In any piece of art, objective decisions must thousands of times. be made from thousands of choices. It is a yes or no. Do I add this color? Do I add this sound? Do I add this space? What about that transition? Eliminating poor choices is called experience. Picking from the good ones is called experience!

 

The original intent of drum & bugle corps score sheets was fairness and accuracy using two judges in each field caption. Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) and American Legion (AL) contests awarded 90 of 100 points for field performance and only 10 for general effect. Major contests had two judges for each caption producing scores using thousandths (like 85.935). Every mistake was a tenth of a point (a tick mark on the score sheet) or more using a unit penalty of up to a half point for extended mistakes or more than one person committing the same error in a measure of music. Marching used the same formula. It was strict judging and you could get wiped out quickly if you didn't know your basics. This focus on the performer propelled North American drum & bugle corps far past the educational system. High step marching bands of the 1960s were laughed at. They had no clue as to what the drum corps juggernaut was doing or the effect it would soon have on them. Add to this the fife and drum masters began teaching a plethora of East Coast corps in 1951 through Sons of Liberty members. Bobby Thompson, Les Parks and others broke with the fife and drum tradition of dissing the lesser experienced VFW and AL drum and bugle corps. (Members of Charles T. Kirk from Brooklyn N.Y. - the best drumline in the world in the 1930s - forbade their members from teaching "M&M" corps.) With former individual champions and instructors returning to judge in the 1950s, by the mid 1960s there was a tremendous forward movement of music selection and arrangements that left high school and college marching bands completely behind. You are what score sheets say you are. Their sheets said to play difficult music cleanly to win. The 1965 Royal Airs of Chicago were the first modern corps using pitched bass drums and Truman Crawford/Mitch Markovich arrangements that sounded completely unique in the music business.

 

How did the score sheets get rewritten to favor the staff design over the performer?

 

Drum corps technical expertise allowed them to perform music audiences realized was in a class of its own attracting thousands of fans to shows, especially the U.S. Open in Marion, Ohio. It quickly became a week long festivity with townspeople and businesses housing from 60 to 100 of the best North American corps. There were All-Girl, Class-A and Open Class prelims and finals. The late 1960s saw band directors and their students in the Harding Stadium stands ogling at the precision and amazed at the arrangements of the drum and bugle corps (if it didn't rain. Marion was famous for dousing corps like Blue Rock with tumultuous thunderstorms). It became a movement.  Everyone was buying tickets and the corps were attracting the best talent, especially in percussion. Some saw opportunity. The focus of those involved soon shifted heavily toward their paychecks, putting aside the real reason for the competition.... to allow youth to compete fairly against their peers.

 

DCI was formed after Don Warren (Cavaliers) and Jim Jones (Troopers) had a chance meeting in a bathroom at a contest. Warren stated they should do shows on their own and Jones countered, "We certainly have the product." Very true. Another incident I witnessed added to this view. The 1969 VFW Nationals were in Philadelphia. Corps had a 10 point inspection (one tenth per deduction) for all state and national contests. The Philly inspection was on a blacktop in sweltering 100 degree heat. Five members of the Cavaliers feinted going face first into the tar. One hit so hard he bounced about 4 times off the ground. Norwood Park Imperials did about same. My father ended up assisting a number of members back to their busses. The corps directors were not angry about this. it's drum corps after all.  Corps kids can and will take anything to be on the field. They protested the show because the two sets of inspection judges did not meet in the center of each corps and one was a much harder judge. Inspection scores carried through to finals. The VFW capitulated announcing all inspection scores were thrown out. This laid the seed for the 1971 "Combine" sponsoring shows on their own (Blue Star, Cavaliers, Santa Clara Vanguard, Des Plains Vanguard). DCI's first season was 1972.

 

Larry McCormick was a Cavalier drummer, then an arranger.  He made money selling some very good arrangements to corps. He soon travelled to the 1971 AL convention in Indianapolis to get the GE percussion caption removed so his arrangements could score higher. (Judge me, not the kids). Instructors and judges travelled from all over the East Coast and Canada to successfully stop him. The Cavaliers did a "Circus Show" by McCormick in 1971 that had the audience at the U.S. Open booing them. Booing almost never happens at a drum corps show. but McCormick's idea to experiment on the Cavaliers wasted their entire season. A clown kicking a ringmaster in the butt was not funny to the serious drum corps audience. It was embarrassing. Members of their snare line stated that corps was one of the most talented they ever had. McCormick's real target was America's 20,000 high school marching bands. THAT has been their target for decades. Drum & bugle corps became a loss leader as the focus on high school band directors wanting to get into this new competition arena intensified.

 

DCI's initial point allotment was a workable 70 points for the performer and 30 for General Effect (10 each for brass, percussion and marching). The best system percussion ever had was a 12 point tick system execution sheet with two judges and one judge for "Percussion Analysis" having 4 points for musicianship and 4 points difficulty. This system exposed any weakness and awarded difficulty. It soon failed because the judges DCI was allowing on the field did not know what was "difficult". Many had never marched before but because of the popularity and marketing of the corps, wanted judging money using their music degree as collateral. They could not be relied upon to judge execution accurately and scores began bouncing all over the place when experienced corps judges were mixed with them.. The entire system began to fall apart. Members could be heard stating, "We don't play for judges anymore. We play for ourselves!  It's all screwed up!" The visual people took all their points away.

 

Socialist educators that came into DCI bragged about being "Outcome Based Educators" (Ken Turner, Jeff Mitchel, etc.) were put in charge of the judges guild. They attacked the objective "tick system" calling it subjective in the manner of Saul Alynski, the communist author who wrote a book on how to destroy the United States. The method they used was to accuse their opponents of what they are guilty of. Then a few years later, they came out in the open to say subjectivity was a better method of judging. Outcome Based Educators always contradict themselves.  Socialism always contradicts itself.

"The student should always be sacrificed for the whole."  Ken Turner, former DCI Judges Administrator, award winning Outcome-Based Educator, Viewing The Band As A Whole, presented to judges and band directors, May 2, 1992

Dewey based "educators" like Ken Turner eliminated the objective tick system of judging. He had tremendous influence on DCI rules agenda for over twenty years. He was Director of Music for Johnson City Central School in New York, nationally recognized as one of the leading proponents of socialist Outcome-Based Education. Member of the DCI Rules Committee, the task Force On Judges Education, the Judges Systems Development Committee and the Drum Corps 2000 Committee. Turner was Coordinator of Judges for the New York Field and Band Conference as well as Chief Judge Administrator for DCI. he served in a leadership capacity for three DCI executive directors. Drum corps competitive tragedy and that of high school children all over the United States is a result of the Ken Turner's "self esteem for non-achievement" John Dewey virtue. The final indignity was Turner's 1994 rules changes wiping away everything from percussion but the field judge, changes DCI Percussin Captio heads voted 13 to 4 against. Additionally, there is no mention in the 70-plus definition pages of the 1996 DCI score sheets of demand or difficulty, something real competitors in the Olympics consider as a given. Thus, if you wanted to win, play simple band parts very clean and don't teach your students anything.  Simply play politics with your socialist judge and everything will work out in the Soviet Union manner. Except the Soviet Union went extinct. Drum corps are down to 30 or so remaining because of Ken Turner's "work". Socialism always destroys.

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Lenin's call for "minimal skills to function in society" has been renamed by modern union educators, "The Seven Cardinal Principles", "Basic Minimum Competency", "Outcome-Based Education" and "Common Core." One has to read the book "Rules For Radicals" by Saul Alynski to understand their method here. Alynski was a devout communist who said to blame the enemy by what they were accused of. Ticks were replaced by taped commentary. Not only did this allow more inexperienced judges onto the field, but now they could cheat. Many of them simply found out the previous days recap numbers and changed them slightly. Who would know? Tapes that I heard at the Phantom Regiment were staring to be unplayable for the performers in the 1978, 1979 period. It was very bad by 1984, the year of Orwell's well known pontification on socialism. Orwell describes what happened to drum corps perfectly.

Credit was no longer being awarded for difficulty because most DCI judges now had never marched or agreed that winning was not important.  it was the "experience" that counted. The 1990s were terrible for percussion sections. Their quality sank to high school level in some instances. I saw the 1997 and 1998 individual contests at Pleasure island at Disney. Only a few drummers each year had any kind of vocabulary. It was pathetic. You are what you measure.  They were not measuring anymore. Socialist educators say to award someone higher over another is bad and hurts their feelings. Perfection has no place in the socialist village.

"No placing or scores will be announced, no scores provided to the bands, only sheets with written comments and tapes. The numbers will be kept confidential..... The change was discussed bu the members of the Advisory Board.... comprised of band directors, adjudicators and educators from across the country... which is something I have dreamed would become a reality for many years.... Students, directors and parents should all be able to celebrate their success without focusing on placement."  Scott McCormick, Bands of America, Larry McCormick's son.

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Consider the advertisements this organization put forth: "Buy your show designs and be a winner!" Why should anyone buy anything from the McCormick's if scores no longer count?  Why not just do half-time for the local footballers and save money? Bands of America wanted to sell to socialist teachers employed by teachers unions across the country. That is how bad the indoctrination of high school children had become. Winning was now evil. (But buy my arrangements for a better placement that only we will see.) The philosophy of socialist educators always makes perfect sense. 

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Rick Beckham (Garfield, 27th Lancers): "When the tick system was eliminated, we saw the biggest increase of judges who had never marched or had anything to do with the activity."  

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Greg Griffith (Bridgemen): "Today's scoring is formless, lacking definition, infinitely malleable. Where there is no definition there can be no objective judgement of quality. And quality, is presumably, what we pursue in our activity. Drum corps used to resemble baseball or auto racing; clearly defined goals (scoring the most points or crossing the finish line first) and clear penalties for errors  (the number under the "E" column after every inning, or the rubber and paint-smeared walls in the turns.) The winner was clear. There was beauty and purity in attaining victory. Now drum corps resembles the dreaded modern dance : no rules, just "interpretations". You can thank the elimination of the tick system for that. The state of the activity - dreaded - can be blamed in its inability to reconcile its essence - competition."  

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"First of all, I want to know who the first guy was to say that a drum line played musically because they were playing a soft buzz roll passage. Because whoever that person was, he has had a hold on drum corps for a long time..... I was listening to a critique as they were talking to all these Japanese instructors over there and all they kept saying was, "You gotta teach your kids to play more musical. You've got to play music. That's all they talked about. And I just sat thinking, that was music.... It's like a crescendo counter. If you don't have 38 crescendos in your show , you're not gonna get in the top five. To me, it destroys a lot of music."  

(Scott Johnson, Blue Devils, DCI Today, Winter 1997, Vol. 23, No. 1, pp.36,37)

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"I have a lot of respect for the judges out there, but there are some who I think don't belong in the activity. .... the [percussion] caption is now gone. You don't have an ensemble percussion sheet anymore.... Now the only the only percussion we have is on the field and we have guys on the field judging percussion who have never done drum corps at that or any level. As a marcher, instructor or arranger, I have to think it's terrible. And I don't think those guys should be there."  

(Scott Johnson, Blue Devils, DCI Today, Winter 1997, Vol. 23, No. 1, p.34)

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Scott should ask the Central States Judges Association why their new pick for a Music Caption Head was someone who never marched. I could tell at the meeting the guy was a fake and didn't belong there. But  why was he there? Why did the Central States Judges Association have a president in Aaron Roble who never marched corps and didn't think the activity was worth having his bands in corps style competitions? I happened to accidentally see a bill of his for a clinic he gave a local Florida high school band. It was $1000 for the day. 

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I don't know if Scott has a music degree.  I never asked him.  But as someone who competed against him in DCI Individuals and had my Phantom drumlines against his, I would rather have him judging or anyone of the top 6 or 7 individuals who know what is demanding and understand what a mistake - a tick -  sounds like and tell you the reasons for the mistake and possibly how to fix it. The visual caption has no art credentials OR basic skill sets. What are THEY doing here? What can they TEACH?

Educators who despise competition are bound to scramble eggs when announcing their sunny-side-up "social future", resulting in rules written so youth can't compete, where the talented and dedicated must be sacrificed for the lazy and average. Being good at something and perfecting skills hurts others feelings who didn't try as har or don't have the talent it's not their fault. Haven't you heard? It's the winners fault! 

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Socialism demands that everyone be equal. While Olympic competition uses thick rule books with mountains of objective standards, John Dewey's ill-defined philosophy needs none. Just "feel it." Developing strategy and making rational judgements to improve when involved with such a system are impossible. The result is similar to trying to be successful in the failed communist Soviet Union where having friends was more important than skills. They had to buy American grain because they couldn't feed their people. The grain rotted on Soviet train tracks because their philosophy of "who you know not what you know" has never worked on planet Earth. 

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Competition is impossible if we refuse to examine, order, classify and distinguish minute details. Olympic rule books are inches thick on these items to respect the competitors time and effort. There is no respect of the individual when capitulating to a popular design fad if it is destructive to the goal of youth competing fairly against their peers.

The visual caption saw its opportunity in 1984 to take control of the score sheets at DCI.  Their goal was not corps, but the 20,000 marching bands across America. That is where the safe money is with full coffers to be raided. They took the score sheets away from the kids and rewrote them for themselves, forcing band booster parents to pay ridiculous prices or lose. Some of the booster clubs did not know any better and forked over thousands if not tens of thousands of dollars. One Central States judge used to staple his business card to score sheets of bands he dumped in the Michigan circuit. THAT is how brazen the visual people became.  One example is the Plymouth Canton High School Band from Michigan.  The Front Page of the Detroit News declared on November 3, 1998, "Plymouth Band Gives Its Boosters an A+". "Families are expected to Anne up $1000 for each child..... The district spends about $100,000 of school money to support the band, but the annual budget is $225,000.  The rest comes from band boosters."  Here is the visual designers target... naive band parents with money to buy their offspring 1st place as long as 1st place is still announced.

 

The Plymouth band had a state champion drumline before they paid for "design."  The year they switched instructors, I put their drumline in 7th or 8th. They danced, wiggled and wore make-up but refused to perform on their instruments.  Their drum instructor stated at critique, "Silence is demanding". Huge tacet times means the ability to do more music run-throughs. 

They hardly played. The drum instructor stated, "We do something once and don't have to show it again." 

Band directors tried to find to who next weeks' panels were to tweak the show for the kids to perform, or to add useless visual junk. They began getting into hated arguments with each other and lawsuits were threatened. Some of the kids began to realize they were being used as design pawns by their staff. It now came up at critiques.

For a long time marching members went along with the indoctrination. Kids trust adults. If you ask a corps member today, When asked, "How was your show", they mostly state, "The designers said we should be beating the other corps." Before 1984 and the elimination of the objective tick system, performers would say, "We played a great show!, or, "Had a rough night, We couldn't hear out there." They would tell you about their personal performance.  But socialism is not about the individual. It is about indoctrinating youth to do something so you can have control, make more money or both. Marching members became stupid dots for the design staff.

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Before George Hopkins had "MeToo" problems, he used subjectivity to manipulate the rules criteria to favor his corps.  Why would Garfield run their members into the ground in 90 degree Florida heat with multiple run throughs just before finals if they didn't want to win?  What I witnessed in the hot sun was an overbearing attempt that pushed the Cadets past their limits. More socialist contradictions. Hopkins tired the corps out in the Florida heat.

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"I am no fan of competition."  George Hopkins

"Unfortunately, the world we live in calls for competition."  George Hopkins

"When kids compete against each other, who is the winner and who is the loser?"  George Hopkins

"It's not about the competition... it's about the experience."  George Hopkins

"I don't want my drummers too strong or too weak."  George Hopkins

"To each according to his need. From each according to his ability."  Karl Marx (Communist)

We need less judges, not more."  George Hopkins

"Drum corps is a game, and a game managed by people's opinions - not FACTS."  George Hopkins

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So what we have is a game played with rules that have no facts. Subjectivity at its finest.

"One has to consider a competition as the most important and specific means of of assessing an athlete's progress."  (Tudor O. Bompa, famous Soviet Block Olympic Coach, Author "The Theory and Methodology of Training, eleven Olympic medal lists, trained Nadia Comaneci to a perfect score in gymnastics, three Olympic gold medals).

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George Hopkins ripped the leg rest off of Pete Castellano's drum, trying to stop him from competing in DCI Individuals in 1981 for Garfield. Pete borrowed a leg rest. (Pete won DCI wearing a Bridgemen uniform in 1984.)

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Rick Beckham (Four time DCA Snare Champion, Garfield Cadets, 27th Lancers): "Hopkins tried very hard to discourage me from competing in 1980.  At the time he was drum instructor and didn't have any real power over the members, but he was constantly using mind games in an effort to discourage me."  

"Some hold the absurd notion that competition is a zero-sum game, with one winner and everyone else a non-winner. Such binary thinking ignores the benefits of progress gained by every competitor, achieved through competition. It's easy to see in sport. Competition in business is a given. One must compete to survive, assuming the business I question is not a monopoly. In fact, monopolies do not progress at a sufficient rate to rival technological advances."  

 

Why be involved in the fierce "competitions" of drum corps "Summer Music Games" using an Olympic moniker to market, then state you hate competition?  Contradictions are not marketable for long.

 

Steven Ventre (Bridgemen):  "I was at Giant Stadium [2004] where I had the time to really critique Cadets, Cavaliers, Corpsmen, Bluecoats , and a few others. I was appalled at what these corps called difficulty - what difficulty? - and even what they did play - poor at best."  

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"Ed school theory these days is tightly focused on feelings. and hostile to the standards and the idea of competition. This produces a philosophy of leveling that is indifferent, sometimes antagonistic to achievement. Bright achievers must be tamped down somehow as part of the campaign for social equity."  John Leo,  News & World Report March 23, 1992  April 27, 1992

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"Competition is the least of our worries.... We're popular.  So what?"  Neil Larrivee, WGI Percussion Advisory Board, Educational Director at Vic Firth Company, panel discussion at the Percussive Arts Society National Convention, Dallas Texas, Nov. 2000.

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With measurement comes accountability. They no longer want to measure. Measurement exposes the Outcome Based socialist educator who needs subjectivity to hide a lack of skill. Emotion is something to be manipulated by those weaving subjective baskets of false victory.

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A prime example of this is the Percussive Arts Society Individual Competition. They required a roll breakdown until the year almost all the contestants couldn't do it. It was only a one minute breakdown. It was so bad, drummers in the audience began to laugh. Drummers from the 1920s could have done far better using Civil War basics. To stop the embarrassment, they stopped having breakdowns as a requirement the next year. Whatever happened to "competing fairly against your peers"?

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Enter James Christian won the DCA Tenor Drum Championship 7 years in a row.  No one could touch him.  He competed in the PAS individuals, getting a standing ovation competing against high school level arrangements.  They awarded him next to last place. The kids that won dropped his mallet. I was standing next to James in the hall as other musicians and parents came up to him with congratulations on his more than obvious victory. The next thing I hear is, "Ken you better take a look at this." The PAS judges said he was unmusical; and did not reward his demand. We cornered the judges in a room afterwards. James was too good for his own good. He made the educators look bad. James had annihilated their students and they didn't want others to copy his excellence. This is what education and judging in the pageantry arts has become - too much damn work.

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DCI judge Jeff Prosperie (another PAS member judge) has stated, "Emotion has demand."  

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Emotions do not involve thinking. They are a reaction to something. Is art that shocks you demanding?  It caused a "reaction". Is this what prosper is after, or is he saying he can tell when the drummers are going to cry? Contradictions such as this are not sustainable in the entertainment business. Only about 30 corps remain from the thousands that used to exist. Why? The objective judging system that used to attract talent can no longer be trusted using the concocted alchemy of Prosperie's subjectivity.

The Leipzig, Germany, Laboratory where this idea of "emotion" comes from studied experimental psychology. The goal was to make psychology a "hard science" like math or physics. They failed miserably. One of the graduates of Wilhelm Wundt's laboratory came back to America to become the world's guru on education. John Dewey was and is the destroyer of United States public schools. The riots of 2020 by Antifa and Black Lives Matter are born by the socialism taught two generations of American youth. These Dewey trained "experimental psychologists" have been practicing on American school children for 100 years through the teacher's unions. Students were not to study. They were to be studied. Prosperie is simply repeating what was being repeated at some DCI judges meeting, refusing to question the philosophy or history behind it. Tell us Jeffery, what is unit of measure of emotion? Lumens? Decibels? Inches? Gallons? Midi-Clorians? The speed of light? 

Prosperie does not know what anyone is thinking. Multiple cognition does not exist. Guessing is not what judges are paid to do. They are paid to objectively compare performances using the senses. Performers in the 1990s started saying, "We don't play for the judges anymore. We play for ourselves." because subjectivity produces contradictions, that if accepted, can be manipulated to produce any outcome.

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Some people will say or do anything for money or popularity.  Just look at all the goofballs on Youtube. Some people do not have the courage to stand up and confront the gullible crowd. Emotion has no objective formula if students are to be adjudicated fairly.  In WGI contests, some drumline that emotes profusely but can't perform well can be chosen the winner over a unit that is obviously better trained and more musically mature, but chose to not dance, wear make-up and act weird to gain attention.

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Subjectivity reduces an art to its least common denominator - shock. You see this in an art show where someone uses sexual content, or a WGI drumline screaming the names of Jewish war dead for the shows entirety mimicking a concentration camp scenario. For a finale, they pretended to shoot a little girl at the front sideline and have all the drummers cry. The judges awarded them a higher place at finals for the shock. This is not education or competition.  It is titillation of the audience because the objectivity of the adjudication process has broken down; just as the protection of citizens in Portland and Seattle broke down when socialist mayors told their police to simply watch as buildings went up in flames and neighborhoods were ransacked. Remember the marching band some years ago who was awarded for pretending to shoot a police officer on the field?  Objectively, what is missing is self and societal discipline and a lack of understanding the history of socialism.

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Performers make fools of themselves running around as Martians, motorcyclists, peel-skinned mutants, street sweepers, witches and goblins, janitors, blackjack dealers, bandits... you name it. One pathetic example was with a large group of parents from two different bands watching units go into the air lock that took them to field level for a state championship. One bands color guard passed before us dressed in hooded black sheets looking like corpses. What caught our eyes was a number of black baby carriages being pushed into the stadium having cut up red smeared baby dolls in them. Arms and legs were torn off. They used dye for blood. As we looked at each other in shock, one father mumbled, "This has turned into something it was never meant to be."

What was it meant to be?

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Ask the first year band director of Paris, Texas. He was convinced to do a DCI/WGI inspired "symbolic interpretation" by making as "seven minute marching movie." Yes, this is the type of stupidity that comes out of DCI and WGI. They waved Nazi flags in a Jewish community at an away football game on Rosh Hashanah, their new year celebration. The band director made the newspapers after the crowd pelted the band with objects cursing them. This is how undisciplined the pageantry activity has become due to subjectivity and socialism. The "movie on a football field" idea is from DCI judge Shirley Whitcomb.

(Nazi flag removed, apology issued, Van Hilburn, The Paris News, September 30, 2003)

(Texas Band Chief Apologizes for Nazi Flag, Associated Press   September 30, 2003)

(Nazi Flag Doesn't Fly With Crowd  School band director says halftime show was meant to be historical  By Tawnell D. Hobbs  Dallas Morning News Tuesday, September 30, 2003)

 

The whole point of pseudo-art to win at WGI is to CAUSE A REACTION. It has nothing to do with skill.

The whole point of using school children to produce an art experiment is to CAUSE A REACTION. It has nothing to do with skill.

 

Dewey was anti-discipline and anti-skill. His disciples are DCI's "Outcome Based Educators."

The roots of DCI educators' actions can be traced to the John Dewey era. These type people simply want total control.

"Through the schools of the world we shall disseminate a new conception of government - one that will embrace all the collective activities of men; one that will postulate the need for scientific control and operation of economic activities in the interests of all people." Harold Rugg,  John Dewey disciple

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"Teachers should deliberately reach for power and then make the most of their conquest is my firm conviction.  To the extent they are permitted to fashion the curriculum  and procedures of the school they will definitely and positively influence the social attitudes , ideals and behavior of coming generations."  George S. Counts, John Dewey disciple

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"It does not take him (a child) long to perceive the contradictions and the sickening self-abasing hypocrisy of the social school of morality. But the worst influence of all, for him, is the subjective school.... the subjective means the arbitrary, the irrational, the blindly emotional. These are the elements he has come to associate with people's attitudes in moral issues, and to dread. When formal philosophy tells him that morality, by its very nature, is closed to reason and can be nothing but a matter of subjective choice, this is the kiss of death on his moral development..... his conscious decision is to not get involved in moral issues; its subconscious meaning is not to value anything."   Ayn Rand, Philosopher  The Romantic Manifesto p.115   (Author - Atlas Shrugged)

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Dan Guernsey (Madison Scouts, 1977 DCI Tenor Champion): "I hold a BA in studio art and a MA and a PhD in art history. I'm currently a professor of art history and humanities at a major university. Hopkins and his "design" crowd don't have a clue about art - they're in way over their heads and they don't even know it. It's an utter shame!  Cesario needs to read Aristotle's aesthetics. Aristotle speaks perfectly about creating within the limits of the idiom."

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Mike Biggs (Snare Drummer 1980, Phantom Regiment): "I was working with a high school one in Arkansas in 1993. The band director told me that competition was harmful to the kids and the "powers-that-be" were changing the whole approach to band contests. She lectured the band on how there was no longer going to be any emphasis on winning or on being better than some other band. She was destroying the most powerful motivation they would ever have to true excellence and achievement. I was tempted to lecture her on the bankruptcy of her philosophy."  

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"The way things have gone, the band directors did it to themselves."  Bob Schreffler, Cavaliers, DCI Individuals 4th place 1976.

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Sorry, band directors. You did do this to yourselves. You trusted these subjective socialist drum corps people who ruined their own contests then came for yours.  You failed to do your homework.  Your grade is "F".  Know some history before debarking on the visual design journey. At least you now know what really happened and can get rid of these people who destroy your students chance to compete fairly against their peers and once again make music the focus of your tax payer financed programs. Your job is to educate, not be involved in an immature art contest run by people who market themselves as "artists" but have no credentials in an idiom where music is far superior to visual.