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West Coast Inflation!

How many times do people have to explain this? These people aren’t all doing massive stints on the road. Most of the great instructors have other commitments in the summer time. The larger staffs allow coverage all summer by tagging in and out. This isn’t hard, y’all.

I was just trying to get the whining and crying started early. Lol. But now that I think of it, I screwed up and went out of order. First thing that is supposed to happen is to overreact to BDs Community Performance in Wyoming, when the show is literally bare bones and nothing of substance has been added yet. THEN I am supposed to cry West Coast Inflation after the first show. And I think the third thing is then make threads about performers sitting out like five years if they change corps to keep them from going to BD. Sigh, maybe I will get it right next year.

Oh I wasn't referring to you brother. We know who they are lol. They'll be here in about a month or so, spew their nonsense, then if BD wins in August, they'll say they are done with DCI and never supporting the activity ever again..............only to show back up next June regurgitating the same crap from previous years lol.

Nah. If Boston did that they'd be looking through classic literature to figure out which book had been adapted. If Bloo did it, they'd say, "Finally, the agriculture show theme has arrived! Composting for fertilizer!" Now do it for other corps

If it was any other corps, I would think somebody screwed up. However, this is the Blue Devils, so it is probably them being all crafty and subtle. Like I have been saying for decades, if they were to go out in their opening set and take a poop on the 50, DCI judges would say they were making a statement on the futility of one man's struggle in a byzantine society. If Boston or Bloo did that, they'd say "get a shovel!" LOL! But seriously, good luck in 2024 BD!

Yes. absurdity.. I don't what gets into us social media Drum Corps fans. Its seems like every preseason starting almost without fail on April 1st we're .. Constantly Risking Absurdity .😉

April is a time for absurdity in this activity.

Oh! Let me play! 1. BD is finishing fourth this year! That show is so weak! 2. Judges are ALREADY slotting BD in first because of last year's performance. 3. We should kick BD out of DCI, they're already basically professionals.

I've gotten to work with two groups. Both times I was only available for a couple of weeks, as were the majority of the staff. I showed up, worked with them when I could, then went home. Same with everybody else. We generally had 5-6 guard instructors in front of the students on any given day. That breaks down to a dance person, 1-2 weapon people, 1-2 flag people, and someone in the tower. About the same as what it was when I marched and had the same five people on the road with us all summer long, minus the burnout.

After they killed it with Jojo last year, sign me up for more Japanese anime!!

Bravo to this thread & all of your comments! 🙌

Chief, you know by now, no whining and crying from me! Personally, I think they have a 60% chance of getting a "fourpeat". But there are several teams who will also bring their A game this summer, so we'll see what happens!

Four is a foregone conclusion in my mind. They have the same staff and won in 2023 with a young corps. The only thing to wonder about in April 2024 is will they make it to five.

Tank. That was BD straight up flexing on everyone. It's like a football team being up 50-0 with two minutes left in the game, and they throw a 75 yd bomb for another TD..........because they can. Moon River.......Tank...........Game Over.

Or Tour 2 and Tour 7

See the trial through to the end, by paying whatever legal fees and fines have accumulated along the way. Obtain the rights to the brand. Purchase all new assets to replace what was sold.

Yep and that's part of the problem. Everything costs money and having 15 guard instructors is just unnecessary. Spend that money on getting a better product.

1. BD is finishing fourth this year! That show is so weak! The annual predictions thread lol. 2. Judges are ALREADY slotting BD in first because of last year's performance. ABBD crowd might get their wish and get a fourth-place finish from BD since one of the alleged BD payroll judges is with Phantom this year. 3. We should kick BD out of DCI, they're already basically professionals. Professionals that are so good, that they COULDN'T march "Insert Corps" show, but "Insert Corps" could totally march BDs show lol. How many times have we heard that one over the years lol.

By hiring instructors to stay on all summer, you preclude them from lines of work that are NOT teaching. This is particularly challenging for color guard people, as we do not teach it as a class for any real compensation outside of Texas and a few select suburbs. I can't think of an office job that would give me the whole summer off to go on tour, nor could I imagine being away from my young children for that long. Regarding your comment about the lack of cohesion, that is by design. Multiple lines in music call for multiple visual elements, so 15 minutes of unison would not live up to the depth and complexity of what we are hearing. That would also make the big moments far less impactful because we'd already seen so much unison. The flag hit from SCV 2017 is a great example of this.

This is true. Not only that, but back when I was alive (80s), there wasn't anything like a 60 day tour which had to be staffed. DCI had what amounted to 2 two week tours....we even referred to them as Tour A and Tour B. So, drum corps staffs just made sure to all get those specific weeks off to go on tour. It is difficult to get staff these days to be able to get 60+ days off from their jobs so that's why they cycle in and out and more staff are needed to cover the rehearsals.

And so it begins for 2024.

My former brother-in-law was Romantics agent

Assuming you had a Jeff Bezos kind of budget...what would have to happen for the Cadets to come back in full force?

The Rock is announcing the title?

We should be about a month out before the Final Boss blesses us with their show title. Let the quest for the four-peat begin!!

the Jojo's meledy was good but good lord, Tank! the year before was supreme. I still think a Seatbelts + Stan Kenton show would be amazing for this BD team to work with while they're on this idiom.

Not us, Jurassic.... 😀

And when those people eventually have their moment in the sun, and they boast about being right with BD finishing 4th, it's important that some of us pull the receipts we collected over the years to remind them how many times they were wrong lol.

I agree. It was a great hornline. Man would they do classical justice. I'd love an all Tchaikovsky show from them.

Yeah that flag feature was glorious. But, I disagree with you to an extent here. One of the most impressive things to me in colorguard is when the entire guard is on flags doing unision flagwork. It's extremely difficult and very impressive. I think the lack of cohesion has more to do with getting marks than having an impact. It's easier to get better marks without unison than with it. The guard is the main visual element and when we are not seeing the guard in unison it is far less effective IMO. There's nothing more beautiful than 36-40+ guard members all doing unison flag (or rifle, sabre, other) work.

I would LOVE it if BD did an all classical show. I still love the '98 show - wasn't that the one with Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet mixed with West Side Story. Old man memory lapse here, perhaps. Yeah, that was the year. Thought it was too West Side Story heavy and didn't like mixing those two pieces, but when they played the Tchaikovsky it was simply glorious.

In addition to @contraguard05's explanation, the corps also avoid HR issues by hiring 'part-time' contract employees. 👍

I didn't either. It was a general comment.

I scoured the staff pics posted in the announcement three times and didn’t see a single tattoo…what?

Guess we’ll be swapping locations. Thankfully I won’t stay in Floridumb. lol

I hope so! (never knew the lead singer was the drummer!)

I'm with you on both 100%. I'll never understand tattoos and think they all look terrible...and why corps need dozens and dozens of instructors is beyond me.

I love Madison, and wish them a return to glory soon. And there are two things I will never understand; the tattoo obsession and the number of instructors required in modern Drum Corps for a single section.

Aren’t there other forums where you can twist yourself into a pretzel to make a lame “ oooooohhh scary George Soros” post? DCP ain’t it

That's not the first time where I've heard the feeling that the inspections were being used to tilt the playing field.

I'm saying this only half tongue in cheek, but most of those types of folks are too busy actually running drum corps... Mike

I can handle hot living down here in Floriduh but I am going north for the summer this year. Three summers of swamp hot so it’s time for a little break.

Y'all. Respectfully... Choosing show material based on 20th century artists who sold their works to/sympathized with/entertained Nazis is not anywhere near the same as enabling and facilitating abuse in drum corps. (Although, to be fair, there are countless other artists and creatives out there that aren't tied to violence, abuse, and atrocity. Would it be a good idea to use Michael Jackson's music at this point, for example? I wouldn't!) It's possibly in the same ballpark as Polanski and Allen in film... but there's no need to ambiguate the topic here. Countless untold members were physically, verbally and sexually abused for years; it was covered up and silenced; and blaming a single person vastly oversimplifies the breadth of this issue. Activity leadership and the community at large have never had a transparent, honest and informed dialogue about that, which risks the safety of current marchers and staff. Rand, an expert, who has listened to countless survivor reports by now suggests centering survivor perspectives. Safe Sport International suggests centering survivor perspectives. Both say that the remedy, which survivors are due, includes minimally linking them to mental health support services, or gasp actually enabling said services. I suggested the idea to VMAPA and it was immediately dismissed without discussion. DCI and drum corps seem to refuse to do anything resembling that. Still. To the detriment of current marchers and staff. It's unconscionable at this point to not even host discussions with survivors, given how long this legacy has lasted.

I'll preface this by saying I agree with the spirit of what this person posted in general. But, as somebody who was there, they do not know what they speak of with the Cadets regarding Hop. Of course the abuse was there before him, because lets face facts: the abuse was, and is, everywhere in the activity. No corps is immune from it. The cycle didn't start with Hop, but he codified it there. He was dug in like a tick. His grip, an ironclad stranglehold. He was in charge for 34 years, more than one third of the corps' existence. He enabled the abuse there for those years and directly took part in it. Once he took over anybody who marched there can tell you: Hop's culture was the corps culture. Outside the abuse, that culture generally was "work yourself to absolute death if you have to in order to succeed." The work was literally all that mattered. Not people, not physical health, not mental health, not nutrition, not safety - work, even at the expense of all of these things. That was the lesson he wanted us all to get. With that culture, they won 6 out of 11 years with incredible performances. We all bought into that culture. We were flat out treated like dog sh** - and we lived for that experience. Looking back on it I see the absolute insanity. I would never let anybody treat me like that here in my adult life now. But I let them do it back then. Because they were the champions when I showed up for my first audition and I was not. I was a kid. I knew nothing. They're the adults. They must know. This is how you succeed. I must be wrong. I'll just take it. Removing Hop drastically altered the organization and the culture. Immediately. The members from 2018 - 2023 were genuinely supported and taken care of to a degree we never were. It was a valiant effort. It was imperfect. But it was far better. Abuse is everywhere in the activity. Hop made the corps an even easier place for abusers and perpetrators to thrive. I hold him directly accountable for that.

My point in including the quote, though, was to highlight that some alumni who were closer to the abuse may no longer be able to enjoy the art that was begat of it. We aren't saying others can't or shouldn't. Literally, OP says a much. We're saying we, the "instruments" of the art making process may not be able to do so despite trying or wanting to. It was a validating statement to read, as I feel the same way about the years I marched.

paid attendance the last several years at finals has been 22,000ish. members, staff and VIP's are not counted in that number

If the judges had any inkling what was coming in the fall, they would have put Cadets 7th (or possibly even 8th).

I hope I'm wrong ... but I have a bad feeling this corps is next....