OMG! Forgot to add this!
 

True story...

One year when I was at the Ex"sight"ment of Sound DCI show in Houston my mom and I saw these Cavelier groupie people. They wre these really large (I'm talking REALLY large) girls and women in a group with signs, wearing black and green, glittered up, you name it. They were just fawning over the guys like they were Gods or something. It was the funniest thing ever! They were like, screaming and crying and holding their heaving chests! :eek:

Once a band geek, always a band geek :D I never marched in a corps since I played clarinet and had NO desire to learn pit or colorguard stuff. But, of a 200-person band, we had a majority of our guard in Crossmen and a few horns and drums in Crossmen and Cadets. One of the guys in guard (yes, he was gay for all you nosey lil ones) had a Crossmen tattoo on his leg.

UPDATE
 

The Cavaliers have won, yet again (isn't that 4 out of 5 years? WOW). Second went to Blue Devils, then my beloved Vanguard, then the Cadets....

What a treat we had at home...the Cadets, Pioneer, and Soutwind spent all week at UNC in Greeley - 3 blocks from home, so we were treated to DCI practices and watched the rehearsals....the Cadets were simply amazing in how open they were to talking with our kids during/after practices. They may have liked corps before, but are now DEAD SET on becoming members of a corps in the future.

The Cadets drumline even gave my boys an autographed (though broken) drum head from one of the rehearsals.

My ears are still ringing.

Couldn't get to the DCI championships due to a family wedding, but still got a "fix" this year regardless.

DAMMIT......AGAIN....WITH A JAMES BOND SHOW?

How the hell did they win if BD won visual, brass, AND ensemble music?

I think ever since the focus went from musical ability to visual, the Cavaque...errr Cavaliers have taken advantage of that.

My friend marches Scouts, so I better talk to him to see how the season went.

SCV! SCV! SCV! They shocked the world in 99 and need to do it again.

This kinda bums me out...Cavies deserved to win 00 outright and MAYBE 01, but 02 shoulda gone to BD.....

Stan-
The only West Coast guy who likes The Cadets.

Scouts broke top 10 for the first time in a while...finally.

They always can rock the house with their energy, nice to see them back in form.

West coast Cadets fan? That is a rarity. Until last week, I wouldn't have counted myself as a fan of theirs, but, they won me over, not so much on the show (which was unbelievable, at any rate), but by the way they treated my kids - they fostered their sense of wonder of it all...even my 3 year old daughter would ask me at night if we could go watch them again....keep in mind this was all practice, in shorts, no uniforms...but she loved it nonetheless.

The Crossmen (partner corps to Cadets) did the same thing two years ago at DATR and my son loved being able to talk with them.

Very impressed. Their discipline is top notch, and their ability to connect with us townies was appreciated!

Yeah, from what I hear, their exec directors and his staff are drill sargents....whatever works.....

I'm a big fan of the following scouts shows: 93, 98, 99, 00. My Scouts friends say their shows "Make no sense"...whatever that means...

Thanks for bringing this up again!

Believe it or not, Mr. Silver and I were in a college band that put on DCI contests. It was amazing being in the press box during the competitions.
My favorite year...a certain corps put on a show with a fire-related theme. The show was amazing; and near the crescendo, this huge fire started outside of the stadium. We all thought it was part of the show and were seriously amazed. It was actually a high school on fire!:eek:
Silver

Phantom Reg?

Back when I was in high school, the band was formed into a DCI-style group. The North Miami Senior High School Pioneer Regiment was composed of all band students (participation in the regiment was mandatory). They won several local, regional and state awards before they disbanded in the early 1990s.

That would be my guess.

My boyfriend is an "ex-DCI guy" from England. He used to march in the baritone section with the Pride of Bristol out of Bristol, England. They weren't top-flight like SCV or anything, I can't remember which class they marched in. Though, they competed a lot in DCUK and the European championships.

The Pride of Bristol disappeared after he aged-out, but apparently the Colour Guard section kept going. However, he and some of the other veterans have returned to help out as floor crew on some of their road trips. Apparently, they've recently roped some of the veterans back into playing for a senior D&BC! They're aiming for the European Showband Championships later this month.

http://www.prideofbristol.co.uk/


As for DCI, I've pretty much liked them all! :) Well, ok, I'm not a super-expert, but I always seem to like the Blue Devils and Santa Clara Vanguard. Neil and I also have a soft spot for the Phantom Regiment.

Stan, are there any SoCal corps? The only one I ever heard of was The Velvet Knights....and I don't think they're around anymore. :confused:


.....Kelly :)

The Cavie's show was really good this year. I didn't get to see Blue Devils, but the Cavaliers were VERY good when I saw them in July.

I'm glad the Scouts are on their way back up. They're my all-time favorites.

I liked the Cadet's show. I also fell in love with the Boston Crusaders. I had never seen them in person before, but their show was really good. It was a colorwheel. Not the best technically, but very well-done.

I was supposed to go to the finals a few years ago when they were around DC, but we had band camp and couldn't go. My fiance and I are thinking about doing one of the adult weekend-only corps when we're a little older. He marches snare and I do pit. We met when we were drumline co-captains in HS, so we're huge DCI Dorks :p

Sorry to jump in, Stan....but isn't Impact from SoCal? (The "new" version of the VK?)...they have the exlamation point uniforms, and are a small DivII reincarnation, as far as I can tell...

Oh yeah:

Pacific Crest - Diamond Bar, CA. They compete as Div 1 in Cali, but Div 2 elsewhere. This puts them in the top 21 every yr, but not the top 12.

Impulse - The combo of Velvet knight alums and ideas shared by them and the Bridgemen. They've had some funny shows over the years, and should be competing in Div 1 as the joke corps in the next 10 yrs.

Esperanza - Won Div 2 couple years back. Solid corps.

San Diego Alliance - Young Div 3 Corps. Kinda like Blue Devils C.