Chapter 25

This Might Not Be Bad

TAKE THE FIRST Cavaliers to win a VFW championship, in 1957. Line them up beside their 1967 brothers, winners of VFW and American Legion crowns. These corps were so close—in uniforms, marching style and music selection—as to be pressed from the same mold, mirror images.

But trot out the 1975 Cavaliers, and put them beside the corps another decade later, and the changes sweeping the activity—and overhauling the Green Machine—are unmistakable.

There’s the uniform, for starters. The tall black shakos, button-up satin blouses and band-style sashes seem as antiquated in the Seventies as an all-male color guard, and would soon give way to naugahyde vests, plumed musketeer hats—the Cavalier look. On the field, the ‘75 edition moved much like Lenny Piekarski’s troops of the 1950s and ‘60s. High-stepping squads of two and four methodically cross yard lines, merge into company fronts, dispatch soloists to aim their bells at the stands, bow, and return. Nobody’s going anywhere very quickly, and the concert number gives everyone a chance to regroup, catch their breath. Time to “park and blow.”

There’s no pit section, littering the front sideline with orchestral percussion. Timpanists still lug bulbous kettle drums like pregnant women on parade. Tinkling bells and xylophones—when they can be heard—merely accent the rhythm, instead of breaking into showcase passages, wowing the crowd with runs and trills. The color guard waves black, white and green flags and generally tries to stay out of the way. Off in a corner stand the American flag and its attendants, borne by the Hero Squad. The brass blows through Russian Christmas music and ballads, and finishes—as their brothers in the 1950s and ‘60s often did—with “Rainbow” and “Somewhere.”

The ensuing decade saw the Cavaliers plummet from DCI’s top five, fall out of finals (the top twelve), nearly go out of existence, and rebound, by 1985, to a top-five finish again. What brought them back from the brink was willingness to change, experiment, and when risks didn’t pan out, further evolve. Standing Man couldn’t afford to stand pat in a decade where tradition was only as relevant as your finals score.

Innovation began with talented instructors. Eventually, the people Jeff Fiedler hired as program coordinator outpaced his knowledge—a good thing, he noted. Percussion guru Jim Campbell reunited with brass instructor Tim Salzman to expand upon concepts they’d first tried with the Schaumburg Guardsmen, and team up with drill mastermind Steve Brubaker. The trio attracted college and high school educators off for the summer and available to boost the corps’ IQ—Tim Ochran, Bret Kuhn, Dave Dombeck, Ken Snoeck, Bruno Zuccala and John Bell, among others.

In 1985, Campbell took over as program coordinator and Fiedler stepped into a new role as personnel manager. The load was getting lighter for everyone, enabling Cavaliers leadership to refine the entire product.

Campbell’s ideas for 1985 included building on a successful winter guard routine by fielding a James Bond show with the big corps. Another was crafting a program around Gustav Holst’s symphony The Planets. That show, with rapidly forming and dissolving shapes, a line of red cymbals, and red exercise balls wielded to dramatic effect during Mars, marked the first summer the corps gave itself over entirely to modern classical music, ditching the “snack pack” programs that held it down. The jump from 8th to 5th—putting corps like Phantom Regiment, Suncoast Sound and Spirit of Atlanta behind them—meant joining the elite.

Corps the Cavaliers now chased had set the pace for over a decade. From 1973-82, the Blue Devils and Santa Clara Vanguard traded every DCI title save for one snagged by the Madison Scouts. The Devils’ brass blasted competition with jazz charts arranged by the incomparable Wayne Downey, but were no less spirited in other aspects of the show. In 1982, they won all 23 contests they entered, despite penalties incurred in early summer by including a guttural “huh” from members during a percussion-only sequence. Rules prohibited singing or vocalizing. But by season’s end, the audience—which loved the rebellious twist—was so into the show the brass kept mum and the crowd performed on cue, sparing the Devils from penalty.

Gail Royer’s Santa Clara Vanguard broke ground in the 1970s with asymmetrical movement in drills penned by Pete Emmons. In the new decade, the Vanguard built themed shows around the music of Aaron Copland and Modest Mussorgsky, among others, just as Phantom Regiment acquired a devotion to Tchaikovsky. The addition of magic—tunnels that changed outfits from green to white, characters performing feats of levitation and disappearing—brought theatrical elements to Santa Clara’s program.

But leading the way were the Garfield Cadets, the Cavaliers’ 1950s “Holy Name” rivals from New Jersey. Their resurgence was sparked by a willingness to bend rules. They risked point deductions for a vocal “Amen” in 1978, when they also expanded their brass by putting the color guard on soprano horns for the closer. Promoting George Hopkins to manager, and hiring Michael and Greg Cesario to oversee program and color guard, respectively, and Jim Prime Jr. to arrange brass, bridged the gap between the corps’ yellowed past and a bright future. George Zingali was the final piece, marrying a speedy, shape-shifting drill inspired by painters Kandinsky and Miro to shows built around the music of Leonard Bernstein. The Cadets locked down first-place at DCI from 1983-85, emphatically ending California’s stranglehold on the title.

The club the Cavaliers entered in ‘85 was separated by fractions of points. With the antiquated tick system trashed for a scoring method that started at zero and awarded points for concept and execution, the race was on to build the most musically-complex, visually-stunning, artistically-rendered show. Rely on same-old, same-old, and you were dead off the starting line, watching finals from the cheap seats, like a common fan.

The Cavaliers’ 1985 finish was their best since ‘76, and a window on their strengths. Brubaker’s guard was first-rate, and Campbell’s percussion took top drums at several contests. Lagging behind were the brass, and a theme tying it together. When staff gathered that winter at Fiedler’s home, all brows furrowed over a way to break through in ‘86.

Campbell’s and Salzman’s musical training opened their eyes to 20th century works for orchestra and wind ensemble, fiendishly complex pieces with mixed meters and dissonant voicing. The success of The Planets convinced management this was the right direction. At Fiedler’s meeting, somebody put a 1960 University of Illinois record of Canzona on the stereo. “I played it again and again,” Fiedler said. “And everybody was, ‘Oh yeah.’ They liked it.” In the midst of their reverie, a gong sounded. Fiedler forgot to take the needle off the record, and the next piece, Korean Folk Song Suite, started. “Halfway through, Jim was all quiet. Then he goes, ‘This might not be bad.’”

Some accidents produce happy accidents of their own. The Cavaliers fielded both Canzona and Korean Folk Song in 1986. “I think Korean Folk Song was the quintessential (Cavaliers) song of the ‘80s,” said baritone Marco Buscaglia. “The backfield playing, the three-against-two (rhythms) thing, the Dragon. And it had a great ending (“Mars”, back from The Planets). That was the model for Images Diabolique (which followed in 1989), and everything else the corps played through ‘92.”

“In a lot of ways, through today,” Fiedler added.

The excitement sparked Brubaker to pen his most impressive drill yet. Employing what he termed “intersected form manipulation,” Brubaker resurrected geometrical shapes of the 1950s and ‘60s and accelerated how they turned and melted into one another. An iconic example is the move that became known as The Snake, and first appeared in 1986 as The Dragon. “The whole horn line would end up in this two-curve type of thing, like this double-S,” explained baritone John Timmins. “And then, in two counts, form a straight line and then invert itself.”

The Snake reappeared in ‘87, ‘89 and ’90. Further tweaking brought 3D effects, including horn “flashes.” Within the snake itself, members snapped up their bells in a domino sequence, timing lifts within the fast tempo, subdividing each beat: one-e-and-uh, two-e-and-uh, so on. Similar flashes were written into the way horn players waved their instruments in a circle, even the angle they canted their heads, attempting to catch the light just so. “It was almost like we were another piece of flag or visual equipment. It wasn’t just people standing there, playing their horns. We made a statement in the way our bodies turned. It took lots of practice,” Timmins explained.

Tentative steps to incorporate dance into drum corps evolved naturally from attention paid the drill. Every beat held an opportunity to sell the music, the show’s concept. This wasn’t a ringmaster and clown in the Circus Show. This was the clown conveying the tragedy of his tears through body quakes and the stuttering motion of a lonely jog. “(We learned) sort of like lunges, or runs, as opposed to not like an athlete runs, but as a dancer. A jazz run,” said soprano Keith Raimondi. “We learned that from the guard, and that was about as far as the horn line and drum line went in dance moves.”

It was enough. Watching tape of 1986 finals, you can feel the crowd’s anticipation for the Dragon as it slowly develops. And when the line forms, and begins to writhe and wriggle, the music continuing perfect as a record player in Fiedler’s apartment, and the audience explodes in a whooping roar, you know the Cavaliers are onto something. Judges recognized it, too, awarding third place, 95.7, barely 2 points back of the champion Blue Devils.

For the follow-up to their breakout summer, the Cavaliers brought back Korean Folk Song, and added Claude Smith’s Festival Variations fugue for the finale—a ton of notes, Fiedler said. Eventually, David Holsinger’s Liturgical Dances was welded to a 1987 drill that wound tighter and tighter before finding moments of release, a musical thrill ride and visual tour-de-force.

The corps was confident, riding high on its climb up the standings. Victory seemed inevitable. An undefeated early season lived up to this promise. There was talk of repeating the feat of the unbeaten 1961 corps. But they’d boasted the same statistics a year before, only to suffer third place during a late-summer swing through Denver, staring up at the Vanguard and Devils. Incredibly—or inevitably, as anyone studying trends in drum corps could tell you—history repeated itself in 1987. At Drums Along the Rockies, for the second straight summer, the Cavaliers scored third. “Not this year, Cavaliers!” the gleeful Blue Devils taunted.

Fiedler began to see eerie evidence of 1977 in that summer’s tour. Too many people read statistics like tea leaves: 66 consecutive shows in the top three! Put their faith in nonsensical algebra: 11th to 9th to 8th to 5th to 3rd to X. We gotta nail top two, even the top, right? “We made the same mistake,” Fiedler said, recalling how seventh in 1976 was considered launching pad to championship glory. “We bought our own publicity. We finished third in ‘86. So we thought we were gonna win!”

Instead, the corps broke its streak of top-three finishes by skidding to fifth in DCI semifinals in Madison. Although they’d finish finals third—besting those irksome Blue Devils by three-tenths—tensions boiled over at the annual Boo Party. “I think it was just part of it all,” said fourth-year baritone Mark Des Biens. “To me, ‘87 was such a down year because of all the internal fighting. We decided we should put it all behind us and go forward.”

The hangover throbbed before it got better. Several boys wouldn’t be back in ‘88 because expectations got out of hand, Fiedler noted. Others in the roughly 80 not returning aged out. And Tim Salzman was leaving the Cavaliers to write for Santa Clara and Gail Royer. “It was a rough summer,” Fiedler said. “Steve (Brubaker) took over programming duties. Jim was switching schools.” And the Cavaliers planned to field Firebird, one of Russian composer Igor Stravinsky’s hallmark pieces, known for tricky, pulsating rhythms and shrieking, avant-garde sensibilities.

As Brubaker’s position in drum corps became more revered, his one-on-one work with kids lessened. He ran practices from a press box perch, watching the drill unfold, dispatching staff to the field to convey his wishes. At rehearsal’s end, he’d appear and deliver his two cents. Brubaker’s drills grew more demanding, revving the tempo to heretofore unapproachable levels for longer stretches of the show. It was all movement, nearly all the time, and physical demands on corps members increased. The Cavaliers beefed up their training regimen. “We’d get up every morning and run at least a mile a day,” John Timmins remembered. “Then we’d rehearse for another twelve hours.” These training runs, now more or less routine, took on the formality of military P.T. jogs. “We ran in block formation, everybody sticking together, led by the horn sergeant or drum major,” said mellophone Chris Kissamis.

For 1988’s Firebird, instructors attempted to coax ever more from the ashes of their fatigued troops. “Compared to other corps, we probably had three shows to their one,” said Rob Wis, in his first Cavaliers season as import from the Guardsmen. “We probably had 110, 120 sets, which pales in comparison to today, but back then was phenomenal. We were running the whole time.”

Horn instructor John Bell, a teacher at Southern Illinois University, puzzled over how to keep his charges playing during such a heavily-layered, constantly-moving drill. “It’s hard enough to play this music sitting down,” Timmins said. “But that’s the way the activity was going.” Early performances ran ragged. “We were bumping into each other. We could hardly make it through the show when we were supposed to start the season the next week. The damn introduction was five minutes long (in a 12-minute show). We were just like, ‘Ah, this sucks.’”

One early obstacle was integrating the last major influx of Cavaliers cadets, who were paired with a crop of high schoolers—experienced musicians, but with little knowledge of drum corps. By late June, instructors realized the show wouldn’t fly as envisioned. At Canton, Ohio’s Hall of Fame Bowl the Cavaliers suffered the unthinkable—a loss to the lowly Bluecoats. Here was a corps consistently placing in the tenth through twelfth slot, Wis said, while the Cavaliers were supposedly top-three shoe-ins and title contenders. Something had to give, or all the progress the corps had fought for could slip from its grasp.

Major changes were drawn up and incorporated. The guys were supposed to get a night off after the July 4 parade. Instead, the buses rolled back to Triton College and the corps worked through an entirely different last-third of the show, with new flags, new movement—in all, thirty-some new pages of drill, Fiedler said. “It was a sacrifice the kids made that year, and the corps got better. They may have mumbled under their breath, but they never complained. The score never went down (after early July).”

The revamped ending featured a formation members dubbed the TransAm Symbol, after Pontiac’s logo. But the music and visual sold the show better. Instructors inserted flashy movement and musical bravado that added just the right touch of polish. The end result was a taut show heading into finals in Kansas City, though a quirk of DCI judging that year probably contributed to the Cavaliers being unable to change their stars over finals weekend. In 1988, DCI cut judges from 12 to six. Normally, the same judges don’t work semifinals and finals, but not this year. So it was hard to change scores from the penultimate show. “In finals we weren’t hoping to win,” Fiedler said, “but we put on a championship performance that night.”

In fact, the Cavaliers slid from fourth in semifinals to fifth when final scores were tallied. No one could best Madison in the year they celebrated their 50th anniversary. The Cavaliers found themselves looking up—again—at the Vanguard, Blue Devils and Cadets, with a 95.10 that would have taken the crown nearly every season prior to 1984, when DCI scrapped the tick system and scores surged.

But if the Cavaliers were eventually to win a championship, the groundwork was laid that summer, Fiedler said. The way the young corps worked, the way staff pulled together to remove obstacles to success—the talent and teamwork were there, if only they could capitalize on it.