Daily Dose 5/7

Home again, home again, jiggity-jig. Once more I will dance the trick jig that attempts to combine the grace and elegance of drum and bugle corps with the wild craziness of the movie The 40 Year Old Virgin. I will use all of my flexibility and skill as a rhetorical dancer (which barely exists at all) to try and use quotes from a comedy blockbuster to illustrate some interesting aspects of drum corps life. I think I'm gonna pull something.

Today's Quote:
I hope you have a big trunk... because I'm puttin' my bike in it. -Andy Stitzer

What does this have to do with drum corps?:
Among those questions you could ask after watching a drum corps show, some fall into a category of "almost never occurring to someone straight off, but seeming blatantly obvious once it dawns on you". One question it took me a long time to ask after seeing a show with nearly a hundred people carrying around instruments, waving flags, dancing with props whilst wearing coordinated uniforms was "where do they put all that stuff"? Drum corps have to tour across the country during the competition season. This means they also have to bring along tons and tons of equipment. The corps members themselves, the professional staff who instruct the corps and design the show, and all the supporting parents ride on buses. They have limits on how much luggage they can bring so that they can fit all these people and all their things onto a few charter buses. Then they have a massive trailer (usually an 18 wheeler) to carry all of their equipment from instruments to flags to uniforms to all the gear they use during rehearsals. then you have to feed everyone so there is usually a dedicated vehicle just for carting food around and preparing meals, sometimes nicknamed the chuck truck. Each and every drum and bugle corps requires a convoy of vehicles just to stay up and running. The sheer tonnage of gear involved with a drum corps often means that one of the biggest parts of a corps day is just managing it all. Trying to take a drum corps on tour is almost comparable to mounting some kind of low grade military deployment except instead of invading France you're trying to craft and perfect a musical performance. I have mentioned that life in a drum crops requires a grueling amount of effort on the field, but off the field its still very demanding.