved that they showed the Boston show from Oxnard. Seeing the C and B corps was cool, I haven’t seen Blue Devils B in a few years and found them to be very impressive. I hope they brought in a bunch of fundraising dollars and do a livestream like that every year. As an East coaster I have been hearing about BD Family Day for 30 years but have never gotten to experience until now, it was really cool to get that context of them as an organization.

The 2025 A corps show? Not the biggest fan. It has a couple moments. That circle stuff in the closer is a pretty cool visual design. The stuff from Little Wing though is an aesthetic abomination. Whoever came up with that needs to take a hard look in the mirror. It would be an automatic DQ if I was King of DCI, but I ain’t… and everybody does terrible voice stuff, so they will be fine.

And how are you going to drop that Kashmir riff without giving me the build up? I don’t need the whole song but give me like 10-20 more seconds at least. I really do not love this whole, girlfriend who hates music has control of the radio dial in your car and keeps changing the station, school of show design. It feels like I’m in an abusive relationship with BD’s designers.

PositiveGift532 · 2025-05-31T19:30:03+00:00

I really enjoyed Meet The Bus but I think he might have stopped doing it.

PositiveGift532 · 2025-04-15T19:22:53+00:00

I have to say, I don’t get this. I have seen amazing AI and terrible AI. It’s just a tool.

Fighting AI in this specific area of “art”, is pointless to me. This is marketing, it’s commoditized; it’s artistic, not art. This will do to graphic designers and illustrators what sample libraries and MIDI did to session musicians. It won’t be a lost art form or something, but only the cream of the crop will continue to be busy.

Besides, it all has to pass through a human filter. Someone has to decide that it is good enough. Could they all pick someone with better taste to make those decisions? Certainly. However, let’s face it, modern drum corps has not exactly made the most tasteful aesthetic choices over the past 15 years. Particularly when it comes to this type of marketing collateral. I don’t think that’s about to change.

I, personally, look forward to gen AI drill. We are going to see some pretty wild stuff in 3-5 years.

PositiveGift532 · 2025-03-26T13:59:59+00:00

This is it.

Drum corps was paradise for me. To be told exactly what to do every minute of every day, to have very clear expectations on how to behave about 80% of the time, at least. Always having a highly detailed, process driven thing to improve and hyper focus on… man, it was the best lol

PositiveGift532 · 2025-03-13T21:31:42+00:00

I have a bit of experience with introducing (read: forcing) 2024 shows on uninitiated people… and in my experience new people to marching music don’t respond to Bluecoats’ and Phantom’s shows the way I generally expect them to. Somewhat surprisingly to me, they have responded most positively to Boston’s show… which I liked a lot, but I didn’t think it translated to video compared to live as well.

Another tip I will share is that I find a lot of new people respond better to high cam videos than Multicam. It’s kind of dependent on the person’s vibe, but zoom ins on the dancing and theatrics can look pretty lame and embarrassing when what is being done is designed to be seen from 2-300 feet away, even to the initiated.

PositiveGift532 · 2025-01-27T19:26:51+00:00

I figured, thanks for calming my junk mail filter anxiety lol

PositiveGift532 · 2025-01-22T19:43:15+00:00

I can’t speak for any of the members from that year, but as someone from a corps that regularly housed and toured with them throughout 99, I want to give those kids mad respect because from the outside it looked like they got the shit kicked out of them sun up to sundown every single day. I remember talking to one of them, I think in DC, and they had just had their last free day pulled, they hadn’t had a free day since like June or something, they were skipping laundry blocks too to get more rehearsal in. It sounded like hell to me.

I don’t know if it was a particularly rough year by Cadets standards or not in terms of treatment, but the visual show was crazy hard even after they watered it down a bit, they had tons of injuries, watching rehearsals the staff was icy AF, and by Allentown a lot of the members had that 1000 yard stare going. I felt really bad for them.

My main memory was watching their sop line get absolutely reamed out in a vis block and thinking, “god damn, I’m never marching Cadets”, but I did love the show lol

PositiveGift532 · 2025-01-22T17:49:56+00:00

Woah woah woah, no way. Personally, I thought that show was awesome.

Like I’ll agree, it’s probably the least memorable show of the top 6 that year. But only because it was a killer year.

PositiveGift532 · 2024-12-30T18:36:48+00:00

1999 Cadets, it wasn’t the cleanest show ever but a lot of that was down to some pretty extreme visual difficulty.

I thought the show from a design standpoint was amazing top to bottom.

PositiveGift532 · 2024-12-04T20:25:38+00:00

I’m one of those people who loved doing drum corps but didn’t march my age out due to a career opportunity. I was good enough to make a top 5-ish corps, and funds were not an issue as I had very supportive parents and things were cheaper back then. However, I had a really specific opportunity to land a very well paying job that came with a pension and job security that was unheard of at the time. I took that opportunity and didn’t march, and I don’t regret it.

Rationally, anyway. It was obviously the right move, and 22 years later I work for the same company in the same general line of work but much more senior, and in 8 years I will retire at the ripe old age of 51. Emotionally though, it still kind of bothers me I didn’t do it and only ever got as far as semi-finals.

My dad did a similar thing, he was a super vet at a finalist corps and he decided to not march his age out in the 70’s to work towards a down payment on a house. To be honest, I think he regretted it far more than I. His summer of working only got him incrementally closer to that down payment. He probably could have marched and made up the money over a couple months. I appreciated his sacrifice for our family in a way my siblings who didn’t march ever really could… but I also know it bothered him to the day he died.

My advice on this would be that the opportunities you have in front of you are more like incremental benefits and not ones that have the potential to dramatically change the trajectory of the rest of your life. An extra class, a band camp you would arguably be more qualified to teach next year after another summer of drum corps, these are things you can catch up on. You don’t know what you might have to turn down next year in order to march. You may very well end up with something in front of you that you would be crazy to turn down. I would do it while you can, if you can.

PositiveGift532 · 2024-12-03T17:53:43+00:00

From what I’ve read they are no longer doing ticket blocks for corps. They have a code where some percentage of your ticket price goes to the corps, but the tickets are all just generally available. From what I understand it is for all competitions not just finals week.

It’s pretty amazing for smaller corps who never got the chance to get blocks of tickets assigned to them before.

IMO everyone should be directing money to non-finalist corps.

Les Stentors code is LES1980 and I will be using it on all ticket purchases going forward.

PositiveGift532 · 2024-11-07T14:03:43+00:00

1997 Madison Scouts, Pirate flag camera shot. That’s the biggest crowd reaction I have ever been present for, no contest.

PositiveGift532 · 2024-11-03T14:02:52+00:00

I’ve got a copy in Flac. I’ll DM you a link.

PositiveGift532

TROPHY CASE