Cadets 2017

[87cadet]

13 hours ago, henry7184 said:

Seventh. It's done. It's a 7th place design and a 7th place corps. There is no way they are finishing higher. It's just not going to happen. Accept it now and you will save yourself some grief come finals. BAC's show design is better and they are performing a better design better. The Cadets had something at the start of the season, but like it recent years they tinkered with it in the wrong direction. I don't like the show today nearly as much as I did at the start of the season. It's completely overkill now.

This.  

Going backwards, yet again. 

Blame falls squarely on one person, yet again. 

Sad to say, but I no longer expect to see a championship contending Cadets corps unless and until Hop courageously decides that the Corps is more important than his ego. 

But I'm not holding my breath.

It's a tragic story repeated in business, sports, and the non profit world: overstaying your welcome, overestimating your ability, overplaying your cards, and stacking the deck (and Board) with yes-people who fail to see the obvious that any insider or outsider has seen for years.  

The current management model is too broken to tweak, fix, or reshuffle.  It's been that way for over a decade. Longer really, but changes in DCI and the wider culture (yes, there is a world out there that is not drum corps) has also changed enough to expose the Hop model as not just passé, but parasitic upon past success and gravely imperiling the future. 

Cadets are not a middle of the pack corps. They are contenders or they are not Cadets.  It's not about the medals.  It's about the art, innovation, emotion, and most of all education.  

Hop's publicly throwing the MMs under the bus on FB a couple weeks ago was the very last straw for me. That was ugly.  Worse, it was pathetic, even unhinged. Not everything must be social media "content". Not everything must be shown and showboated.  Let the kids, let the innovation, let the work, let the culture, let the performance, let the Art speak for itself. And I submit that all the Hop "content" on social media over the last ten years has been a sure sign and symptom of increasing discontent, another immature overcompensation for underlying lack of confidence, a clumsy attempt to cover a lack of faith in leadership by offering a pseudo transparency, a pseudo bottom up empowering and involving community, and too often, exasperating and utter ineptitude. Simple psychology: start with excuses, manage expectations, CYA, Doctor the spin, project blame, rinse, repeat. 

You can attempt to flush the failures down, and when the process and results are posted ad nauseam on social media, and it looks all white and clean and new, almost like fine China, it's somehow easy to delude yourself into forgiving and hoping against hope for next year, and the next year, and the next year, and thus forgetting that you need to stand on your two feet and back away to see you're still just looking at a toilet. 

This is a top down problem.  The many thousands of alumni and friends and current team members must step up to fix it.  

Now. 

It's done broke. We gotta get woke. 

I'm not gonna get stoned to be satisfied with the spurious "progress" of sixth or seventh. I'm stone cold sober. 

I am dismayed by those who see this year as a step forward. From what? 

Remember.....First as tragedy, or many of them, then a Stoned farce.  

I don't measure progress from a series of ineptitudes and chronic mismanagement that resulted in the open festering weeping boil of a show design like Stoned.  Hell, I even came out almost immediately after the show concept was announced a few years back and said to Cadets leadership and on this forum that "10" was doomed because it missed the entire point of the music, and sadly, I was right.  The design and executive team of any of half a dozen or more dci corps would have won with that monster corps of MMs, because they had better design across the board, and they consistently have better design because they have better management and better execs who leave ego at the door when they go to work.  

Nothing more important to a team than the leader. Any design or fundraising or morale or recruitment/retention issues are just symptoms of a kind of management that just doesn't work anymore.  

Tyrants and egomaniacs like Toscanini are dead, though today we have another similarly famous (though much less talented) leader whose name begins with a "T" that I wish were dead, or never had been spawned. So it goes. The new and usually very successful leadership and organizational culture model is much more egalitarian, empowering, non-hierarchical, nurturing, creative.  That is what millennials and GenZ love and have come to expect, and it's why Cadets have been passed by the Coats, Crown, Cavies, SCV, etc.  (And you think I'm talking about friggin scores, don't you?)

All those corps have better and more talented and creative and education-focused and empowering teams top to bottom. Or as I should say, better all around.  ;)

Hop must retire.  (He won't likely be fired with all his BFFs on the board though.)

So much talent out there to find better exec and board leadership, staff, etc.  Alumni and supporters would come out of woodwork to help and improve and reform and reload.  So many people have been sitting on their hands waiting until this leadership era ends and a new great era begins. 

Every year the cadets discussion threads generate more interest than anyone's.  So many people care.  So deeply.  So many people are so frustrated.  So many people need to come home and help. 

Thank you Hop.  I love you, but it's time to transition to another role in another organization.  

It's bigger than drum corps.  So let's aim higher, unafraid of the perilous skies, welcoming the springtime when kings go out through the Door, which, with our undying and renewed support, soon will reopen and surprise with a new entrance, not of another, but many hundreds, the family reunited and regenerated and once again revolutionary. 

That's my rocky point, my simple song, my simple gift, my demons and my better angels, my somewhere, somehow, someday. 

Zag!

FHNSAB

 

Edited August 4, 2017 by 87cadet
Typo

[xandandl]

12 hours ago, Cappybara said:

I forgot to thank you and @xandandl for sending me a video of the Cadets. Their show is progressing really well and I adore both the opener and closer for this show 

The improvement in the actual marching since Jon Bilby has arrived these two weeks has been phenomenal!!!

I listened to the last two nights live just in front to the box. Unfortunately the Cadets followed corps who did far more miking than they did. As a consequence, the Cadets going au naturel made the brass seem quiet and soft. Reality on my tape is not that at all. The others were just too loud due to the microphones.

Great shows to all in Allentown, including the corps whose DM keeps ogling Miss Claire. The brass and percussion lines want to know, "What are your intentions, sir?"

 

[Cappybara]

7 hours ago, jonwoody said:

The reason seems to be they rehearse and practice more than anyone. They have the $$ to be able to pass on some shows and rehearse instead. If other corps could afford to do that BD would not be so dominant. Plus the judges rewarding them for things they don't always deserve. How many feel they deserve best guard every year for the past , what 8 years??

In terms of rest days, yup BD gets more than any other corps out there. But I'm not too sure about the whole "rehearse and practice more than anyone." That seems to be the Cadets' motto more than anything. 

[Icer]

A lot of comments have been made about the judging.  I don't know enough about the detailed criteria to have an opinion.  But I do have a question for you experts out there. Looking at last night's scores from Chester: what is the difference between the visual component of GE and the Visual caption?  The Cavs ranked 3rd in the former and 1st in the latter. How does this work?

Edited August 4, 2017 by Icer

[cadet93]

GH mentioned Michael Lentz working with Cadets today to rework the "fallen" section.

Wonder if this will be part of a bigger relationship moving forward.  That is the type of creative person they need.

Edited August 4, 2017 by cadet93

[pudding]

52 minutes ago, Icer said:

A lot of comments have been made about the judging.  I don't know enough about the detailed criteria to have an opinion.  But I do have a question for you experts out there. Looking at last night's scores from Chester: what is the difference between the visual component of GE and the Visual caption?  The Cavs ranked 3rd in the former and 1st in the latter. How does this work?

GE Vis is more about how the visual program ties in to the advertised effect of the show: does the visual design reflect what the show is being sold as? Does the visual package marry well to the music, reflecting what we're hearing with what we're seeing? 

The Visual caption evaluates the visual book demand and execution independently of the music and overall effect. That is, regardless of how the visual design marries with the rest of the show, is it composed to challenge the performers? Are the performers demonstrating excellence in a variety of demands and executing them well?

[E3D]

8 minutes ago, cadet93 said:

GH mentioned Michael Lentz working with Cadets today to rework the "fallen" section.

Wonder if this will ne part of a bigger relationship moving forward.  That is the type of creative person they need.

Maybe someone with a brain will figure what you have just posted out. I would say his name but it would be fruitless. 

[emc2]

17 minutes ago, cadet93 said:

GH mentioned Michael Lentz working with Cadets today to rework the "fallen" section.

Wonder if this will ne part of a bigger relationship moving forward.  That is the type of creative person they need.

Do you really want to go there WTF.

[exitmusic]

1 hour ago, 87cadet said:

The new and usually very successful leadership and organizational culture model is much more egalitarian, empowering, non-hierarchical, nurturing, creative.  That is what millennials and GenZ love and have come to expect, and it's why Cadets have been passed by the Coats, Crown, Cavies, SCV, etc.  (And you think I'm talking about friggin scores, don't you?)

All those corps have better and more talented and creative and education-focused and empowering teams top to bottom. Or as I should say, better all around.  ;)

Post of the Millennium, to date.

[exitmusic]

Can somebody tell me if we are contractually obligated to play Bernstein next year?