I need to take a moment and apologize to the all-age drum corps community. Up to this point, I have not featured any DCA performances. There’s a few reasons for this, mainly that there aren’t many videos of DCA corps performing Christmas or wintery music that I can use without worrying about the video getting taken down from YouTube at some point. Another reason is that there hasn’t been a lot of DCA shows I can think of which have these themes as part of their show. Fortunately, there is one show which I’ve found that I actually hadn’t seen until recently, the 1994 Bushwackers and their performance of The Nightmare Before Christmas.
Both Bushwackers and the Velvet Knights used music from Nightmare for their 1994 program, which is a quick turnaround considering that the movie and soundtrack were released in October of 1993. VK chose to focus more on the dreamscape side of things with their use of music from the movie, plus Bush made their whole show focus on the music and themes of Nightmare Before Christmas, so I only include Bushwackers for my Christmas corps list.
The Bushwackers were the two time defending DCA world champions in 1994 and had won all six of their DCA titles (1986, 1988-1990, 1992-1993) over the past 8 years. A recent powerhouse corps, founded just a few years before winning their first title, the Bushwackers had also made a name for themselves with their highly theatrical show themes, such as their previous two championship shows, Sweeney Todd and Sunday in the Park with George. While they departed from Steven Sondheim, the music of Danny Elfman proved to be just as effective and eclectic for the corps.
Two things stand out from the very start of the show. First is the percussion, both in terms of their performance, which was one tenth short of winning the percussion trophy, and in terms of their design, which had the field percussionists opening the show on stages set on the field, performing on various concert percussion instruments during What’s This. The other is the color guard, dressed in patch covered black, evoking the dress worn by Sally, with faces painted as if they were themselves residents of Halloween Town
The show runs the gamut of emotions from the wonder of What’s This to the mischief of Kidnap the Sandy Claws, as well as the spooky anticipation of Making Christmas and the sadness of Sally’s Lament. The closer brought it all home in reprise format and the big finish which drum corps excels at. Just like our yearly tradition of watching Nightmare Before Christmas as part of our Christmas holiday viewing, I recommend giving the 94 Bushwackers a watch and/or listen for Christmas time as well. Jack Skellington would approve.
