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This thread is neither exciting to me nor one of the best 6 threads I have read this year. In accordance with the OP's value system, I therefore deem it a failure and will move on to read more successful threads.

Totally ignoring the French horn player standing beside him. LOL!

I can tell you as BK Alumni (Pit 93-95) that BK has been down the whole "entertainment" road before. In 91 and 92, BK placed 9th with shows that were well performed, but maybe lacking in the "wow" department. They also picked up the "Blue Ninth" moniker in the process. So in 1993 they decided to shake things up with a show containing the music of Star Trek and a 5 minute drum solo (which was killer by the way). Guess what happened, we dropped to 10th, and were #### lucky to score that high. Then in 1994, we go back to basics with not the most exciting show, but again, a well performed show. The result? Tied for 7th. Here comes 1995. Instead of sticking with the formula that works, the designers decided they wanted to be more entertaining. What do they come up with? Disco. The result? Blue Knights watching finals. The same scenario played out in 2000 and 2001, this time Blue Knights are out of finals for the next 3 years. The moral of the story is, stick with what you know and what you do well.

This tantrum has sadly become ubiquitous enough to earn its own name. I christen thee: Purple Rage.

Lets be honest here. If Crown came out with the exact same photo people would be saying how great it is that they are trying new things and how great it will sound because its Crown. Literally they can do whatever they want and people wont care. I can put money on people complaining about Cadets narration , BD props, or a trombone(already know Madison is using) or french horn of any other core.

Thought for DCI: I attend anywhere between 3 to 6 shows each drum corps season where the shows are held anywhere between a large high school stadium to a huge sport facility (LOS/Mile High/Denton/etc...). At each show when the corps are coming on the field you have this normal trek of staff members (5 to 10 members) who you see coming up the stairs for each show to find a corner or vacant seat so they can view their corps on the field. Normally its on the staircase heading up the 50 yard line (highest paying seats) and they try to place themselves as high as possible to get the very best view point. Even at DCI Championships at Indy you see the staffs climbing the stairs to find an observation point. My question - Has DCI ever considered providing a reserved area or space in the booths for staff members so they too can view the show in its full glory and at the same time not hinder views of paying customers (does happen sometimes). For myself I kind of enjoy having the staff near by as I hear their "ooohhhhs" and "aaaahhhs" of whether the kids hit their mark (or not) but I can tell it did bother some paying customers to have someone block their view or emergency exit. Don't know if this area was every addressed with DCI. Just a thought...

This makes me smile! My son preformed in 2000 with the Blue Knights and he was on staff for the three shows mentioned. My daughter performed guard and my son was the visual caption head for "Folk Song" so, of course, that was the best season for me.

Subjective? Yes. Policital? I think you underestimate how hard it would be for one person's political agenda to affect the overall score of a drum corps. We had a champion just last year that was 6th in a caption and still won. So unless you're prepared to offer some kind of evidence supporting a conspiracy to keep one corps out of finals over another then all you have is an angle to whine when the corps you think should have been in finals wasn't.

The simple answer to the question of competitive inertia is that except for Carolina Crown no Corps move up very much beyond their DCI station in life. Why ? , ...well because there is an established pecking order of accepted tradition whereby lower corps talent feed into the rosters of the higher placing Corps their best marcher talent each and every year. Additionally, The top show design Corps staffs have remained intact pretty much since The Beatles broke up. The marchers from the Scholastic Band world only want to march with what they perceive to be the Beautiful People's ( top tier ) Corps. Thats just the reality here. You want your Corps ( any Corps, not just BK ) to move up in DCI ? Convince your vets in your Corps that you are not in a " Stepping Stone Corps " ....that you are a " Final Destination Corps ". And that your Corps is special.. that they are unique... that they are family... and that they will stick together for one another. You accomplish that, and you will move up in placement in the future as you'll retain your best marcher talent who feel like they are in a Corps family... and you'll find also that other talented staffers from other Corps will likely find that the culture in your Corps attractive and will want to be part of breaking thru that glass ceiling and will move heaven and earth to become a part of a Corps that they believe is fully committed to excellence throughout its organization. You do that, and you have a shot, imo. Absent that, you can just about forget about moving up thru the perennially slotted pecking order, as the top 3 or 4 Corps are going to be a magnet for other lower placing Corps marchers just as they have always been.

How low have we gone when High School Marching Bands are the paradigm of cool for DCI? I’m just glad we are going to keep the composer’s original brass timbres intact when we hack their piece into tiny little sound bites while prancing around the football in spandex re- imaging the piece as an homage to a 1930 art house movie and pounding out synth-samples of pixies hissing in disgust

Apropos of nothing, a nice anecdote: This morning I am on my morning train to Stamford. After the podcast I am listening to ends, I queue up Crown 2013 for the remainder of the ride. As I am getting off the train, I spot a young man in a Carolina Crown hat (not a common occurrence way up here in CT) and I tell him "nice hat", to which he smiles. Then I show him my Kindle, so he can see that I just happened to be listening to Crown at that moment. Pretty cool Carry on...

I'm still torn on the weight of "GE". I like a corps to have tight captions and get that credit. In fact, the push for great GE numbers has created some sloppiness even in the top corps in August because a horn line can't just play an amazing run. They must be wiggling their legs or lying on the ground with one leg up, (or jumping on trampolines throwing freebies to get full credit). Same with guard, they are required to do so much multi tasking, it's a rare treat to see 40 flags actually spin in unison in any guard. Sometimes the basics done perfectly (aka 27th Lancers guards), is effective in a spot or two during a show. I think that is one of the reasons I always love the 12-15 ranked corps. There is less fluff in their programs. (No dig on Crown with above reference). Just current stuff used to make a point.

I got it.. The Phantomette's can now run down BD's runway doing their Swan walk and jump onto Crown's trampoline's and then land on Cadets Stage to do some ballet.

My Top Three. Note: that I wouldn't want to have them all together because I might embarrass myself. 1. Mr. Hopkins: No Dinner. Just drinks and lots of slow dancing to REO Speedwagon. 2. Mr. Boo: Watching a midsummer show in Madison while eating brats and drinking a tall cold beer. 3. Jeff Ream: Because anyone who has 157,000 + posts on DCP has to be extremely interesting in person.

I think this should go up on my profile as a quote so everyone can see what you said. but why bother with you is the bigger question.

That seems an odd sentiment coming from you, you’re usually a new guy and Fellini’s been dead for a few decades. I find Fellini boring, predictable and dated but not in a good way. He gave art and indie films a bad name and often was the touchstone for their mockery and everything wrong with them. Wouldn't a show about Lars Von Trier be more contemporary, more about what the kids want, more new? Kids, youth of today, skip Fellini, he’s boring, old and we’ve all moved on. Heck, a 12th place DCI show from the 70’s is more exciting. Fellini is irrelevant except to dinosaurs doing a nostalgia trip. Save the time of watching his movies and update your Facebook page or get to that next level on Candy Crush

I agree with the above two opinions. I loved Avian. Not since Garfield 1982 have I thought that a show could move the activity in another direction. Not for the sake of just a new direction, but something that came across as more fluid....more abstract. I was all prepared to hate last year's BK show. Marc Syvester was gone and I was looking forward to seeing Avian 2.0. I watched it, and then watched again. I love BK 2013. If anything could make me stop being upset about not seeing Avian 2.0 that was the show to do it. There are some things in it that just make me smile like the tambourine feature. How simple, how really quite ridiculous in this day and age of everything electronic but it was just so well done. The show just seems to never stop. There are pauses yet something in the show is still continuing during them. There are also subtle hints - a point in the drill where there are multiple circles on the field depicting the BK dots. This is a corps that hasn't been above the 6th position. But I love to watch them. IMO, something is right in Colorado.

It's not the content of the discussion, but the nature and tone of it. In fairness, this is true of most of the internet, but most of the current and recent generations of participants prefer Facebook - away from the anonymity, where they can take accountability for the things they say and foster pretty friendly relationships with one another despite their active/recent competition with one another. That, and Facebook is easy. Per the OP, can't wait to hear the duet, especially now that I've been away from the activity long enough that I'm actually starting to enjoy it (weird).

Making the " Top 12 " is not only an accomplishment for Corps at this pecking order level, it also means more revenues to that Corps. Additionally, all those 13th- 14th place Corps performances are pretty much lost to history in regards to fans having the ability to watch and hear their shows later. There have been lots of entertaining 13th place finishing Corps over the mnany years of DCI. Go see how many you can find however. Not many. And the ones you can find are on totally crappy tapes that makes the tape watching almost unbearable to watch and listen too. The 12th place finishing Corps however has their performance stored forever for history and its performance generally preserved in its quality that dwarfs that of a Corps that might have finished only a mere few tenths behind in performance.

um ok. they marched 80 last year and pretty sure it's the same this year.

Shh we don't acknowledge those things on this forum.

Judges judge what is before them in competition. They don't factor in ( or shouldn't ) what a Corps did earlier in the season. If they did, that defeats the whole purpose of marchers and staff busting their butts all season long to have their Corps be at their maximum best when it most counts at Championships week..

Me too, going back to 1968. I loved "Avian"; visual.emotion.story.culminating music :)

Bluecoats 2011 "Creep"? Can't say I was EVER a fan of the original by Radiohead, but what Bluecoats did to it.......mmmmm. Listen to it all the time.

For me personally, their 2012 show is on my all-time favorite list, going back to 1964. I loved "Avian".

2001 Blue Knights, anyone? Now that was one horrible show.

This activity has become very competitive. After being on tour with a certain drum corps for a couple of summers as a volunteer, I did really get caught up in it, and felt the same as you do. However, don't take too much from points and rankings, it doesn't matter all that much anyways, and only one corps can win each year. And even then, there's always controversy about who deserved to win. Drum corps are very expensive - and the talent out there on the market to write competitive music/drill/choreography is not easy to come by, and can sometimes come with a hefty price tag. Not everyone is a Michael Gaines, or a Jeff Sactig, or a Zingali, etc. They do the best they can. And I will say this about show themes - the Blue Devils, and even Crown in the past 4 years, have set the bar extremely high for innovative and unique themes. It's becoming more and more competitive, and sometimes a staff can only do so much to put an idea out on the field that may or may not work. Blue Stars 2011 Rebourne show comes to mind - great theme, execution was not too bad, but the scaffolding didn't work too well for the judges. Sometimes that happens - but for a staff in the Blue Knights who consistently makes finals, in the last 15 out of 18 years, I don't think you have anything to worry about. I found the 2011 Blue Knights' show incredible. I think the judges could have given them a couple of more points, but then again, it doesn't really matter right now, does it? These 3 things I can think of right now are top priority for any corps - making sure there is enough money, making sure there is still enough money, and making sure the kids are fed and watered, and that they have somewhere to sleep and rehearse, and that they make their competitions on time. You can throw the whole "having a good tour experience" on top of that. Some corps are in a position where those things are pretty much taken care of, and they can focus on bringing in better staff, etc. But many corps struggle with meeting those first requirements. I would consider the Blue Knights fortunate that they've been able to be so consistent all these years. A corps director will do what he can to put a competitive corps on the field year after year, within budget, and still give its members an experience of a lifetime, year after year. Chill out. There are organizations in worse situations. See "Glassmen". That being said, I think 2014 should be a good show and I predicted them in the 7th-8th slot.

How many corps have ever placed above 6th..... No offense but the levels are so much more difficult than when u and I marched.... Finalists are so close in performance level. It's all about retention and staffing which they've got in place. They had transition and a lot of it, but still didn't drop out of finals. I think you have a pretty narrow view of how this works. But again, talk to the staff or Mark. I have 4 or 5 current or former kids marching there and I recruit across the state for them. It's about building a culture, not tearing it down

Spirit's Facebook page announced the 2nd number in their show: "Promised Land" from Gershwin's Porgy and Bess.

Um let me get this straight Jeremy, u want BK to be a top 6/World Champ.... Ok perhaps you can help the corps like I do by recruiting and talk to members about staying true to BK each and every year instead of jumping ship to BD or Phantom etc.... You say you're frustrated, u talked to Mark Arnold, u let him know that you find them to be inconsistently consistent by making finals 15 times? You marched 2000? I marched 97 and 98... What made the 6th place finish happen then was a building.... I marched with three 13 year old sops in 97, those kids grew up and stayed with the corps. Retention is everything, and while you're trashing them, THEY RETAINED THIS YEAR!!!! I've heard the whole show. You? It's pretty #### cool and takes on an incredible topic. You've missed the boat on what are corps is all about.... BK is one of the few corps out there that can tackle European Brass Music one year then play jazz, Symphonies, movie music, American folk... The corps style is- Diversity! You have no clue what you're talking about and I'm ashamed you chose to publicly thrash the corps with no knowledge of what's going on. Wow, I hope you enjoy Drums while some of us only dream of going to Denver to support the corps!!! Unbelievable! PS BK is kicking ASH this summer. But guess that's just boring or since they might not be top 6 they should just stay home;) Wes Perkins BK 97 98

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hfYJsQAhl0

Each year that passes, I see the Blue Knights deliver a show that is, for all intents and purposes, clean / solid enough to be considered top 12. One adjective that I have never been able to use when it comes to a BK show (including the year I marched in 2000) is "entertaining". I was a part of the "dark and brooding" indoctrination that is BK - they're keen on proving that they have their own style and possibly more enthusiastic about making the sport "come around" on its collective view on what constitutes a championship performance. This is where an artist loses his identity in his work - it happens at the point where you insist that your audience "just doesn't get it" and belligerently pursue your particular point of view at the expense of its original intent: to edify your audience. An entertainer is beholden to his audience. A presenter doesn't show up at Pepsi and attempt to deliver a presentation on how to drive Coke sales. A magician doesn't walk up on stage and give the audience a talk on blood diamonds. Nor should a drum corps take the field and give the audience its take on a great show iwhile incessantly ignoring years and years of evidence that this style, viewpoint, institution is not considered to be the state of the art. Some at the BK camp perhaps believe that emulating the success of other corps only cheapens its brand. It's a "sellout". It's "admitting defeat". To that, I say "try not to take yourselves so seriously." There is a reason why Olympic swimmers, basketball, football, and baseball players have "fundamentals" -- these are things that tend to yield the best results. Every science has evolved in a similar fashion. Where would we be had a group of rugged sailors not discovered that the world were curved? How about Copernicus' crazy notion that the Earth rotates around the sun? How about transistors before there were integrated circuits or later computers? Is there room for innovation? Did Robert Noyce ignore Shockley's breakthroughs with the transitor before he created Intel? Doesn't the evolution of any art form require the good work that came before the breakthroughs? BK should start from a place that observes the fundamentals. Pick songs that the audience can identify with. Have flashy moments that show of its musicianship and confidence to the crowd. Make someone's pulse exceed 60 beats per minute. Otherwise, you're just performing for yourselves. What's the fun in that?

True. But there is a place for everything. And not all places are the same. For example, you can have a family frank discussion on things at home among yourselves. Or... you can have your family frank discussion of these " difficult conversations" in a restaurant. DCP is that restaurant. We are your surounding patrons of the restaurant that are sitting around you and Weslyrp. We hear your frank discussion. But we are not privy to the goings on in your family, nor can we tell you what to do, nor is it our place to intervene as to what you need to do. Other than to whisper over to you to politely tell you that your familiy frank discussion probably needs to be toned down a bit and done in private, as your heated words are even beginning to scare away the waiters from coming around to ask us at our tables if we want more water in our glasses, or a refill of the drinks.

Looking forward to the live broadcast Sunday night. Curious if the show is complete. They had about 8 minutes last weekend done and performed very well but they have a habit of constantly changing things as they go.

Klesch's arranging is about as far from chop and bop as you can get. But i enjoyed your post nevertheless.

I just think if everyone took things less personally around here, it'd be a lot easier to have a decent discussion that wouldn't drive most of the CMM et. al. away. You've got 44,000+ people that like "Drum Corps Memes" on Facebook - the discussion here could be much more active than it is (less of the same old, same old and typical backstroking I think you pointed out earlier). This might make sense if DCI somehow existed as governing body away from the corps themselves, but as it is strictly an extension of corps leadership, this is simply the reverse of the situation. The corps themselves drive the change they want to see, DCI only facilitates the change. It's not the Umbrella Corporation, etc.

My old roommate had a saying when we'd watch baseball together. Any time our team would get beat, he'd say "they're allowed to play baseball too". You don't think every other corps in world class is trying to move up? Its not as simple as you seem to think it is. The suggestion that you get on staff was simply a reference to the fact that you seem to think you know how to fix it. You're here pretty much bashing everything your corps does, from membership retention to design decisions, but are refusing to accept that maybe getting above the top ten isn't the easiest thing in the world to achieve. If it were, it wouldn't be the top ten, or the top 6. Management and staff can talk until they're blue in the face about how the corps is a family and members should stick around, but the fact is, if a kid wants a medal around his neck, he's more likely to go somewhere where he thinks that's going to happen. That's not a Blue Knights problem, its a cultural reality in our activity. It takes a lot of hard work, planning, and frankly, a lot of luck for that kind of program development to happen. Crown happened to be able to pick up the right guy for that brass program at the right time. But that's not the only thing that played a role in the development of that program. He had to get the right members to show up to auditions. Those members had to have a reason to stay. He had to bring in the right staff, and those staff members had to have a reason to stay and develop a rapport with the membership. The corps also had to have the right design staff for the instructional staff. That pairing had to work well together, and develop a relationship that would also grow to the next level of instruction and design. All of that is just to develop a championship BRASS program, not to mention guard, visual design, percussion etc. Look at the development of a baseball franchise. Its not so simple as to just say "I think we'll win the world series this year". You can spend all the money you want on free agents, but if the free agents you need aren't available, or are offered more money or a better situation elsewhere, you're out of luck. You can pour all the resources you want into your player development program, but sometimes your prospects just don't pan out. Sure, you can chose to invest more money, and that will improve your chances of signing free agents, or increase how much you can spend on development, but at the end of the day, the players and coaches have to play the game. The Yankees have been the number one spending franchise in the majors for over a decade. They've won precisely ONE world series in that time frame. You think you have the answers? Call Blue Knights. I'm sure they'd love to hear from a concerned alumni.

Wow.... Again you have a lot of opinions on BK and what they're not doing... You call the corps office yet? 303 777- 1937, Rosalie will get you in touch with Mark and staff.... I'm sure they're dying to know that they don't plan for the future, work to improve year on a out or have done anything meaningful in the past.... I'm sure many who've gone home in tears for not making finals are thinking how dismal it would be to be a top 10 corps every year- Despite lots of staff a d member turnover.

Granny, I'm buying

I call Corps Staff in the stands 'Ferals'

Been awhile since we’ve seen one of these from a BK alum, I thought that Folk Song Suite show was enough to kill this sentiment for a bit….but there was that alien bird dance show so…

Allegro - if a message like this ruffles a few feathers, so be it. I find BK's consistent output of sleep-indicuing, overly-cerebral shows to be condescending and offputing to the listener. It's not fair to say the Blue Knights are failing - as many have stated, they are perennial finalists and that counts for a lot. This is old news though - why not turn your sights on the next evolution of your program and go for the top tier? What's holding them back? What are the other corps doing that BK isn't? And why is it taking so long to have this conversation and come up with some solutions? When I marched in 2000, we were within a point or two of SCV throughout the entire season. Sometimes, we'd finish in time to cach a glimpse of their show and I remember thinking...."man, their show is so much more interesting and exciting than what we're putting out. What gives?" I keep holding out for that moment when I say to myself, "yes - that was an exciting show. I could see that show among the Cavaliers, Cadets, and Blue Devils of the world." More important than "taking on a difficult topic" or "making a statement" in some intellectual way should be the simple idea that a show should entertain. For one reason or another, this concept seems to elude the mainstays at BK.

For the record, not too many high schools even use the concert horns as seen here in the marching band idiom, they're occasionally used for a novelty purpose or for soloists, and usually in very tasteful and cool ways. Lassiter high school 2002, Westfield high school 2003, ect.

Threads like this make me laugh because some people have no idea what it takes to build a drum corps. To the original poster, I'm not sure what sort of beef you have with the Blue Knights, but it obviously seems as if you have some underlying issue with the corps. Why aren't you saying the same thing about Boston Crusaders? The Colts? The Blue Stars? You've asked the question "Why haven't the Blue Knights broken into the top 6 lately", yet couldn't this question be asked to about 15 other drum corps? Why are you targeting the Blue Knights? It is SO hard to break into the top 6 with the way that drum corps is today. I truly don't think you can use placement to determine the success of a corps. The Blue Knights could have the most entertaining and polished show that they've ever had, but if 7 or 8 other corps are still better than them, then the Blue Knights will appear to have ended up in the same spot. However, the performers/staff of the Blue Knights will know just how much they have grown, and just because it isn't reflected in terms of a "top 6 finish" doesn't mean the corps isn't strong. After last year, I am SO optimistic for the Blue Knights. One of the best 10th place shows, in my opinion. Seems the staff is finally starting to gel. I believe the visual staff from last year is still there this year (does anyone know who that is, by the way?), and know that the guard and brass staff are still there. The percussion staff has been upgraded. Anyways, simply put, I think your comments don't carry much weight and I am not sure why you have this opinion. Seems you are just wanting to start trouble. Not sure what kind of "beef" you have with the Blue Knights.

That's a good point, and I suspect perhaps the reasoning is that an intern or someone low on the DCI employee totem pole has a much easier job "deleting everything but Finals week" rather than "delete everything but Finals week except the last shows of these specific corps." I'm not saying it's right or wrong, but if enough people were to make a rational complaint to DCI FN, and said that they actually wanted to have those corps/shows with their subscription, DCI might make the effort. But right now I think we're all discussing a "theoretical" problem, in the sense that yes DCI omits the final performances of a small handful of OC corps, but as a subscriber I can't ever recall being frustrated because those shows aren't up 12 months or more after the performance. I think a far more legit frustration is not having older non-finalist shows on FN. Again, I 100% understand the reasoning behind that decision, but as a FN subscriber I would MUCH rather see the 13th or 14th place corps from 1997 than 2013 BDC

For the lsat 10 years, DCP has had a toxic reputation throughout marchers (go teach somewhere now and mention the site--the reaction is priceless), so the new blood to replace the leaving blood hasn't been super existent. Can't wait to hear this. I know the Bluecoats mello solo in Metropolis was originally supposed to be French horn (and almost was until they eventually decided the penalty wasn't quite worth it). It'll be cool hearing that other brass timbre the way the arranger intended.

Especially younger fans who are more virtually connected to online content most waking hours of their day.

That's the full uniform. They're very short this year.

A bit ago there was quite a nice topic about Madison's hypothetical introduction of trombones. One of the main "antagonists" (I use that word as being vehemently against trombones and apparently the progression of DCI in general) was FlamMan, an alum of the corps. And here I am yet again on this ridiculous site reading him and other alumni trash about this progression and talk about how disappointed they are. Well on that trombone post I made a nice long comment which seemed to go ignored, and now that a similar "discussion" has arisen, I think it's about time to bring my comment back for these alum to see. To tesmusic and other alums being supporting, THANK YOU MORE PLEASE. And to other alums who think that Drum Corps changing means they can abandon what they learned at the Scouts, YOU SIGNED UP TO BE A BROTHER. MYNWA MEANS FAMILY. FAMILY MEANS NO ONE GETS LEFT BEHIND OR FORGOTTEN.