Metamora, IL - July 28, 2017

[N.E. Brigand]

I am attending the annual conference of the Mythopoeic Society (studies of J.R.R. Tolkien, C.S. Lewis, Charles Williams, and other like-minded writers) this weekend in Champaign, and it occurred to me that if I drove the long way around, adding only another hour-and-a-half to my six-hour trek, I could catch this show. Unfortunately, I couldn't leave Cleveland until mid-afternoon, and there was a lot of traffic in the Chicago area, so I only arrived in time to see Guardians from below the stands, but caught the remaining three from a good seat. Metamora is in pretty flat and open farm country; I could see the stadium lights from about four miles out.

Everyone was sloppy. Surprisingly so to me. I guess Open Class corps really do clean up in a hurry at the end (as their scores often suggest), because at Avon Lake, where I've seen them many times before and plan to next weekend, I'm used to a much tighter product. Still, I enjoyed all four corps and the audience (about 50% full) generally seemed to as well. I didn't stay for the encore or scores, having that 90 minutes still to go to get to my domicile for the evening.

Based on video I'd seen of Legends, I thought that Guardians' performance would score farther back. Did I mention how everyone was dirty? They were dirtiest. Also I really don't think the Kanye quotes work. Borrowed swagger. And the closing message was that Beyoncé made the greatest music video ever (pretty funny that DCP's spellchecker automatically puts the acute accent on her name), which seems like an odd theme for a drum corps show.

However, Legends seemed really tired. And their show is less appealing to me than the previous couple years. Plus their prop didn't light up in the big way that it is apparently supposed to do at the end of the show. (It did light up as they were marching out of the stadium--presumably they were fiddling with the controls to see what went wrong. That said, they could close much (but not all) of the gap on the leaders if everything goes right in ten days. Which means maybe, just maybe, Music City can do better than third. (And I have no idea where Spartans will fall.) But I think the top two will hold on.

Vanguard Cadets should have won tonight. I'm glad to see it was at least very close. Nice singing in the opener.

Whereas I do not care at all for the prerecorded voice in Blue Devils B's show. But the antlered devil character is quite effective; Boston could use her. She traumatized the child in front of me, whose mom had to comfort him.

[N.E. Brigand]

Legends won guard? Huh.

[DawsonBurnes]

1 hour ago, N.E. Brigand said:

Everyone was sloppy. Surprisingly so to me. I guess Open Class corps really do clean up in a hurry at the end (as their scores often suggest), because at Avon Lake, where I've seen them many times before and plan to next weekend, I'm used to a much tighter product. Still, I enjoyed all four corps and the audience (about 50% full) generally seemed to as well. I didn't stay for the encore or scores, having that 90 minutes still to go to get to my domicile for the evening.

One of the factors was the grass. It was incredibly thick and it was extremely hard to maintain straight legs through it. It was pretty nice to lay on in our preshow, though.