gdisney

Keyboards are fine on the track, it's the vehicles they didn't want on the track. Hence the plywood runways. I can't vouch for whether or not this was communicated properly onsite. For those that are interested, the university's statement on the event is here.. I post this as an FYI, not as any suggestion of my opinions on the matter.

I'm jumping on this topic a little late, but obviously I am ashamed and embarrassed by our university's inability to get the lights working. I'm the one who actually filed the initial paperwork with the university to reserve the space for this event. We had asked, been confirmed for, and had paid for the lights to be on from 7-11pm. I was in the stands at 7pm. At 7:05pm I started calling people to find out what was going on since the lights had not come on as expected. We checked the individual poles, all of which had their breakers physically in the 'on' position, which tells me there was some sort of problem with the system which tells them to actually turn on (I don't know anything about the technical aspects of how this is SUPPOSED to work). At this point we still don't know exactly what went wrong, whether it was a system failure or a screwed up programming job. The Facilities guy onsite (essentially part of the custodial staff), said that in 20 years of working events there he had never seen this happen. They did, incidentally, reach electricians offsite who were trying for over an hour to remotely activate the lights via computer (I didn't know they could do that...but obviously it didn't work). I don't know why there was no one onsite with knowledge of the lighting system or how to turn it on, since it had been reserved to be used, or if it was supposed to be on a timer why there was not someone at least on call who could come onsite if there was a problem. As a representative of the Dept. of Music at Sac State, we're just peons in the university hierarchy, and we had but a small part in getting this show to Sacramento after it was found out fairly late in the game that UOP would no longer be available. We were just the middle man, as it were. But we were excited to see drum corps back in Sacramento. The great turnout (i believe more than double last year's event) showed us that fans were excited to see it here too. We felt utterly helpless last night since we personally had no direct control over the stadium facilities. All we can do really is to offer our apologies to S.O.M.E, who sponsors this event, and to the corps and fans who came out last night. Obviously some investigating will have to be done higher up than our department to find out what went wrong.

Earthquake? I didn't know the Renegades were rehearsing already... B)

Darn - I was looking forward to auditioning for that spot.

I don't think RCR will field again.

I loved Crown's show - but I don't recall anything from Tchaikovsky's 1812. The "Lone Ranger" is actually Rossini's William Tell Overture.

Are you looking at Wednesday Sept. 5?

Here's some random thoughts: Car washes Crab or spaghetti feed or similar Work bingo (check with a local hall and see if they need volunteers to fill someone's session, often they'll pay around $40 per person per shift) Work concessions at a local sports arena (out here, working a minor league ball game needs 12 people, takes about 6-7 hours, and nets around $400 per game) Use Good Search.com - small return but takes no effort, you get paid for doiing internet searches Start a program recycling ink cartridges and such.

That's exactly why I never buy the ticket packages...

Um...question. Why would you want to make hotel reservations 2 years in advance? Or did you mean 2008??

I have a curiosity question maybe someone can answer - why is it that we're worried about getting tickets to an event 11 months before it happens? I can understand wanting to get the best possible seats and so forth, but really there can be methods to offer this regardless of whether or not tickets go on sale in August, December, March, or whenever. Is there a reason DCI sells them SO far in advance? This is not meant to be insulting to anyone, I'm just trying to understand the thought processes behind all this.

Except the DCI West at Stanford the week before finals, where Cadets won by three tenths. Was that not considered a 'major' regional? And don't forget at semifinals they were only 5 hundreths of a point apart...

I don't know, I think every year no matter who wins there's always scrutiny over it by some people. This year you have a second place corps which, even for people like me that hated the narration, you have to admit they played and marched the hell out of their show. Before the scores were announced, I honestly thought they outperformed BD in finals night, though I really wanted to see BD win. And of course, both BD and Cadets were within a tenth of each other at several shows in the week leading up to finals. With two corps that close, there's going to be some scrutiny.

No, but for many it is the biggest single source of fundraising revenue.

That's an interesting point, because one of my favorite years musically from BD was 1998 - where they blended Bernstein and Tchaikovsky.