As a classically trained trombonist, I am very sound oriented. I don't know how this corps consistently got such beautiful sounds from those awful bugles...but they did. And they have my undying respect for that.
If not mistaken? I believe the year they lost DCI by .10 from a penalty. I forgot how tight the rifle line in particular and the guard in general. Phantom and SCV two groups responsible for my love of classical music.
I can't explain it...but the PR somehow always got a more symphonic sound out of those god awful G bugles than anyone else. That's why I've always loved them so much. There was always such a beautiful sound and precision with this corps. I can understand why the flash of the Blue Devils always won, but the PR from this era will always hold a special place in my heart. Remember....the PR INVENTED the Rockford File and they did it better than anyone else...well....until 27th Lancers in 1981...LOL. But really...have you ever seen another corps do Petrouchka on the field? This is epic.
Nice comments, but one correction- Blue Devils took 3rd place that night. By the way, when the Phantom Regiment was announced as winners of the High Brass trophy, the horn line of the Blue Devils applauded.
@@johnflorio3576 To be fair, they usually positioned the contras much closer to the front sideline then as opposed to now. And that doesn't explain Star of Indiana having 16 contras in 1991, the Cadets having dual timpani from 1996 to 1999, or Carolina Crown having dual timpani in 2003.
@@MicahtheDrumCorpsPseudoboomer With the exceptions of 1992 (16 contras) and a feature in the 1986 show (3rd euphs picked them up, so they marched 18 for the feature from "Close Encounters") Star marched 12 contras in the hornline, including 1991.
I come back to this show again and again. Just a masterpiece. So musical from the great horn line to the actual marching percussion that are playing complimentary parts and not just a bunch of unison notes. Tonal bass drums, tymps, keyboards and marching cymbals. While modern corps have way more options from full chromatic instruments and 100K front ensemble, they just don't entertain me like this does...and so many other corps from this era.
you're the first person from Cal that ive ever heard/read state they enjoyed respected a corp from the midwest let alone PR (there's a little "history" between PR and west coast corps)....
During the 1978 season, Phantom's desperation to win never translated into self-assured, nuanced, musical finesse. The decidedly dark, breathy, desperate, ham-fisted arrangement of Firebird at finals in 1978 intensified the corps's bridesmaid anguish, behind the scenes. The entire production pulsated like angry Red Army soldiers in a Russian parade. Phantom sounded like an Eastern European marching band white-knuckling classical tunes with muscle and broken teeth, and on an empty stomach. "We must win! Louder! Stronger! If we don't win, we'll be shot in the gulag courtyard! Harder! Harder! You will be killed! Again from the top!" The result was ten minutes of robotic huff and puff, giving the appearance of behind-the-scenes torture and Red Army Stockholm syndrome among Phantom's members. In prelims, Phantom tied for first with the softer, more elegant Santa Clara Vanguard. Phantom's performers were tense and morose, mirroring the foreboding pieces, which created a strangely mechanical stye of color guard movement and a traditional military countenance. Phantom's pieces were "blatty", metronomic, and thread-bare, played by inmates performing for their lives. The syncopated phrases were chugged out of a sky-roiling locomotive in Glittertind. The high leg lift exhausted the lung capacity of the horn players, creating a murderous, blue-faced, last-chance soprano wail on the final note of the opener. Phantom's whole performance is an example of drum corps kids being told that they have to "try harder" to win, meanwhile the real responsibility for their success rested on the designers and arrangers. The "try harder/play louder" approach resulted 1970's style arrangements focused on volume and punch, without any nuance, self-awareness or finesse. Phantom's strange combination of the dark material, staccato arrangements and lack of self-awareness quickly succumbed to SCV's masterful balletic approach. SCV had both power and finesse. SCV's delicate hornline walked on air at the beginning of the Gayanes Ballet Suite. SCV introduced a whole new style of marching and authenticity in arrangement, ushering in a new era of artistry and refinement, for the win.
@@jesuspectre9883 having aged out with this corps, your assessment that the members exhibited some sort of "Stockholm syndrome" is simultaneously utterly wrong and quite funny. Uh... no. You preferred the Vanguard's show. Excellent! But more than 40 years later that shouldn't be a reason to trash their closest competitor. The Brass Judges who were on the field and in the Box that night didn't agree with your hyperbolic assessment that the Regiment brass section was "blatty", "robotic", "threadbare", "blue-faced" or "without nuance", giving out top scores in Brass Execution, Musical Analysis (tying the Vanguard) and Brass General Effect. Phantom Regiment took the high brass award that night, and the judges weren't they only people who thought they deserved it. I for one will never forget standing in Retreat formation and hearing them applauded by the Blue Devils horn line, who took second in Brass that night. That applause, coming from their nearest competitor, was high praise and well-deserved. Your latter-day critique comes off as a desperate attempt to justify the overall scoring result. The 1978 season is long, long over. Please, let the people who enjoy this performance do so without peeing in their punch bowl.
@@dvadams75 The arrangement is so rigid and one-dimensional, has so little variance in mood, so little variance in voicing and tone, without a single arranged moment of vibrato or cloratura. The entire show is so focused on precision that it seethes with military conformity and compliance to avoid punishment. The show is so machine-like that it kills any delicate passage or humanity in the underlying pieces. The performers don't appear to own the material, they appear to be victims of it, slaves to precision, like programmed robots. For example, the baritone solo before the Ode to Joy ending seems to be played by a player piano, scripted and metronomic, as if it's being sight-read for the first time. Where's the bravado? The passion? The exuberance and joy from Beethoven's original symphony? Any chance the fascist instructors would let the kid sneak in a little vibrato or trill? It appears to have been fried out of the soloist by an electroshock machine while in solitary confinement.
@@jesuspectre9883 You should go back in a Time Machine to 1978 to tell every Judge in DCI that they were all wrong (because they consistently put the Regiment horns in first place throughout the season). Your ignorant attributions of "Fascism" and "Stockholm Syndrome" are not only utterly wrong, but insulting, to the members of the corps, to the Staff and to the Management. I'm struggling to be polite here, but your insistence on pushing wrong-headed assessments, especially on a site where the Corps is celebrated, is making that difficult. Phantom Regiment took High Brass, Vanguard took third place. There is no shame in that, and it was no mistake.
It's funny how this show has aged. That is, it's aged well actually. Recently DCI did a "Who Did It Best?" with various performances of the Finales of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Crown, Boston Crusaders and Blue Knights were also featured in the segment. Surprisingly, actually *shockingly*, this performance was one of the fan favorites, even though it's well over 40 years old. I think it's due to a couple of factors. One is that the show is accessible to the fans. Another is that it was well-executed all across the board. Every caption of the corps was near the top of the score sheets (ok, we'll leave off the controversial 6th place GE M&M score and the low Color Guard rating). To borrow Pete Emmon's description, the entire production was "solid". The show is now cited by some as the textbook example of "old-school drum & bugle corps". I think it's because of that "solidity" factor. No, Phantom Regiment did not win that night, but this show, with every aspect nailed down tight, has now come represent an entire Era of DCI. Those of us who marched in the corps will take that.
The horn line had so much power and finesse, the drum line was super technical and precise, and the color guard was by far more talented-creative-cohesive than Vanguard in 1978…saw them the very first time that summer and when I saw the snares playing the drum solo, Flight Of The Bumblebee, I was hooked…✌️😎🔥
Such meaning. Not just the music but the structure and presenting the colors at the end. Can you imagine trying to do that today...it would likely be criticized as a political message. So sad. Miss those days.
I must say Phantom's 1978 American flag presentation makes no sense because they're playing all Russian and Austrian music. It's a lack of cohesion. This is like China presenting their flag while playing The Grand Canyon Suite. This show doesn't meet professional design standards.
How SCV won at Mile High instead of PR is beyond me.....Even Pete Emmons stated that PR won.....Shirley Whitcomb.....look at her score sheet from that night.....joke
Shirley was a Program Consultant to Spirit of Atlanta late in the season in 1978. I saw her running a full-corps rehearsal with them in Alton Illinois shortly before Finals. There is no way she should have been judging Finals.
I marched PR in 1984, and Ed Danec, who aged out the year before in 1977, and was a M&M instructor my year, also pointed the finger at Shirley . But I’ve also heard (from another fellow ‘84 member) that snare drum legend and instructor that season Ken Mazur went off on the entire judging staff, and offended them. Not sure if true, but it’s fun to re-live my corps experiences and my teen years. Thanks, TH-cam!
@@JosephMadden-cn2bl That story doesn't make sense. Why would Mazur "go off" on the Judges before the performance? And if he did it afterwards what difference would it make to the score? I don't recall that occurring. That said, Mazur was outspoken and often questioned Judges. But from my knowledge it was only in the percussion caption. There wasn't a lot of controversy about the percussion scores after Finals. The Vanguard drum line had a "come from behind" performance and their score showed it. We were consistent with our Prelims score, which BTW stands as one of the top ten percussion scores of the entire tic era of DCI.
that is horseshit buddy. Losing had nothing to do with Syd dropping. A .1 is a .1 no matter if it's a horn crack or a bad interval, or a phase. The reason we lost was Whirley Shitcomb - from California. GO SCV
As a classically trained trombonist, I am very sound oriented. I don't know how this corps consistently got such beautiful sounds from those awful bugles...but they did. And they have my undying respect for that.
They spent a lot of time on tuning from my recollection.
@@dvadams75 Obviously, as they were the best tuned brass in the G bugle era.
To think my mom was born just before this show is amazing ❤
If not mistaken? I believe the year they lost DCI by .10 from a penalty.
I forgot how tight the rifle line in particular and the guard in general.
Phantom and SCV two groups responsible for my love of classical music.
This show should have won the title in 1978…🥁✌️😊
I can't explain it...but the PR somehow always got a more symphonic sound out of those god awful G bugles than anyone else. That's why I've always loved them so much. There was always such a beautiful sound and precision with this corps.
I can understand why the flash of the Blue Devils always won, but the PR from this era will always hold a special place in my heart.
Remember....the PR INVENTED the Rockford File and they did it better than anyone else...well....until 27th Lancers in 1981...LOL.
But really...have you ever seen another corps do Petrouchka on the field? This is epic.
Nice comments, but one correction- Blue Devils took 3rd place that night.
By the way, when the Phantom Regiment was announced as winners of the High Brass trophy, the horn line of the Blue Devils applauded.
Def The most solid low brass of that era of DCI. Fat contra sound!
…and there were only six of them! Now it takes sixteen tubas AND synth goo to hear the bass parts.
@@johnflorio3576 To be fair, they usually positioned the contras much closer to the front sideline then as opposed to now. And that doesn't explain Star of Indiana having 16 contras in 1991, the Cadets having dual timpani from 1996 to 1999, or Carolina Crown having dual timpani in 2003.
@@MicahtheDrumCorpsPseudoboomer With the exceptions of 1992 (16 contras) and a feature in the 1986 show (3rd euphs picked them up, so they marched 18 for the feature from "Close Encounters") Star marched 12 contras in the hornline, including 1991.
@@k.coleman9317 Oops! Thanks for correcting me.
It was 90% Jim's writing that gave us the best low brass in the country.
I come back to this show again and again. Just a masterpiece. So musical from the great horn line to the actual marching percussion that are playing complimentary parts and not just a bunch of unison notes. Tonal bass drums, tymps, keyboards and marching cymbals. While modern corps have way more options from full chromatic instruments and 100K front ensemble, they just don't entertain me like this does...and so many other corps from this era.
you're the first person from Cal that ive ever heard/read state they enjoyed respected a corp from the midwest let alone PR (there's a little "history" between PR and west coast corps)....
During the 1978 season, Phantom's desperation to win never translated into self-assured, nuanced, musical finesse. The decidedly dark, breathy, desperate, ham-fisted arrangement of Firebird at finals in 1978 intensified the corps's bridesmaid anguish, behind the scenes. The entire production pulsated like angry Red Army soldiers in a Russian parade. Phantom sounded like an Eastern European marching band white-knuckling classical tunes with muscle and broken teeth, and on an empty stomach. "We must win! Louder! Stronger! If we don't win, we'll be shot in the gulag courtyard! Harder! Harder! You will be killed! Again from the top!" The result was ten minutes of robotic huff and puff, giving the appearance of behind-the-scenes torture and Red Army Stockholm syndrome among Phantom's members.
In prelims, Phantom tied for first with the softer, more elegant Santa Clara Vanguard. Phantom's performers were tense and morose, mirroring the foreboding pieces, which created a strangely mechanical stye of color guard movement and a traditional military countenance. Phantom's pieces were "blatty", metronomic, and thread-bare, played by inmates performing for their lives. The syncopated phrases were chugged out of a sky-roiling locomotive in Glittertind. The high leg lift exhausted the lung capacity of the horn players, creating a murderous, blue-faced, last-chance soprano wail on the final note of the opener. Phantom's whole performance is an example of drum corps kids being told that they have to "try harder" to win, meanwhile the real responsibility for their success rested on the designers and arrangers. The "try harder/play louder" approach resulted 1970's style arrangements focused on volume and punch, without any nuance, self-awareness or finesse. Phantom's strange combination of the dark material, staccato arrangements and lack of self-awareness quickly succumbed to SCV's masterful balletic approach. SCV had both power and finesse. SCV's delicate hornline walked on air at the beginning of the Gayanes Ballet Suite. SCV introduced a whole new style of marching and authenticity in arrangement, ushering in a new era of artistry and refinement, for the win.
@@jesuspectre9883 having aged out with this corps, your assessment that the members exhibited some sort of "Stockholm syndrome" is simultaneously utterly wrong and quite funny. Uh... no. You preferred the Vanguard's show. Excellent! But more than 40 years later that shouldn't be a reason to trash their closest competitor. The Brass Judges who were on the field and in the Box that night didn't agree with your hyperbolic assessment that the Regiment brass section was "blatty", "robotic", "threadbare", "blue-faced" or "without nuance", giving out top scores in Brass Execution, Musical Analysis (tying the Vanguard) and Brass General Effect. Phantom Regiment took the high brass award that night, and the judges weren't they only people who thought they deserved it. I for one will never forget standing in Retreat formation and hearing them applauded by the Blue Devils horn line, who took second in Brass that night. That applause, coming from their nearest competitor, was high praise and well-deserved. Your latter-day critique comes off as a desperate attempt to justify the overall scoring result.
The 1978 season is long, long over. Please, let the people who enjoy this performance do so without peeing in their punch bowl.
@@dvadams75 The arrangement is so rigid and one-dimensional, has so little variance in mood, so little variance in voicing and tone, without a single arranged moment of vibrato or cloratura. The entire show is so focused on precision that it seethes with military conformity and compliance to avoid punishment. The show is so machine-like that it kills any delicate passage or humanity in the underlying pieces. The performers don't appear to own the material, they appear to be victims of it, slaves to precision, like programmed robots. For example, the baritone solo before the Ode to Joy ending seems to be played by a player piano, scripted and metronomic, as if it's being sight-read for the first time. Where's the bravado? The passion? The exuberance and joy from Beethoven's original symphony? Any chance the fascist instructors would let the kid sneak in a little vibrato or trill? It appears to have been fried out of the soloist by an electroshock machine while in solitary confinement.
@@jesuspectre9883 You should go back in a Time Machine to 1978 to tell every Judge in DCI that they were all wrong (because they consistently put the Regiment horns in first place throughout the season).
Your ignorant attributions of "Fascism" and "Stockholm Syndrome" are not only utterly wrong, but insulting, to the members of the corps, to the Staff and to the Management. I'm struggling to be polite here, but your insistence on pushing wrong-headed assessments, especially on a site where the Corps is celebrated, is making that difficult.
Phantom Regiment took High Brass, Vanguard took third place. There is no shame in that, and it was no mistake.
Hearing those amazing baritones in the opener awed me as a young band member, and I became determined to play like that!! Lol...
So great. Love old school drum corps. I remember this show and love hearing it as an Anaheim Kingsmen member.
It's funny how this show has aged.
That is, it's aged well actually. Recently DCI did a "Who Did It Best?" with various performances of the Finales of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. Crown, Boston Crusaders and Blue Knights were also featured in the segment. Surprisingly, actually *shockingly*, this performance was one of the fan favorites, even though it's well over 40 years old.
I think it's due to a couple of factors. One is that the show is accessible to the fans. Another is that it was well-executed all across the board. Every caption of the corps was near the top of the score sheets (ok, we'll leave off the controversial 6th place GE M&M score and the low Color Guard rating). To borrow Pete Emmon's description, the entire production was "solid".
The show is now cited by some as the textbook example of "old-school drum & bugle corps". I think it's because of that "solidity" factor. No, Phantom Regiment did not win that night, but this show, with every aspect nailed down tight, has now come represent an entire Era of DCI.
Those of us who marched in the corps will take that.
Gosh, that's a masterpiece.
The horn line had so much power and finesse, the drum line was super technical and precise, and the color guard was by far more talented-creative-cohesive than Vanguard in 1978…saw them the very first time that summer and when I saw the snares playing the drum solo, Flight Of The Bumblebee, I was hooked…✌️😎🔥
Thank you for posting 👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼👏🏼
Such meaning. Not just the music but the structure and presenting the colors at the end. Can you imagine trying to do that today...it would likely be criticized as a political message. So sad. Miss those days.
I must say Phantom's 1978 American flag presentation makes no sense because they're playing all Russian and Austrian music. It's a lack of cohesion. This is like China presenting their flag while playing The Grand Canyon Suite. This show doesn't meet professional design standards.
@@jesuspectre9883 even more reason for that great flag, great design , kinda like shuvin it
How SCV won at Mile High instead of PR is beyond me.....Even Pete Emmons stated that PR won.....Shirley Whitcomb.....look at her score sheet from that night.....joke
Shirley was a Program Consultant to Spirit of Atlanta late in the season in 1978. I saw her running a full-corps rehearsal with them in Alton Illinois shortly before Finals. There is no way she should have been judging Finals.
I marched PR in 1984, and Ed Danec, who aged out the year before in 1977, and was a M&M instructor my year, also pointed the finger at Shirley . But I’ve also heard (from another fellow ‘84 member) that snare drum legend and instructor that season Ken Mazur went off on the entire judging staff, and offended them. Not sure if true, but it’s fun to re-live my corps experiences and my teen years. Thanks, TH-cam!
@@JosephMadden-cn2bl That story doesn't make sense. Why would Mazur "go off" on the Judges before the performance? And if he did it afterwards what difference would it make to the score? I don't recall that occurring.
That said, Mazur was outspoken and often questioned Judges. But from my knowledge it was only in the percussion caption. There wasn't a lot of controversy about the percussion scores after Finals. The Vanguard drum line had a "come from behind" performance and their score showed it. We were consistent with our Prelims score, which BTW stands as one of the top ten percussion scores of the entire tic era of DCI.
The Firebird Show… It should have won, but for the dropped rifle…
A drop is one tick. There were other ticks that don't get singled out the way a drop does.
that is horseshit buddy. Losing had nothing to do with Syd dropping. A .1 is a .1 no matter if it's a horn crack or a bad interval, or a phase. The reason we lost was Whirley Shitcomb - from California. GO SCV
This is the show where dci turned less military and more prefrormace
78? I'm more leaning toward 1981 and 1982 when the did Spartacus.
Hardly
No, that was 1979 for everyone except Bayonne, they started it in 1976