I've been trying to make this funny for two days, but I guess it isn't...
I always wanted to play with the Sunrisers, ever since the first time I heard them in 1963. I heard Sun and Sky for the first time witihin a couple of weeks of each other at exhiitions at local jr. corps concerts. But if you were a baritone player, Sun blew you away. I thought Bill Hightower was God. I'm not dissuaded to this day.
In 1965, the West Side Story piece sealed the deal. I was too young until I went into the Air Force, and too beat when I got home in June 1974, but I joined at the first rehearsal after DCA in 1974 and only missed one rehearsal in 1975. I've never been with better people than 1975, but we weren't good enough to win. But as far as fun goes, if you could get over the losing (which I couldn't) it was a blast, although I suspect that there are very few actual memories around from that year... a few photographs and several hallucinations.
1976 started out incredibly for the corps and for me personally, but kind of went downhill as I got drafted into covering the drum major spot when Brian Callahan left home. I guess we ran out of short guys. I sucked. We could have won, but took 3rd, which was better but still sucked.
The next winter it was clear the corps was taking off, hitting on all cylinders, but I was involved in some miserable political stuff within the staff, and my son was due, and I took some time off. I tried to make it back at the beginning of the season, but I couldn't get the day off the day of the MSG show, was told I couldn't marched, and just gave up. One of the biggest mistakes I've ever made, and left me feeling bad about my Sunriser "career" pretty much for good after that.
China felt sorry for me and brought me back in 1990 after Glenn Eng disappeared (notice a trend here?).
1990 was great for me, but lousy for everyone else... finishing 9th the first year after being the "corps of the decade". So I was there before the dynasty, and immediately afterward, but exiled during the golden age.
There's a cautionary tale here for present day Sunrisers: If you want to be happy in a drum corps, NEVER NEVER NEVER put yourself before the corps. True happiness in a drum corps can only be found through a Zenlike dedication to your fellow corps members. And never ever quit during a season, even for a brain transplant. or a stichadictomy or other important procedure.
I've written a little poem: If you want fun before you're gone-zo, Be like China, not like Ponzo. (yes that's the whole thing) Unless you 'd prefer: there once was a young man from Merrick With a p**** the size of a derrick...
I'd better finish that one on one of the passworded forums...
Okay, that's my Sunriser story... I'm sticking to it... not funny, but mostly true...
I guess no one on here remembers one of my stupidest, and what should certainly be regarded as one of my most embarrassing moments in the corps.
At Floyd Bennett Field - during the late winter, early Spring of 1975 (hard to tell the difference that year) - while Gene Bennett was working side A of the symmetrical drill, we were standing around freezing on the other side and I (I've always tried too hard to fit in) rookie though I was, kept saying to people ... "C'mon... it's not that cold! Be a man!"
Someone, (for some reason I think it was Marty Haring, but I don't really remember) said, "if you're so warm, let me have your jacket." I took off my military issue field jacket (olive drab) and handed it over. To make a long cold story short, additional members continued to ask for additional pieces of clothing, until I was standing out there between the hangars at Floyd Bennett, stark naked, with my little rookie member doing a pathetic job of standing at attention (everything had disappeared from the cold) (is this a public part of the forum?)
Bennett went nuts on me for disturbing his rehearsal, and I remember my socks blowing down the taxiway toward the water, looking as if the invisible man were running away wearing only socks. As I began to cover my now very pink body back up in clothes, I heard a familiar voice say to me, "Ya know, you ain't all there..." I looked up and there was my idol, the person I thought of as God, John Sasso standing there with my socks in hand.
I don't think the girls were impressed. I don't remember many dates in 1975... Back when men were men, although they may not have always looked like it... brrrrrrrr!
