jeffmolnar

Still a 60% chance of rain according to The Weather Channel though...

Is this show canceled? I'm not sure where to check for that info, the old show page from previous years doesn't seem to be up anymore.

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Okay, that's downright amazing. Anyone who's marched before has got to be able to appreciate that. The year I marched, my only concern in the world was trying to regulate my breathing and keep my tone from wavering during the ballad. I can't imagine having to deliver a long monologue -- in character -- projected throughout the entire stadium. Especially not after performing that opener at such a high level. I don't know what kinds of awards Crown gives out at their banquet, but hopefully that kid got one. Like you said though, not my cup of tea. Unfortunately, it seems as if my preferred brew no longer possesses the requisite ingredients to contend for a championship. _

I thought that the counting was rad! For some reason I've always enjoyed shows that feature tasteful, well-performed vocals from the marching ensemble. SCV '01 and Cavaliers '02 are some of my favorite shows of all time, particularly because of the cool vocals. Amplified singing can also be a wonderful addition to a drum corps show, in my opinion. The Cadets' ballad in 2006 practically had me in tears! Too bad about the rest of that show. After reading some early season impressions of Crown's production on DCP I was prepared for disappointment, but when I finally saw e=mc² live at the North Dallas show I was completely blown away (in a good way). Wow. I loved both the counting and the singing, and at the time I was still thinking that the corps was using prerecorded tracks for all of it. When I watched the multi-cam live stream on Finals night and saw that the hornline started the counting from the field and the singing came from a handful of talented pit members, I was floored. There's no longer any rule saying that Crown couldn't have just used prerecorded tracks for all of those bits, but they chose not to anyway. They didn't take the easy path. They performed. Kudos to them. Throughout my years of watching (and a brief stint marching) drum corps, I've come to enjoy a style of musical performance that I lovingly refer to as "wailing," and I can appreciate said wailing from both brass instruments and vocal cords alike. Those pit singers were wailing, y'all. One of my vertebra actually froze over and shattered under the relentless onslaught of chills. I'm not a dinosaur or anything -- at least I hope not, I'm 27 -- but I tend to prefer more "traditional" drum corps shows more often than not. Not this year. I was completely, utterly on board with e=mc²... ...until the love story bit. Talk about a sucker punch. I think my face developed its very first wrinkles from all the cringing I was doing. What bothered me wasn't that the content itself cheesy as hell (though it certainly was), it simply didn't jive with where I thought the show was going. Like the OP, I was expecting some sort of science/mathematics show with a Crown twist. Their opener reinforced that misconception, which made my disappointment all the more pronounced once the narration hit. Unlike on-field vocals and amplified singing, I've never really taken to narration because it's not grounded in music. Singing is obviously grounded in music. Even counting aloud tends to be rhythmically satisfying. Narration is different. It's a crutch, leaned on by design teams to convey a show's message when they can't figure out how to get the job done with music and movement. A well-designed show simply does not require it. That's not to say that e=mc² was poorly designed overall; on the contrary, both the opener and closer were immaculately designed -- and not just from an entertainment perspective. If you pull back the veil and begin to dissect the show, you'll find some of the most impeccable hornline staging ever to grace the field. Good thing, too, since that brass book would have almost certainly been impossible without it. I still can't get over the brass book. It's unbelievable that those kids were able to perform it at such a stratospheric level. Flawless. Awe-inspiring, even. Then BAM! Cheesy narration. Goodbye, chills. Goodbye, harmonious trance of melody and motion. I'm back in the real world now, listening to some kid rattle on about what is arguably the most complicated aspect of the human condition. Great. I've obviously come to learn that the narration came from the source material itself, so I suppose I understand why Crown went with it and why those familiar with the work found it to be tasteful. That said, it's been a long time (well, never, actually) since a world class corps performed a published work measure-for-measure on the field. Drum corps shows have always been arranged, these days more so than ever. Crown's design team should have left the narration on the chopping block. The show wouldn't have been any weaker, in my opinion. The "love story" would still have played out as a beautiful guard duet -- now with the audience's ears trained on the magnificent brass chorus rather than a single, amplified voice -- and the effectiveness of the rest of the (and I do hate to use this word) gimmicks would have remained equally strong. The unbelievably talented performers of Crown would have held the hearts of the audience in the palms of their hands even more so than they already did -- and they still would have won! The show was just that good. I feel such conflicting emotions when I contemplate e=mc². On one hand, the first and last thirds of the show absolutely blew me away. The unreal performance of the hornline managed to conjure up emotions that I hadn't felt in response to a drum corps show in over a decade. Just wow. The melodious counting had me captivated from 00:01, and the beautiful singing further sucked me down the rabbit hole into Crown's amazing little world. On the other hand... the utter repulsion I felt at the onset of the narration completely obliterated the high I was riding up until that point. My emotional wave came crashing down with a vengeance. After the ballad, the corps did everything they could to bring me back up... but the damage had been done. Some bad tastes just linger on the palate no matter how hard you try to cleanse them. At the end of the day, I'm still ecstatic that Crown won and I feel unbelievably lucky to have witnessed such virtuosity from a marching ensemble in person. A marching ensemble of young people, no less. It's just hard to dismiss the thought that the show could have been so much more. It was almost my favorite drum corps show of all time. Almost.

Yeah, that's not how that works. People hate BD because they perform boring shows and pander to the judging sheets. If they went out and threw down everyone would still love them, even if they were undefeated for 5+ years. Pleasing the crowd and earning high scores don't have to be mutually exclusive. It's amazing that the staff in Concord can't figure that out. They could have their cake and eat it too...

What a year.

SCV!

I just have my MacBook Pro plugged into the receiver directly. I guess I could AirPlay to the Apple TV, but eh. Might as well just use HDMI and be done with it! Watching Finals on the 106" projector screen with 7.1 surround is going to be better than being there! Not to mention the appropriately priced beer.

Does anyone know if the Finals stream will have Dolby 5.1, or will it be stereo? I need to know how to set my receiver.