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Well he did say SEE tape. Are you sure there wasn't anything written ON the tape itself?

Personally, I think the decision belongs to the individual corps, not to DCI as an organization placing them on the Fan Network of something. While we-as-fans might like to know what is on the tapes, we don't really have to know...it isn't something we have the right to know, in other words...at least IMO. Yes, it is cool to hear them, so I understand the desire. I also think that wholesale release of tapes might cause judges to be more generic..and therefor less insightful...in what they say, if they think their words will be spread all over the web.

They were .1 from finals.... I understand everything else that you've written, BUT they were almost in FINALS; hardly a far cry... Almost as close as you can be without not being in...

Sure, BUT it's what may or may not be said on a tape. I get why people like to hear them. For me? No . Scores are just scores and dont tell specifics. Tapes do It , for some , can also mean being called out on something publicly . Sure , one side loves it but if you are a target you don't want that out there and it also suggests what from a competition standpoint you may have been told to beef up , fix change,etc etc. If I had some of that info on my competitor you can bet I would use it and 1 up them if possible.Remember it is a competition. Maybe no right or wrong in this but very different perspectives.

I have to agree. The first part of that show kicked some serious butt!

The Skyliners’ 2015 Production is aptly named “Whatever Lola Wants”. The corps is well known for performing an exciting, entertaining, and crowd pleasing show, and their 70th Anniversary production will continue that tradition. Their opener, “Meglio Stasera” (known in English as “It Had Better Be Tonight”) is a 1963 pop song with music by Henry Mancini, Italian lyrics by Franco Migliacci and English lyrics by Johnny Mercer. It was composed for the 1963 film ‘The Pink Panther’, where it was performed by Fran Jeffries. The Skyliners have chosen Michael Bublé’s treatment of this song, which was featured on his 2007 album, ‘Call Me Irresponsible’. Bublé's version is an adaptation of the musical arrangement made for the great songstress, Lena Horne. “Whatever Lola Wants” is another popular song, sometimes known as "Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets". The music and words were written by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross for the 1955 musical play, ‘#### Yankees’. The song was also used by Mario Lopez and his partner Karina Smirnoff in Season 3 of Dancing with the Stars, when their tango to it was voted the best celebrity dance ever by the judges. More recently, people may have heard this song in a 2011 Pepsi Commercial that featured Sofia Vergara and David Beckham. "Ain't No Sunshine" is a song by Bill Withers from his 1971 album Just As I Am, produced by Booker T. Jones. The song was released as the “B” side of a single in September 1971, and frequent play by Disc Jockeys helped make it a breakthrough hit for Withers instead. It reached number six on the United States R & B Chart, and number three on the Billboard Hot 100 chart at the time. This song won the Grammy for Best R & B Song in 1972. It has also been featured on popular, more recent, movies and TV Shows. Some of its appeal is that this song has been covered by many artists, in a variety of styles. The Skyliners are no strangers to the musical, ‘West Side Story’ (1957), and will bring a fresh take on the "Tonight Quintet". Music is by Leonard Bernstein and lyrics are by Stephen Sondheim. ‘West Side Story’ was based on a conception of Jerome Robbins, who directed and choreographed the entire musical. The five parts of the quintet are sung by the Jets, the Sharks, Tony, Maria, and Anita in anticipation of the expected rumble that evening. With Bernstein’s genius, he begins the song with the parts sung in turn, and eventually the parts overlap to build to the final line, "Tonight," sung by the ensemble in individual parts. The plan to end the Skyliners’ show with the “Tonight Quintet” corresponds perfectly with the fact that this song also culminated in a climactic part of the play. How appropriate that the Skyliners would choose music from musicals, and diverse styles for their 2015 show! Come out to The Skyliners’ Open House to find out more, and be part of the initial performance of this production number: Date: Saturday, November 22, 2014 ~ 12:00 - 6:00 P.M. Location: Wyoming Valley West High School 150 Wadham Street, Plymouth, PA 18651 Directions: http://tinyurl.com/Wyoming-West-HS-Directions-Sky Keep up-to-date with us via our website, http://www.MarchSky.org, the Skyliners Drum & Bugle Corps Facebook page at https://www.facebook.com/skylinersdbc and the Skyliners 2015 Interest Page: https://www.facebook.com/groups/712736618762089. For more information, please contact Adam Burdett at info@MarchSky.org.

Right: it appears the Calgary Stetston Show Band merely placed second at this year's WAMSB championships in Brazil, while the Calgary Stampede Show Band placed first both at that event and at last year's competition, which was held in Japan. That make them five-time world champions, by the way. The Brazil competition was held outdoors; the Japan competition was held indoors. At the 2013 competition, Shonondai High School's "White Shooting Stars" marching band placed second. Here is the Stampede's world championship show for 2013 (I note that the stupid "bug squish" has even made its way to Canada.) I'm not quite sure, but I think this is the White Shooting Stars' 2013 show, although from a week earlier than the WAMSB championships. And that returns me to the topic at hand. I think it's wonderful that Crown went to Japan, and it's really cool to see their show re-imagined to accommodate fewer members, a smaller performance space, and no props. (It's sort of like drum corps of old, when a corps might present the same concept or musical selections two years in a row.) However, given the high quality of the WSS performance contrasted with the reduced effects of mini-Crown, I wonder if the audience was as wowed as Crown perhaps had hoped they would be. I daresay people might lay the same charge against this Crown performance--which, again, I enjoyed very much--as has been laid against some of Crown's competitors the past two years: the brass doesn't play enough, and they stand still too much. I proposed above that the Shooting Stars, if competing with their 2014 show in DCI Open Class, might have earned a medal. Most amusingly, I note that one wag in the comments beneath Crown's video wrote, "Looks like Open Class will be really tough this year": the presumed implication being that the top of Open Class is about the level at which Crown-reduced might place. (The contrast between the two makes me think, just a little, of enormous North Royalton beating sprightly Brunswick (relatively speaking: 280 vs. 192 members) in G.E. at a marching band show I attended last week, although Brunswick won all performance categories: it seemed to me that while Brunswick was clearly superior in all the technical details, NR was good enough that they could bring their sheer numbers to bear in generating effect.) On a side note: as the only commenter on the WSS video says, mixing together Mission: Impossible and The Barber of Seville works surprisingly well. (And there is at least one bit of drill in the WSS show that probably derives from Crown 2008! Did anyone else notice?) A final detail: you can see Crown in the background for about the first three minutes of the WSS performance.

well not to mention that being a performer -- even a very good performer -- has little to do with being a great teacher.

And to give us some context about what the audience there might be used to, see this performance by one of the Japanese corps at that same show (actually they appear to be the marching band of Shonondai high school--but I don't see any woodwinds, so they might as well be called a drum corps). How well do people think this White Shooting Stars performance would do in DCI? Good enough to medal in Open Class? Their major limitation would seem to be the small field coverage (because of the small field)--is that why they lost the world marching band association championships last year to Canada's Calgary Stampede Showband? (Whom I'd also never heard of before now.)

Ha; I imagine Mike D now thinking, "###### the key to winning DCI that year was written on that tape :doh:" lol

Waaay back around 1977, a Garden State Circuit corps I taught went to the World Open Prelims, and on one of our sheets the phrase "See Tape" was scrawlded. Now..not to mention the word "see" over "hear", but... When we listened to the tape, the judge turned it on as the corps was just starting to march on the field...he left it going...said his name at some point...never turned it off....the corps started...no comments at the beginning of the show...first number ended...still no comments...second number...ditto...all the way through. Not a single comment on the entire tape! I'm not sure if he turned it off, or if it ran out of tape! We could have used it for the guard to practice with!

It's just very rough sounding and raw... It doesn't sound like a normal brass ensemble to me haha. It's displeasing to the ear. It sounds like they're putting volume over everything else. I'm more of the opinion that intonation >>> than volume. I also don't like the lack of a coherent theme in the shows.

Favorite story about that: one that I tell all my students annually in regards to recovering after a mishap during a show Cadets 1995 had a plethora of props throughout the field, and at times members had to back into sets blindly. At one point in the opener (John Williams' "The Rievers," tempo around 200), the tenor line was coming around and one of the tenors tripped over the park bench and face-planted on the turf. IIRC he tripped over one of the covered mounds. He popped up right before a pseudo-feature, and the tenor was off one of the j-bars (the two hooks that used to attach drum to carrier) and the tenors were on a severe tilt because of the fall. When the member popped up right before the halt/solo he bent his upper body significantly so the drums would visually look straight, played the solo (pretty cleanly), and when he stepped off for the next phrase he fixed the drum and put it back on the j-hook properly. It was one of, if not THE, most impressive recoveries I'd ever seen! IIRC I think you're right about being in one of the 'box seats' you were pretty close to the field, but I was never a fan performing in that stadium: it did, however, mean a lot to me to perform there in drum corps as that was the stadium I saw my first live drum corps show and it meant a lot to me to be able to march my home show and kind of bring my drum corps career full circle

There are also member-leaked judges tapes out in the wild: mostly from very high achieving captions that members were so stoked to post because most of the tape is gushing. I can get why a Director might not want a tape criticizing design, or maybe a specific weak section of the corps. I agree with others that it would be AWESOME if a corps offered a judge tape with Fan Network video (I'd love to hear some of those perfect 20 scoring judges' tapes from BD). I also agree that it's the choice of that corps to release them if they choose. I wonder if they released them as a pay-only video download (i.e. not an automatically free stream for FN subscribers) if it would be an easy(ish) way to make a little bit of money. But I do get why the majority of corps wouldn't want to release judge tapes & let the general public hear the judging criticism. With some of the nutty conversations posted online, why add to potential negativity?

Hoo boy... some of the comments on our tapes when we were working our way up would be embarrassing to some judges. Personal favorite is our judged exhibition at Baltimore in old Memorial Stadium. There were beer and hot dog salesmen working the crowd during our part of the show and yelling just like it was a ball game. One tape had "Well this must be coming across very nice. I say must be because the crowd is responding. As for me I can't hear anything because of this ### #### hot dog saleman!!" Other part of the tape had <judge talking>" "COLD BEER GETCHA COLD BEER" <judge swearing>.

I think in the cases discussed here...Coats and Cadets...the corps themselves made the choce, so that would really be fine, though deep down inside I have a few jitters about the judge not having a say in publically posting his or her commentary...adn what it might do to their commentary if posting them online became commonplace.

To continue the grat analogy... Because those who are the ones being evaluated (the corps) made the decision to post them, not an external organization (DCI posting them, for instance).

why are a lot of things on line that perhaps should not be. a leak, a mole, or selective release by the organization.... not unlike a company selecting positive quotes to show how good they are.

I get goosebumps just remembering it. They have had some great ballads over the years, but that era seemed special.

Love love LOVE that ballad! One of my favorites.

I loved '99. It has been mentioned on here that the summer was challenging for The Cadets that year, but I thought the show was incredible. The ballad they played that year is still one of the most beautiful they've ever performed.

I wasn't a fan of the small guard experiment that year. Then with the small number they had, they played Wonderful Town after On the Waterfront and the guard wore raincoats and sort of spun plastic clarinets. On the Waterfront knocked you over the head with the intensity. Wonderful Town knocked me over the head with plastic clarinets.

yes, Hockey Dad, '86 was during Michael Cesario's dark period (he was still consulting when not running his Phantom phantasies.) After the corps members realized what he had done to them at Governor's Island with Christopher Street during a national broadcast, there was definitely a sour mood..on the field, in the stands, and in the judging box. So much for learning Shenandoah and National Emblem for the occasion... For you young un's, 1986 was also the show where Hopkins and Cesario experimented with clarinets, had the hornline double as the color guard, and the corps did the rededication of the Statue of Liberty. This included Mrs. Reagan releasing the 50 doves (actually pigeons) who were suppose to circle the statue and fly away into the heavens. Instead, while the corps did the concert in front of the statue (on TV of course,) the pigeons pooped constantly (who isn't nervous in front of the national media) onto the corps below completely destroying a set of uniforms which were never able to be totally clean again. Most Cadet alums, somewhat cough at '86 remembering the broken cycle of '83.'84,'85 and...'87. from one who was there for all of them.

I loved On The Waterfront. The first 2/3 of the show at least. The last 1/3, not so much.

BEEF !!!

OMFG DUDE! You're missing out! 1996, 1997, 1998 for example (all three are my favorites!).

You're missing out on QUITE a few good shows then. Lol.

I always thought that the stripe on the pants looked amazing. George Hopkins said they really can cause visual dirt when the marchers are changing angles and directions at different times depending on drill design. I can understand that and the fact that Cadets are really the only group that marches with light color pants that exposes everything, I can see the concern BUT, they tend to be the strongest marching corps most years so I think they would work out the kinks if they decide to use them.

Bands have been used before. Drum Corps have been used before. It never developed into anything mainstream. Then again, maybe I'm being too picky with the concept of mainstream.

LOL!

Wait, did my smiley face emoticon not come through? Sorry, Internet friends

"WSS" was just on Broadway; it was micced up and amplified. My daughter-in-law was one of the stage managers on that production. "On The Town" is currently in previews to open shortly...also micced. My guess is the poster was being facetious.

Most amateur theater groups and schools use amps and synthesizers and "West Side Story" and to a lesser extent "On the Town" are still favorites with schools and community theater groups, so my guess is electronics had nothing to do with it.

No. I heard the problem was they disapprove of using amps and electronics with LB music. 😄