Float Through the 80's || Aged Out Reacts 

I think, too, that the contributions that Catherine Float made to the front ensembles of all of those outstanding line should be mentioned.

I marched snare in Tom's 1980 Spirit of Atlanta. We tied for high drums that year with Bridgemen and it was the first ever tie in D.C.I. The judges had to hold an impromptu meeting to decide who to give the trophy to and they went with the high G.E. score. We won high execution and thought of course they should have used execution as the tie breaker. Float's lines were always clean. He would have it no other way. Catherine marched marimba (yes-"marched") with the 1980 line also and I think she may have marched the year or so before too. The center 4 or 5 guys in Float's first Blue Devil line were all from Spirit. Some of those guys were from Auburn University where we all traveled to Atlanta twice a week for practice. They quit college and drove to Concord and marched with BD. I chose to finish college and became a band director. My parents would have killed me if I had quit college to move to California and march drum corps. Lots of memories and stories. Tom Float knew people and what made them tick. And NOT tick.

Pleased and flattered with the kind words about the bass drums I played bottom 36” ‘83-‘85. Our bass instructor tuned the top four for whatever pitch he wanted and let me tune the big one for volume. We used first aid gauze and first aid tape for the muffling. In ‘86 they used weather stripping from a hardware store Float wrote great parts for everyone but saved his best writing for me. “Jake, don’t drag it man- ‘cause it’s gonna be on the record…” We cut the first windows in the basses on tour in ‘86 at Carlsbad. We made windows with motorcycle helmet face shields. #5 had a hard time seeing the shorter guy playing #4. When I marched, #4 were 6’8”, and 6’4”; I just watched their plumes to see where to go Oh, the ‘86-‘88 Yamaha big bass was 36”. How could anyone think otherwise?!!! #Thundergods ☮️FFF

Oh. And the "Big Bass" in 83/84/85 was at Floats celebration this past weekend, towing his chiropractor around. We listened to these shows this weekend and love the thunder of those deep bass drums. Serious BOOMS in those shows.

Nice video, fun to watch. I marched in the 80's Blue Devils hornline (81-85) and was fortunate to witness the arrival of the Floats in 82 and the magic they worked with the drumline. We were spoiled in the Blue Devils with the hornlines we had accompanied by these amazing drumlines. And the characters in the drumlines fronted by a hilarious staff. The whole corps learned the language Float brought to the Blue Devils in 82, from drum speak to "What it is, Holmes", to "I need to borrow a sled to get some grease" [need a car to get some food]. It was an amazing era to witness first hand......and to know those guys/gals.....Float impacted many, and his drumlines loved him.

A couple of thoughts about Tom's writing, he wrote the parts to mimic the drum set playing of Buddy Rich. '88 is my all time favorite show, but he also did this with Channel one Suit. Some of the kicks and fills were right off ove Buddy's recordings. Also Tom said he love having the 4 sections of play off each other. In the early days it was snares, basses, tenors, and timpani. Later he would pull the cymbal players or from the pit to form the 4th group with the North Tri-toms or the racked toms. The man was the definition of cool.

Awesome, guys. He and Katherine were amazing. Privileged to have been in BD pit ‘83-‘85. Coolest man I ever knew.

The drum solos and the playing were all awesome, but if you really want to understand what made Tom Float a great marching percussion writer and instructor you have to listen to the charts he wrote accompanying the brass. Float had a gift for big band jazz. He understood grooves and fills and kicks and translated it perfectly from the drum set to the field. Listen to BD 89 "You Gotta Try" or the entire Spirit 1979 book (perhaps my favorite). The way Tom's parts complimented the brass, the fills that he wrote in the empty spaces, and the way he got his lines to phrase brought those tunes to life and made them supremely entertaining and memorable. I'd love to see an episode about that.

The thing about Float's lines was they were just so damn smooth while ripping the tastiest stuff available

I'm the 17yr old with the shaker in the '85 clip!

If you can find them, go back to the Etobicoke Oakland Crusaders lines from 75, 76 and 77. In 1977 Oakland Crusaders finished 15th overall in prelims and didn't make Finals. But they WON the drum caption. They often killed the old Exposure to Error caption.

For The Algorithm!✊😎 Fun Fact: Tom Float's Vic Firth Drumsticks were based off of the Slingerland 3S Drumsticks his drumlines used throughout The 80's!

Man, you guys gotta check 80 and 81 Spirit too, those were also Float lines of the 80's.

Tenors with the "line of coke" vis at 8:24

Thanks for keeping this era alive. Glad you mentioned 1980 Spirit. 1979 Spirit was impressive as well. You may also get a kick out of 1988 VK, with Matt Savage at the helm. Not clean like a Float line, but fun nonetheless. Great job.

Love this content! I really wish that we had more "young people" reacting to classic drumcorps, not just drumlines but all the rest also. Tom Float is a real legend. Always enjoyed hearing/seeing his lines.

I marched BD '85 in the Q5. That was the year that the drums burned while on tour. So, we played on silver, and white the same year. It's nice to be in one if these compilation vids, and it was awesome being taught by Tom. He was a whole different kind of cat. The whole staff was killer actually. You should check out the ram at the end of the opener for some vintage Float. FYI, for more of the teacher tree; Glen Crosby, who worked with Crown, marched '81- '83 Q5, Leif Marwade who taught cavaliers for a bit, marched '86 Q5. And Vern Johnson, who marched '88-'90 Q5 taught Garfield. And, if I remember correctly, the snare line in '88 was using some hybrid head that was kind of a mylar/cloth mix, that I personally thought sounded better than the kevlar when it first came out. It was early in the change of heads and drums. But they would split in a cross pattern, which was wild. Mike or Pete might have more info. Cool pod!

Kansas City Arrowhead stadium was covered in those beetles that you called cockroaches. If you watch videos from 88 and 89 you can see them for probably all the corps. During quarterfinals I remember going to the top of the spiral walkway on the outside stadium, seeing a beetle on the edge, flicking it off and watching fall all the way to the bottom, then crawling away. In 91 there were crickets all over our practice field at UNT. When we rolled up the giant Vietnam flag at the end of rehearsal it was full of them. Then they got released at the final show at the Cotton Bowl the next night.

I have a copy of the original hand written blue devils drum line parts from their 1990 show, feels like a piece of history.

Thanks for doing this tribute and retro review. Those Float lines from 79 Spirit through his Devils years were so awesome to watch live. You could pretty much hear snippets of his writing style through every decent high school and college line during those years. Tom Float was a god to us drummers. I really miss those days of tonal bass drums that actually sounded like bass drums and provided a nice bottom end to the overall sound of the corps. Today's tightly tuned and muffled bass drums just sound like cardboard boxes. Lastly, I really miss Blue Devils playing those awesome great jazz charts during the 80's, all about the music and not about the GE back then. Yeah I know, such a boomer comment.

I played bass drum number three with Spirit of Atlanta in 1980. A story from that year… We were having a winter camp at a high school in Stone Mountain GA. We had been working an early version of “The Devil Went Down to Georgia”. Float camped out at a local Waffle House into the early morning hours doing a significant rewrite of several sections of the feature. That became the classic we played throughout the rest of the year. Those waitresses had no idea they were serving coffee to a musical legend.

You should get Emc productions on the podcast

French roll off the toms at the end of the feature in the 90 clip. Scraping from the tom to the snare. 1st tap on the tom and the second two on the snare. at 14:21 I rode the SCV bus with one of their snare players on the way to the Fiesta Bowl show for DCW All-Stars after the season. He ran the feature down for me on a practice pad.

Float didn't win drums with SoA in 1980. They tied with Bridgemen, but Bridgemen won on a tie breaker GE, I think), which was the start of their three-peat. 83 was Float's first drum title. I was in the 84 soprano line, and it was always fun to watch the drum line at work! 8:49 as the snares turn back around front...dude facing to the left is center snare Steve Campbell...he of the perfect 100 I&E snare score earlier in the week (vid at ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-Wx3r7Q8s6Rw.html ). Dude facing right is Dave DiLullo....who came over from SCV -- VERY easy to spot Dave as everyone else if head-bobbing and he didn't! 11:20....sop at the center screen with the ring (86) on his finger is current brass caption head John Meehan -- his father, Jack, was one of our brass guys in 84.

Cool review of Float's lines, fellas. Nice work!

Check out Red on the big ass bass with Spirit in the Float days. He was the man. Legend.

First solo is paradox, somehow my university got a hold of the music and we played it in like 2008. so much beef even in the bass part

1976 & 1977 Oakland Crusaders an 1980 Spirit of Atlanta are definitely Float lines worth watching.

I marched some of those years. They used to tell us to just play as hard as you could. Minus the dynamics.

Everyone that March that line were some of my friends from years before drummer from the Maruders and Spartans Longview WA and Vancouver WA love you guys with my soul brother Igor baritone and my best friend constant challenger for drums superiority top bass Jerry Matthew enjoyed running around in Brady station wagon to Mars...

Float nylon tips are some of my favorites too, probably in my top 3 list of favorite marching sticks. On most of my drumming videos on my page, that’s what I’m playing.

Watching these bring back so many memories. To think my first drum corps show was at the Odyssey Classic Show in 1986 and got to see Santa Clara Vanguard and the Blue Devils there in person. Life changing experience! I had to comment on the part of the video concerning the ‘86 Blue Devils drum feature. It’s sad that the camerawork always misses the awesome parts to film. The camera focused on the tri-toms that they used in their ‘76 championship show (they also played Channel One Suite then too) and missed the awesome stick visuals that the snare line was doing there. I was so mad at that. I remember myself sixteen years old and had never seen something so awesome! There is a video on RU-vid somewhere showing that part. If I can find it, I will link it.

Those bottom drums were probably 36" back then in the early 80's

'95 VK. If you haven't seen it you need to check it out. Float writing and Rennick teaching.

Through all of this is two sentences maybe three: Long Rolls that go into eternity and HANDS FASTER THAN A SPEEDING BULLET!!!

1982 was flipping insane

great shot of the unison double handed sixteenths at 8:26.

86 snare line in the solo did the Spyder A Rob Sirat special over all 10 snares and the showed the Roger North tri’s instead of the greatest visual in snare drum history. Here is a small clip of it from the PBS Broadcast. Enjoy! ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NzS7ufzZ0CQ.html

The roach was at 10:47-10:49 lol

Cameron Halls dad, Brad is in the '85 snare line.

I wish the video showed the accelerando singles at 4:01. IIRC, the snares start it with just left hand, then add in the right.

Listen to the bottom bass smash the and of four @ 7:38.

You guys are awesome!

Etobicoke Oakland Crusaders???? 1976 and 77?

Somebody needs to bring back 1984 Phantom Regiment's 40-inch bottom bass drum, while somebody else should bring back the 2003 Cavaliers' front ensemble.

you guys should react to X 10 and talk about how some of that stuff came to be

Love those bass drums that got windows cut out.

The last half of '85 was when they switched to Yamaha. The equipment truck caught fire on the road a few days before the Centerville show and their Ludwig's burnt up. Ludwig sent them new drums and a bill for the new drums and Tom told them "see ya Holmes". Yamahas for the end of the season. It was Yamahas foot in the door. Before that everyone played Ludwig or Slingerland.

Great job! Too bad you didn’t include ‘87 which Tom always praised as his best line.

You should have checked out the years with Spirit of Atlanta and VK.

8:23 hmmmmmm 🤣

Still can’t understand the TD decision to cut away from quad feature

❤️

I found it! Trying to link it at the end of this comment. This is the snippet of the 1986 Blue Devils snare line doing those stick visuals. Also, the person talking with the stuffy nose is the late Don Angelica who one of the DCI caption awards are named for. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-NzS7ufzZ0CQ.html

For the algorithm. ✊

You need to check out 1980 Spirit of Atlanta

Sometimes, the video editing at DCI was complete garbage back in the day. For instance, in the 1990 show, it's absolutely criminal that at the 13:10 mark in this video, the DCI broadcast cuts away from the insane tenor solo and points 👉 the camera instead at the snare line (while they're not playing) and then to the color guard. This is the most insane display of hands moving across 5 sets of 5 drums that NO ONE SAW 🙈 ON THE NATIONAL BROADCAST!!! And the tenor line couldn't make it anymore obvious by giving a cue to the spectator (which you again don't see 🙈): They take several steps backing away from the rack 🥁 right before their solo, and lean forward as if to say "Hey dudes, check this shit out!" Now, I don't want to take anything away from the color guard. They won top guard that year. But I'm sure they and the snare line would agree that sometimes the editing decisions at DCI just kind of shits all over 8 months of intense practice that should be showcased in a national broadcast. If you actually want to SEE 🙈 this tenor solo (as well as hear it) from a show at the beginning of 1990 season, check out this video: ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-nn7XoeXiCss.html The Video quality is shit, but you get to at least see it.