Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, August 9, 1994 TAG: 9408090090
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: By LESLIE TAYLOR STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
They sleep on gym floors, or wedged into bus seats.
They practice eight, sometimes 10 hours a day.
They perform five to six times a week for 21/2 months out of the summer - drenching downpour or three-digit-degree heat.
What's more, they pay for the privilege, some of them in the thousands of dollars by the time the summer is over.
And they love it - or at least they put up a darned good front.
Because traveling with a drum and bugle corps can be a little grueling and a little chaotic. And it's sure to make those out of the loop wonder why these 14- to 21-year-olds sacrifice their entire summers.
Take, for instance, the 128-member Phantom Regiment, of Rockford, Ill. A wholesome, all-American group - fit, good-natured, brimming with stamina.
They'd pulled into the parking lot of William Byrd High School in Vinton early Sunday from a performance in Canton, Ohio, with four buses, two semis, one van and a food truck.
They ate and did laundry. Then they took to the fields for several hours, practicing over and over the moves that have brought them worldwide fame.
They were up at 8 Monday morning, ate breakfast and practiced again - the brass section on an asphalt parking lot, the color guard on a football field, the drumline everywhere.
Breaks were the five-minute kind, and only for a quick sip of something.
"What we're doing is not normal," said Dario Civinelli, a 21-year-old from Barrington, Ill., who is in his second and last year with the Phantom Regiment. "I haven't watched TV for three months. You spend your life on a gym floor or on the bus.
"But it's fun, too."
The Phantom Regiment belongs to Drum Corps International, a Lombard, Ill.-based organization that promotes the nation's top drum and bugle corps. Its 49-city 1994 North American tour - called The Summer Music Games - will swing through the Roanoke Valley this evening at Salem Stadium.
DCI competitors have been gearing up for the tour for nearly a year. The Phantom Regiment held auditions last November. Selected musicians from all over the country traveled to the group's Rockford headquarters once a month during the school year for meetings and rehearsals.
The group hit the road in mid-June.
"We're a gang, of sorts," said Kerry Knodle, the group's tour director. "We live and breathe this stuff."
That much is obvious. The pace is close to frenetic.
The brass section is marching - make that running - at 200 beats a minute. The drumline is marching - just marching - to the beep, beep, beep of "Dr. Beat," an automated metronome. Mallets are flying across xylophones, each note precise.
And they pay for mistakes - with push-ups, sit-ups or laps.
"I've lost 15 pounds," said Mike Turner, a 17-year-old from Dallas. "There have been heavyset people come here and lose weight. It's like an athletic event."
Living conditions seem to matter very little.
"We're young enough to sleep on a gym floor and not feel it too much," said Becky Speckman, 21, from Columbia, Mo.
The day's schedule is written on the food truck door: 8:00, breakfast; 9:00, sectionals; 12:30, lunch; 1:30, drill; 6:00, supper; 7:00, ensemble.
Stuart Brady, 24, and Alan Carter, 25, are groupies of sorts - employed groupies. The two traveled from Gloucestershire, England, this year to work as cooks for the Phantom Regiment.
Both drummers, they say the group has a loyal following in England. What better way to spend the summer than cooking 800 meals and snacks a day for the group's 128 members and some 70 other support staff?
"The people have pretty good attitudes, and they have good fun," Brady said. "They are the best corps never to win."
The Summer Music Games tour features 40 sanctioned contests held all over the U.S. and Canada. Throughout the six-week tour, Drum Corps International also holds seven regional championships, where the competing corps battle for dominance throughout the season. The tour culminates with the 1994 DCI World Championships in Boston, Aug. 15-20.
The Phantom Regiment consistently has placed in the top five. They have yet to place first.
But there is more to this madness than winning. There are lessons for life in the horn-blowing and drum-beating and flag-waving, Knodle says.
"In this age of drugs and violence, there is a place for the arts in solving problems in our society," says the former probation officer who runs a nonprofit correction company.
"If you can get a kid to pick up a trombone, they're not likely to pick up a gun."
by CNB