The Intoxicating Aroma Called Drum Corps

DCI Atlanta has come and gone. For those of us in the most southern parts of the United States, it’s the only chance we get to see live drum corps without a significant amount of expense and travel. For those of us in Florida, we long for the days when DCI finals was in our back yard of Orlando. We miss shows that use to be in Clearwater, Daytona, and Miami. The times have changed, though. For most of us down here in the alligator swamp land, we only get the one show in Atlanta. We get the corps as they are starting the finishing touches headed into the push for Indy. By the time we see the shows live, we have already watched them on our computers and the big screen. Nothing is truly “shocking” by the time you get to the last weekend in July. 

Saturday night as I sat in the Georgia Dome, a place I’ve watched my share of the marching arts, between BOA and DCI (and in one exciting instance the SEC Championship), it occurred to me that it had been four years since I had seen a live DCI event. It wasn’t out of a lack of interest, but a weekend that unfortunately falls traditionally on a busy work week for me. This year, I made the decision back in May that I would go to Atlanta and figure all the work stuff out later. I’m not sure I went because of a thirst for live drum corps, as much as it was the thirst to see old friends. Regardless of the reason, I went. 

Seeing old friends all along the journey from the moment I checked into the hotel, to the first cocktail among the randomness of the activity, and even at a gas station in the middle of nowhere Georgia at 11 at night, made the reason I attended immediately apparent.  Before I even made it inside the dome I was having a true drum corps experience. To me though, it wasn't very different than a weekend at WGI or BOA. Friends, cocktails, laughs, and memories make up any one of our many activities of pageantry. It wasn’t until I stepped on to the big escalator heading down to the entrance of the Georgia Dome when I got my first scent of drum corps. It was sun screen. It was the smell of sunscreen. The escalator was packed full of people and somewhere in the midst of the eager drum corps fans I got a whiff of sunscreen. Living in Florida this isn’t a scent unfamiliar to me, but there was something about that smell of coconut that brought my senses to life. Research has shown that smell is the most significant memory trigger out of all five of the senses. In an instance, I was transported back to summer days on a practice field in the middle of some no name town in the midwest. I was 20 again and I could taste the smell of drum corps. The smell of drum corps woke me up to a journey I made a lifetime ago.

All of a sudden, all around me were people wearing drum corps jackets in 95 degree heat…a tradition I never could understand, but none the less, there it was. There were people in tee shirts representing drum corps of days long ago. Drum Corps I had never heard of were still being represented. There were the hordes of marching band kids standing with the band moms, having just finished a week of band camp. There were the girls who follow the Cavalier boys around and there were the old timers in heated debates trying to make sense of an activity that has left them behind. After four years of being gone, it was clear that nothing had changed. As I approached my seat in the dome, I felt alive again. I felt alive in a way that I hadn’t in quite some time. I watched corps after corps, having strong opinions about what was occurring on the field below. I would turn to friends between corps and debate what we saw. No one ever agreed with each other.

"I loved that. Did you see that moment when...?"

"Girl please. It was trite." 

Even the debates had been stalled in time. 

It wasn’t’ until a shot on the Jumbotron above showed a guard member performing her heart out. Her face was sweating and her eyes had a look that drew me in to a world that was once mine. Her eyes were sunburned right below the line to wear she clearly wore sun glasses. It was that red burn mark that you get when you consistently forget to put sunscreen on. It was the mark of a summer spent rehearsing in places like Lisbon, Iowa and Elko, Nevada; places no person in their right mind would ever go to on their own. Her eyes brought me back. It was intoxicating. It was visceral.

For a moment in time, she was me. Twenty some odd years have gone by and I could still feel the soul of the performance. I could feel her. I could feel the adrenaline that raced through her body and the thrill of performance. My pulse raised with her and for a brief moment we were one. The performer and audience member became one as if time had stood still like a caricature of the never changing times called drum corps. I realized then that the shows might evolve (thank God) and the criteria they are judged against might change, but the activity remains just an amalgam of all of us who stood on that field with a painful sunburn.  Fans still bought their favorite corps tee shirt. People still rose to their feet when they witnessed something incredible and the crowd roared when their faces got blown off by a wall of sound. 

Nothing had changed. 

Later in the bar, there were complaints about the judges and the old curmudgeons grappled with shows that just seemed a bit too “artsy.” For me? I just drank my cocktail. Things hadn’t changed, because the cocktail conversation was still just a part of the culture as the corps were and the cocktails were still the same. Drum Corps was still the same. We were still the same. The passage of time might have changed what we see, but it hasn’t changed who we are and for that I’ll be back.

When I got home, I went into the garage and took out something that had been in a box for twenty years. I opened the box and removed my old corps jacket that had been folded neatly with my memories from so long ago and placed in the past. I held it up, with my name embroidered on one side and “colorguard” embroidered on the other and I took a deep breath. With the touch of the jacket and the fragrance of old times, it was 1990 again. I could smell the bus fumes and years spent passing through no name towns. I remembered friendships formed in the battle of victory and defeat and could taste the bad food and feel the long hot summer days. Mostly though, I could smell the sunscreen and thought about that young performer on the field Saturday night as she pushes through to the end and hoped she could feel the echos of the past through an old drum corps guard girl sitting in the stands enjoying the moment with her.