Old-time fans bowed in reverence. Young fans sat starry-eyed in amazement. That was the scene inside the Madison Area Technical College auditorium when the revived Chicago Royal Airs Drum and Bugle Corps began to play their music, arranged by the famed retired Colonel Truman Crawford.

"I was really pleased, it went well," said mellophone soloist Jeff Helgeson, a member of the old Royal Airs when they were a junior corps. Helgeson marched from 1964-68, and said the corps is serious about its one-year revival.

"Given the nostalgia of coming back after all these years, there's still a commitment to maintain the standards and strong sense of discipline to live up to what we perceive to be the corps' reputation," Helgeson said. "It wasn't just, 'hey, let's get together and play the horns and drums for old time's sake.'"

The fans could sense that from the moment the mammoth corps took the stage with 60 brass members, seven snares, five single-tom tenors, six basses, two cymbals and one drum major. Helgeson said the corps will be even bigger -- perhaps as many as 170 members -- by the time it hits football fields this summer.

The corps billed itself as having a loud, brassy, '60s style, and the members lived up to that. The snares ripped off single-stroke rolls and sopranos played solos that almost made fans' ears bleed. The drum line brought back old cadence-style double-stroked rolls with bold accents. The drum major didn't just keep the beat; he brought the musical nuances out of each brass performer. The corps needed no front ensemble; when there was a call for timpani, a snare drummer simply played on the two biggest bass drums for a thunderous effect.

After faking the first half of the performance because a valve on his horn malfunctioned, Helgeson swapped instruments with Dale Primer ('65 Royal Airs) so Helgeson could play his solo. His tone quality was so rich, his vibrato so lush, that fans' jaws dropped.

The corps played tunes such as Alexander's Ragtime Band, Ballyhoo and John Brown's Body, a swung version of Battle Hymn of the Republic. They closed with the trademark Very Good Year, a Frank Sinatra standard. Sopranos screamed and the corps blew fans' hair back. The crowd roared to its feet.

Scott Stewart, director of the Madison Scouts, took the microphone after the performance and said, "Excellent show. I mean this in a good way: These guys are a living museum to drum corps in the 1960s."

"We're trying to represent music from each generation of the corps," Helgeson said. "We said from the start..."