Dream Theater, Indoor Drumline, and A Change of Seasons
The year is 2002. The place? My middle school gymnasium. And we’re here for the most unexpected of performances: the high school indoor drumline’s inaugural show.
If you’ve seen the Nick Cannon movie Drumline, you know show bands: technical mastery meets extreme visual flair. Those cats are COOL. But there’s another, nerdier side to the percussion world: Corps-style bands, rooted in military traditions. Think SEC-school marching bands or your own high school halftime show. The pros of this world compete in Drum Corps International (DCI) during the summer before returning to their home bands in the fall. But for percussion die-hards, the winter was a wasteland—until indoor drumline entered the scene.
In 2002, I was a seventh-grader playing percussion in the middle school band (no strings here; we weren’t fancy enough for an orchestra). Our small rural high school had a shockingly talented percussion instructor and a killer percussion section. And while “drumline” typically refers to snares, bass, and tenors, indoor drumlines include the “pit”—stationary percussion like marimbas, xylophones, vibraphones, timpani, and any number of oddball instruments you don’t blow into.
That year, the indoor drumline performed Dream Theater’s A Change of Seasons, a 23-minute prog rock odyssey from a band full of Berklee prodigies. Dream Theater wasn’t exactly mainstream, but their complex time signatures and intricate compositions were perfect for percussion. One unforgettable moment came at the 12:17 mark: the mallet players nailed a blazing run that left the audience (and me) awestruck.
The show was COOL. The girl on mallets? HOT AND COOL. The guy on snare with earrings? BADASS AND COOL. The other Mexican guy on snare? EFFORTLESSLY COOL. These weren’t just band kids; they were rockstars in my mind. Watching that performance, I knew I had to join the marching band.
When I joined that fall, I started on mallets. All those cool older kids were back, and to a dorky, 13-year-old Harry Potter lookalike, they felt like gods. But they embraced me with open arms and made me feel cool by association. In our band, the drumline was at the top of the badass hierarchy. Snare drums were ear-piercingly loud, tenor drums were heavy as hell, and bass drums dominated the field visually. The drumline got first dibs on the back of the bus (including me even as a middle-schooler), led every card game (spades and asshole were the go-to), and woke everyone up with a rowdy chant as we pulled into the parking lot after returning from competitions.
By 8th grade, I was on the indoor drumline. That year, we performed Divide by Zero: Error, a technically complex original piece with aggressive drill formations. The judges hated it (not enough theater), but I didn’t care. I was part of that elite crew, and by the time the class of 2003 graduated, I felt like I’d earned my spot.
In 9th grade, I got contacts, a slightly better haircut, and moved to snare drum. I was terrible. Traditional grip? Couldn’t master it. For our indoor drumline show—this time based on Super Mario Bros.—I was offered a spot on tenor drums and never looked back.
Sophomore year was our peak. The class of 2005 brought real talent to our drumline, and we won Best Drumline at every competition we entered. Even with our band a mere 50 members — a plucky underdog —as a drumline we were absolutely unfuckwittable. Somewhere on every band trip, someone would plug in headphones and listen to A Change of Seasons from start to finish—proof that I wasn’t the only one hooked by that Dream Theater performance.
Junior year brought changes: a new band director, less talent, but one lifelong friend joining me on tenors. We never quite reclaimed the glory of 2004, but my obsession with marching band led to a surprising encounter.
The week after my 17th birthday, at a band competition a family friend said someone from my dad’s office wanted me to meet her granddaughter. Now, I’ll admit, my 17-year-old self assumed “grandma setup” meant “great personality.” So, I brushed it off. The next day, I got a MySpace friend request from a random smoke show. You guessed it: the girl I was supposed to meet.
We started chatting, and it didn’t take long to realize she was, in fact, the kitties titties. What a bozo move, not meeting her sooner just because she lived an hour away! And here’s where this story ends—for now. Because this was never just a story about her. This was about how a Dream Theater-based indoor drumline show in spring 2002 sparked a passion for drumline, which shaped my high school years and, ultimately, brought me to this gal.
One of many 1st-Place Drumline trophies over the years: 2002, Furman University, with yours truly on the far right
