by Brooklyn Mario | Jun, 2021
George Del Monte: He was, in the truest sense of the term, a living legend. Educator, musician, playwright, and…most of all, a friend. Better yet, was our BFAM (Brother From Another Mother) relationship. Over the years, I’ve saved every piece of email that we shared, including those which he wrote in Italian, to encourage me to learn it better. After all, I am/was a Sicilian from Brooklyn (BklynMario).
Among drum and bugle corps people, there is a special place in heaven reserved only for them. Now George is also a member of that group.
(more…)
by Brooklyn Mario | Apr, 2021
It was a simpler time in New York City. Corps directors had jobs in the real world. Instructors had no assistants— they taught what they created. Corps members were from the neighborhood, and “outsiders” were from a relatively short subway stop or bus ride away. An entire corps could fit on one bus, with all equipment stored in the undercarriage. Our ad-hoc staff was volunteer fathers, uncles, cousins, and former corps members.
(more…)
by Brooklyn Mario | Nov, 2020
“2020, the Movie.” Once upon a time, this would have been the title of a sequel to the film 2010, or a graphically esthetic date of a science fiction novel. More fantastically, it might have been a possible calendar date reality in which we got around town in our own, fits-in-the garage, gravity defying, auto-maneuvering Ford Skyliner, darting between multicolored, spiraling glass edifices, and on our way to Indianapolis for the DCI Championships. It might have been…but it is not. Had that been so, it’s title would not be, “2020 The Season That Wasn’t.”
Rather, we find ourselves house-bound, quarantined, isolated, sequestered, involuntarily (but not necessarily religiously cloistered), domestically quartered, and in most cases, imprisoned in a fairly comfortable, and familiar, solitary confinement. And, no, this has nothing to do with your prankster, police officer cousin, who forgot the password that would allow you to be legally freed from the ankle bracelet that he just wanted to, “Let me show you how it works.” Again, it is not.
(more…)
