Popular Post hostrauser Posted August 12, 2014 Popular Post Share Posted August 12, 2014 Before my review, a quick(?) story... So I'm returning my rental car on Sunday, and who do I walk past in the parking garage but Scott Johnson and his wife (assuming). I had to congratulate him and the kids for their amazing performance. Later, as I prepare to disembark from the short IND-ORD flight, who do I see four rows in front of me? Scott Johnson. Since we had to gate-check our bags for the small regional jet, I got to briefly talk to him again and related my BD audition story (short summary of it in my profile) which got a chuckle out of him. Both conversations combined probably didn't amount to two minutes, and in my super-geek-boy-fandom-ness I failed to introduce myself either time. So, if ScoJo happens to be lurking here or if this finds its way to him: Hi Scott, I'm Kevin. It was a pleasure to meet and chat with you. And you were right, it was Todd Ryan who "let me down easy" at my audition. HOSTRAUSER'S ALL-PURPOSE DCI CHAMPIONSHIPS COMMENTS - The Drumline Battle Championships in the plaza on Saturday afternoon was PACKED. At least 1,000 people there, minimum. I don't know if SoundSport was similar, but it sure looks like these auxiliary events are really taking off. - I know DCI has no input on the concessions prices inside Lucas Oil Stadium, but Jesus. - Semifinals seat: right-side 20-yard-line, field level, 7th row. Finals seat: left-side 48-yard-line, field level, 2nd row. Front and center. - Souvenirs purchased from Bluecoats (hat and keychain), Phantom (t-shirt, bumper sticker, conductor's baton), Crown (polo), and Patria (sunglasses). - BLUE DEVILS B: So, how long until the Blue Devils put TWO corps in Finals? Want to start taking bets? My placement: 82.500, 17th Actual placement: 82.325, 15th - OREGON CRUSADERS: Show design felt REALLY stale, and they were the worst offenders of the "body movement for the sake of body movement" sin. A lot of it did not mesh well visually or work with the music. They're still new at this. They'll get better. My placement: 81.700, 18th (Note: I did not see anyone before BDB on Friday as this was when I did my souvenir shopping.) Actual placement: 80.100, 19th - THE ACADEMY: I really liked "Vanity Fair" and thought the corps sounded great. HUGE improvement over last year. I hope they are challenging for a Finals spot again soon. My placement: 83.500, 15th Actual placement: 81.875, 16th - SPIRIT OF ATLANTA: Their brass was WOW AMAZING. Just a couple of intonation errors, which you expect at this range in the standings. Nice usage of the trombone for the soli. After hearing all the doom and gloom about trombones, I quite like how they were used (Spirit, Madison, and Vanguard). Visually this show was a bit of a mess, though. My placement: 83.100, 16th Actual placement: 81.550, 17th - TROOPERS: I can't believe I'm saying this about a Robert W. Smith/Paul Rennick show, but Troop's musical design was very poor. It was boring, it felt like every minute or two they ran out of inspiration and went with an obvious and saccharine "AMERICA, EFF YEAH!" moment. I though the show was WELL below the abilities of the performers and held them out of Finals. These kids can PLAY, and I honestly feel if they had a better vehicle they would have passed Colts and Crossmen for 12th. My placement: 84.400, 14th Actual placement: 84.775, 14th - COLTS: The exact inverse of the Troopers. The show design was GENIUS, one of my favorites of the year. When I first heard the concept it sounded like old territory, but they did a very fresh take on it. Kind of a Patrick Bateman in Oz story. But the visuals seemed above the ability of the performers, and they just couldn't quite squeeze out enough juice to push into Finals. Still, I liked the show a lot. My placement: 85.600, 13th Actual placement: 85.350, 13th - CROSSMEN: Another great Chuck Naffier brass arrangement. They seemed a little tentative in Semis, Troopers and Spirit brought a lot more power, but Crossmen were oodles cleaner. They did NOT seem tentative at Finals, they brought it all and a bag of chips. I was simply amazed that a 12th-place corps was pinning me to my seat. I don't remember that happening with G bugles. Sure, the Blue Devils and such could do it, but the 10th-17th place corps were rarely capable of parting your hair. It's a really simple concept of music: the better your tone quality and intonation are, the easier it is to be loud. And these Bb horns have much, much better inherent tone quality and solid intonation than the old G bugles. It's helped the 10th-17th place corps to become far more amazing in the brass department than ever before. My placement: 86.800, 12th Actual placement: 86.225, 12th - MADISON SCOUTS: Another corps that really seemed to be holding back on Friday. The Scouts were fine on Saturday. But just fine. Their show is just kind of there. They don't do anything exceptionally well, they don't do anything exceptionally poorly. The show didn't really seem to have a musical or emotional arc to it, just jazz jazz ballad jazz okay we're done. It felt unusually tepid for a Scouts show. The soloist at the end nailed it on Saturday night though. My placement: 87.200, 11th Actual placement: 87.575, 11th - BOSTON CRUSADERS: One of my Top 3 show designs of the year. "Animal Farm" is a very caustic, allegorical novel about the Russian revolution and descent into Communism. Every "faction" in the book parallels real-life: the pigs represent the brutal Stalinist regime, the horses are downtrodden and abused Russian populace, etc. Boston was on top of this, cleverly using patriotic Russian and very anti-Soviet music, and matching the moods to the book. In Boston's show, the pig imagery accompanies the brutal, violent sections of music, the horses show up in the ballad, etc. Just really well done, my favorite Boston show in many years, maybe since 2000. My placement: 89.000, 9th Actual placement: 88.950, 10th - BLUE STARS: A visual delight. Holy moly that guard! The worked well with the "clutter" on the field, though I must say the music didn't particularly thrill me. I put BAC ahead because I loved their show, but these two corps really were very closely matched. Love the red plumes, please keep them. My placement: 88.900, 10th Actual placement: 89.600, 9th - PHANTOM REGIMENT: They were on fire at Finals. There were some ensemble balance and blend issues between brass and percussion, and the corps had about a billion interval issues visually, but man did they bring the energy. I know I'm a Phantom homer, but I really thought they were underscored. They weren't even close to BK's level on Friday but really stepped up their game for Saturday. My placement: 92.300, 7th Actual placement: 91.425, 7th - BLUE KNIGHTS: Phantom threw down the gauntlet and BK picked it up and answered the call. Amazing show, maybe the best 8th place show ever. But while I had them over a point ahead of Phantom and close to the Cavaliers in Semis, in Finals they may have been TOO amped. They had several visual tears Saturday night that didn't happen on Friday. And I think, in the end, that is what cost them. Still, along with Phantom I felt BK was underscored (ESPECIALLY on Friday). Also, this may have been mentioned many times, but it wasn't until the end of their show Friday that I realized, "Wait! All their narration is from 'American Beauty'!" My placement: 92.000, 8th Actual placement: 91.150, 8th - CAVALIERS: I liked this show a lot more than I thought I would. I liked it so much I didn't take hardly any notes, but now all I can really remember is the crazy marimba feature. Still, it is good to see the Cavies back into the Top 6 where they belong. And I don't think they'll be going away again any time soon, but who knows? DCI has gotten so ridiculously competitive. Interesting note: the parents of a first-year member of a bottom-half-of-Finals corps sat behind me at Finals, and it was their first DCI show EVER. So I got to hear some nice, unjaded opinions from "true newbs" as the saying goes. This was their favorite show of the night (Bluecoats were 2nd). My placement: 93.400, 6th Actual placement: 93.675, 6th - CAROLINA CROWN: Along with BK, this was the corps I really felt had a better run on Friday. They just felt off to me at Finals, and I noticed several uncharacteristic mistakes from their brass line. A couple of fuzzy attacks (including a solo) and some hitches in the big 16th-note runs when transferring voices. I'm actually surprised they were still only 0.1 back in brass. Don't get me wrong, they were still AMAZING. But I felt they were obviously "only" the 2nd-best brass line this year. Crown's visual wasn't as clean as last year, and their percussion book had more meat but also wasn't clean enough. Still an enjoyable show and one I think will have a lot of "replay value." My placement: 95.200, 5th Actual placement: 95.675, 5th - SANTA CLARA VANGUARD: Maybe the best visual design Pete Weber has ever done. Just loved how much of a spectacle for the eyes this show was. Opening impact was immense, after that the brass left me wanting more. One could argue both Cavies' and Phantom's horns were better on Saturday night. But Vanguard's percussion was amazing, and their overall package was so good I thought they should have been well ahead of Crown (at least a point). My placement: 96.700, 4th Actual placement: 96.075, 4th - BLUECOATS: As the Bluecoats' drum major saluted before the Finals performance, the guy to my left said, "He wants to beat The Cadets SO BAD." That was the impression you got from the entire corps. Like the Blue Knights, Bloo was almost TOO amped up. But they held it together. The finale (of course) sent the stands through the roof. 3rd in brass and percussion, 2nd in both GE captions, all well deserved. I thought The Cadets had them after Friday's show, but Bloo came out like a steamroller on Saturday. The last time I went to Finals before this year was 2010, so I'm beginning to think I'm good luck for the Bluecoats. My placement: 97.500, 2nd Actual placement: 97.175, 2nd - THE CADETS: It's like a flashback to 2007: a show design I absolutely cannot stand but holy moly can those kids play. Sitting only two rows up you could not see anything but faces and shakos. And this was an NFL stadium. I wonder how many high school stadiums The Cadets performed at this season where 50%-75% of the audience couldn't see a darn thing. This was a show wholly and entirely designed for the press box. Even worse: it was cheesy. The Cadets blatantly tug at the Americana heart-strings about once every decade, but it's such a tired concept by now it feels more frequent. All I can do is report what I saw: without hyperbole, other than myself I saw NO ONE who was not wearing maroon in sections 139, 140, or 141 applaud ANY of The Cadets impact statements during the course of the show. Another spectator thought, since they were going so blatantly for the patriotic angle, why not troop the colors up onto that stage for the grand finale instead of a bunch of people just standing around and saluting? Ironically, I like his idea, it would have been a nice effect statement from a show that needed it. My placement: 96.900, 3rd (based on the technical abilities of the performers alone) Actual placement: 96.875, 3rd - BLUE DEVILS: I'm not going to explain in detail why the Blue Devils visual book is so superior. I'm tired of arguing with people who don't want to learn or don't want to understand. A few years ago I was just like you, I ridiculed the Devils shows for being nothing but jazz running and scatter drill, frustrated that the judges were throwing them 19.9s and 20.0s. It's laughable in retrospect: the trained experts who judge are picking up on nuances Mr. Armchair Quarterback on the web is missing? YOU DON'T SAY. Thankfully, I had a couple of friends who are visual designers and explained to me (in great detail, because I asked for it) exactly how and why the Blue Devils are superior in everything from dance to staging to uniformity of technique to subtlety. Yes, subtlety. I don't know if you've noticed (and, judging by the vitriol I see on DCP, you probably haven't) but the Blue Devils have little throw-away sections of visuals that are as hard as anything any other corps attempts in their entire show. Just one example: in the jam session about midway through this year's show, some brass players march backwards and sit WITHOUT LOOKING on the stage platforms that have been placed behind them. As a friend said, if I put a chair 16 feet behind you and told you to backwards march a perfect 8-to-5 at any tempo you like then sit down without looking, would you land in the chair? (At least half of you that just said "yes" are wrong) Anyways, onto the scoring. There was little doubt that BD was the best at nearly everything this year. As for the 20.0s, look at it this way: there is no such thing as perfection, but if BD truly deserved a 19.98 in Visual Analysis and a 19.97 in Color Guard, which is more fair: rounding up to 20.00 or rounding down to 19.90? My placement: 99.300, 1st (though I joked they'd probably end up at 99.125, getting stung by that 0.025 once again) Actual placement: 99.650, 1st - The Blue Devils have now had a Finals score of 98.0 or higher thirteen times. Every other corps in DCI history combined have done it only fourteen times. 11 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jwillis35 Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 Fantastic Review!! Very much in line with my thoughts. I probably liked Crown's Saturday performance better, but they did have visual issues. I actually did have them winning brass over BD by .1, but in the end the judges saw things like you. I actually loved the Cadets show up to the company front that ended the first part of Appalachian Spring. It was nice and stately, elegant, and really well performed. I didn't care for the cheese at the end. My buddy, however, felt as you did. He didn't like the stage and felt it hurt the visuals and the overall sound since they had to push the corps further back field. He hated some of the audio clips (although he liked the narration), and he couldn't stand the end of the show. I think they backed themselves into a corner with that show for which they couldn't recover in the last 2 weeks. So they cheesed it up with tarps, audio, flags, banners, people on stage, you name it. I actually do like Patriotic shows, but I will admit that they are more difficult to develop as the season unfolds. Ultimately there is always going to be the urge to add the gimmicks. As much as I love the Cadets, I was glad the judges didn't reward the unnecessary cheese at the end of the show. From a musical standpoint I love the charts and will be listening to this excellent brass and percussion section a lot. You are correct about BD's visual program. It's on a different scale from what is being done by others. I think the Bluecoats have taken a small page out of their book. If you analyze TILT you can see some of the similar staging concepts and individual marching demands, in addition to some excellent full-ensemble marching maneuvers. I believe it's one of the reasons Bluecoats took 2nd in GE. It certainly wasn't the synthesizer glissando effect alone. The whole show has amazing focus and structure. I, too, was unsure if they'd pass Cadets. On Friday the Cadets were just technical monsters, and they were again on Saturday (incredible marching); but GE is a big deal and BLOOOO was vastly better in that realm. Phantom Regiment was one of my favorite corps all summer. I loved the music, even loved the stately and elegant drill. They cleaned, and boy did their brass play. One heck of a guard too. In the end, they were simply more refined than BK on Saturday. BK was just one of the best shows of the weekend!!! I love the theme and the music, and reading your review is the first time hearing that their narration came from American Beauty. It's funny, because while listening to their show I actually thought of that movie. The structure and cadence of the sentences and thoughts. But I didn't realize it really was from American Beauty. What a great concept for a show and they were one of the crowd's favorites as well. One final thought, as I compare notes with your outstanding review, you are SPOT ON about Boston Crusaders. At first, from a Fan Network perspective, I hated their show. A difficult and dark theme to pull off, and I initially thought the music and drill were over-scored, too demanding. Seeing them live in Massillon, and then again over Finals weekend was an eye opener. I ended up really liking this show and could have seen them taking 7th with a cleaner performance. They certainly had the demand, and LIVE you really get the show. Some of the effects were stunning, and musically the ballad to the end was beautiful and riveting. Boy could they march. VERY demanding show. Thanks, again, for the excellent review! 4 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
BRASSO Posted August 14, 2014 Share Posted August 14, 2014 This was a well written, interesting, and very insightful review ( probably because I agree with just about all of it.... and I mean all of it... haha!). 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fecontra Posted August 15, 2014 Share Posted August 15, 2014 How can a person who knows so much flunk a try-out? If you play low brass-you have to Love Phantom- especially that chord in the ballad! I loved Blue Devils - one of my favorite shows of all time. SCV should have also passed Cadets ( who have awesome talent but so=so show ) Crown show much better than judged as frankiE 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
hostrauser Posted August 15, 2014 Author Share Posted August 15, 2014 How can a person who knows so much flunk a try-out? If you play low brass-you have to Love Phantom- especially that chord in the ballad! I loved Blue Devils - one of my favorite shows of all time. SCV should have also passed Cadets ( who have awesome talent but so=so show ) Crown show much better than judged as frankiE 1. Can't march. Like not even a little. Pregnant ducks have better form than I do. Don't know why, it's just something I was never any good at, even in high school. Could play just fine, but I was a visual catastrophe. 2. I do, and I do. Started on tuba then moved to baritone/euphonium. So of course I've always loved Phantom! 3. Definitely the best performance I've ever seen, technically. I liked the show, probably the most I've liked a BD show in 6-7 years. Not one of my all-time favorites, yet, though that may change with time. 4. I liked SCV's show more, but their brass still needed some work. Nowhere near as clean as the rest of the Top 5. You could make the argument that SCV should have been ahead of Cadets and I might agree. Then again, you could also make the argument Vanguard should have been 7th in brass (behind Cavaliers and Phantom, too). 5. Nah, I'll disagree there. The show was very enjoyable, but the visual staging could have been a lot better and the percussion was filthy (by top tier DCI standards, not by normal human standards). Crown's visual design this year was the weakest of their past three shows, and unfortunately that was glaringly evident with several GREAT visual designs at the top (BD, Coats, Vanguard). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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