audiodb
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Posts posted by audiodb
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The one section of the show that wasn't a World Class corps reference (because the corps wasn't WC at the time) was from The Academy's show in 05 ... just after the Channel One section ... when the brass do a BK reference visually .. then end up in the ball doing the plume wag while the tuba is doing American in Paris. It's a 10 second reference .. but it's there and it's clear. It's ALL SO VERY CLEAR!
Academy played all Shostakovich in '05, so guess again. Come to think of it, PR was playing Gershwin that same year....
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SCV had trouble with their amps in San Antonio. Major blasts of mid-range noise from the right speaker. Sound board operator was crawling around, trying to fix it several times, and it would stop for a minute....then belch noise again.
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Just wondering why bad news from open-class is allowed to sit on the WC forum, while good news (i.e. Oregon Crusaders thread) is not.
But while we're here....
Memphis Sound would have completely evaporated had it not been for a contingent of members and staff (and eventually, administration) from north Texas. They made up such a majority of the corps in 2009 that they actually declared themselves "Memphis Sound, from Grand Prairie, TX". In order to resolve conflict between the corps and whatever administration remained in Memphis, they reorganized as a new corps for 2010, adopting the name Forte.
The 2012 corps was the result of all-new administration from that of 2010-11....and judging from the "interim director" reference in the press release, it appears the new admin did not stay for even one full year.
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I shot the live streaming video for DCI Fan Network at DCI West at Stanford. From the first note that the Renegades played, to the last note of Santa Clara's encore, it was 5 hours.
2 1/2 Hours of that 5 hours was DEAD TIME ... corps moving cr*p on/off the field ... save 1/2 hour for intermission.
Would you go to a 2.5 hour play, and watch it 11 minutes at a time with a long break between acts, but not long enough to go to the bathroom or get a hot dog (and if you did, you weren't allowed back in your seat)? The format of drum corps shows is "grueling" ... forcing fans, who have paid a lot of money, to sit there for 50% of the show, watching the "backstage hands set up the next scene". This way of doing shows is not a "fan friendly" format.
Your thoughts?
When would I catch up on my texting if we changed this format?
Seriously, for those who consider this a problem that requires fixing (I'm on the fence myself), some thoughts:
1. This was not a problem back when corps were limited to using only what their members could carry on/off the field with them. (Chances of passing such a rule change = 0.)
2. This was not a problem back when corps started from one goal line and finished at the other goal line. (Chances of passing such a rule change = 0.)
3. Some band circuits take a different approach, giving each band a block of time to use however they want....but they must complete their entry and exit from gate to gate within that time as well, including all their equipment. (For DCI's current ensembles to accomplish this would require an additional two or three minutes per corps.)
4. Some shows blast commercials over stadium PA between corps (with video if there is a jumbotron). DCI may well be making crucial $$$ from this advertising, thus rendering this whole discussion moot.
Nevertheless, the best suggestion I can offer at the moment is that if you want to improve the entertainment/time quotient, change the scoring system so that corps are judged throughout their entire 17-minute time block. If those corps who figure out how to make their setup/teardown less awkward, shorter, smoother, etc., were rewarded competitively for it, we would see changes....trust me.
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If this show was being performed as well as last year's, it would be placing within a spot or two of last year's corps.
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If I recall correctly the TOC compromise was a two year trial and temporary solution to the G7 requests. Does this ring a bell with anyone else?
No, it doesn't.
We had an entire thread last year devoted to people asking if there would be a TOC in 2012. That's because the 2011 TOC press releases never said whether it was a one-year-only deal, a multi-year experiment, or a permanent feature of future DCI tours.
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It's bad enough that DCI doesn't do enough to promote OC corps .. so I IMPLORE DCP to do their best to NOT do the same.
Please merge ALL drum corps topics into one arm of this Forum.
DCI Jr. Corps Discussion
This would give a larger voice to the open class corps, their management, attention to their shows .. and maybe, JUST MAYBE send a message to DCI that they should follow suit.
What are your thoughts? Discuss.
The original intent of the separate forum for open-class here on DCP was so that their threads wouldn't get lost in a sea of world-class threads. Upon reflection, though, I think that if we're going to do that, the objective would be best served by creating a separate open-class forum temporarily every year for the last week of July and first few weeks of August (in the same manner that we create rule change forums each January). For the other 11 months of the year, we might as well combine the two junior corps forums.
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This may actually be the looniest post I have ever seen on DCP.
Slipped? Ehhhh... possible (maybe in a rant of anger or slightly tipsy).
When was the last time you saw....no, this doesn't even deserve to be phrased as a question. I see these corps directors coming in/going out with their corps at shows all the time. And in over 20 years, I have never seen a single one of them "in a rant of anger" or the least bit "tipsy" at such a time and place.
But what I just thought of, just now as I was typing, is that a few of these guys are rather shrewd, and they might say something like that to a casual fan to test the waters on the blogs because they would know a person who heard such a thing would not keep it quiet.So how does that work?
"Hey George, I got an idea! Let's go down to the field tonight and start talking about pulling our corps out of DCI, real loud, so that people overhear us."
"Dave, that's a dumb idea. You want to get booed like I did at the Rose Bowl?"
"George, you said you wanted to test the waters. You said this whole G7 deal is off unless those five people bantering on Drum Corps Planet like it now."
"So?"
"So we blab this in front of a blogger."
"And how do you know who's a blogger, Dave?"
"That's easy. They're the ones with those DCP headsets, y'know, that cup the ears and make everything louder."
"Oh, yeah. YEA!"
"We'll say we have eight corps ready to split, maybe nine now."
"Got it!"
Seriously....we all know that seven corps threatened to leave DCI just a couple of years ago....therefore, a split is still a possibility, generally speaking. But just because some anonymous DCPer thinks he heard someone that might (or might not) be a corps director say something about corps leaving DCI as if it is still a plan (or maybe he didn't hear the past tense) is no reason to proclaim that the sky is falling.
Besides, the sky cannot fall now. We're in the Alamodome tomorrow.
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I would assign corps against their will, honestly, based on the needs of DCI and the various tours.
OK....that's where we diverge.
Hey, one question about this comment below....
There are many corps who declared for World Class that really shouldn't be there.How many WC fall into that category, in your view? And getting back to the above, how would the numbers in each division come together to make the tours practical?
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All of whom had to fight to create and keep regional tours. All of whom had to deal with competitive and "peer" (for lack of a better word) fallout for it. But as you said, all of whom actually ended up better for it. You and I agree on that point. But they're still not competing with the big corps.
Academy, Crest and Surf are big corps. And they are competing with big corps (though perhaps not as well as you'd prefer).
DCI wants its corps to travel nationally, else selling Tour Event Partners on 4-corps shows gets a little silly. That push to have every corps tour like the Blue Devils (well, not this year - 24 shows
) is what I'm talking about.Where is this "push" you refer to? "Full tour" is still defined as San Antonio to Indy....and you can still get into WC without even doing that "full tour".
Now, if individual corps were pushing themselves to tour like a G7 or die trying, that would be a problem. But again, there's no DCI rule compelling them to do so.
Not for me to speculate. Not gonna touch it.Well, it was you who said DCI was killing corps, in this context.
I look at this from a competitive and tour perspective. I'll name names - I don't see the benefit of making Pioneer, Teal Sound, Jersey Surf, etc compete with the Cavaliers, Blue Devils and Crown. It makes no sense.But no one is "making" them compete. Those corps all chose to move into world-class.
No more than making Revolution, Forte and Genesis compete with the Crossmen.Or Oregon Crusaders and Thunder compete with Cascades....oh, wait.
We get in OC/WC that there's a clear difference in quality, mission and resources - there's no reason we can't draw a second line in there as well. (As DCI had previosly for how many years?)I look at this from a different angle. I don't want to draw more lines. In fact, I'm not entirely convinced we need the line we have. Here's what I mean....
Once upon a time, drum corps did not have a class structure. Corps stratified themselves by choosing where they competed. If a corps was young or less ambitious, they would find a local circuit and stay there. Better or more audacious corps might add a trip to a major contest to that routine. Highly competitive corps would travel to a national championship contest each year, perhaps more than one, and might wander outside their immediate locale to lock horns with a comparable rival some other time during the season just for the competitive challenge. Geographical stratification had an elegant simplicity to it that I wish we could recapture today (sigh).
Even after "class A" spread all over to provide an additional method of stratification, corps still had the ability to determine their level of participation by where they traveled to compete. There were options available at all levels. Major regional circuits (DCM, DCE, DCW/PDCA) and DCI regionals provided a particular wealth of choices for intermediate corps.
Today, we've folded everything into the DCI tent, where there is simply no focus on developing local or regional alternatives. DCI is pretty much all about the national tour. We're lucky that they even offer two flavors of national touring (world-class and open-class), because DCI tends to focus and excel at only one division at a time.
I think corps could still stratify themselves even today. One could even argue that they already do, to whatever extent corps have freedom to choose between competing in WC/OC. But why must there be a WC and an OC? (Yeah, I get the whole voting/membership thing, but why must your competitive division be married to your voting status?) And what do the intermediate corps do in a two-class system? WC has over a dozen corps that tour 7-8 weeks, while open-class only provides a 2-week tour. What if your corps is located in some corner of the country that makes a 4-week tour more practical? (Notice how many of the limited-tour WC and more ambitious OC corps come from the edges of our national map.)
What on earth does voting rights have to do with it? Taking away shows actually equals taking away operational costs. I'm not getting the economics that doing 31 shows is more profitable than doing 16.Sorry, I may not have been clear earlier, in referring to the G-7 proposal, I was addressing the idea of splitting off the top groups into their own tour - that's really all. As for pay or no pay, etc, I have no ideas on that front.
Ohhhhhhh. Well, if you refresh your memory on the particulars of the G7 proposal, you will see how I got the wrong impression. Their proposal did not establish a viable touring model for a middle division. In fact, it proposed the opposite by reserving all Fridays and Sundays for exclusive G7 shows, with all-inclusive focus events on Saturdays. Meaning, all the touring non-G7 corps would still have to do the same tour to be there Saturday, but be denied any revenue oportunities at the surrounding Friday/Sunday shows. And yes, those same corps would also have faced loss of voting power and a change in pay scale.
What you are suggesting is far different....
However, I do think adding a "middle class" to DCI would be a good thing for all.OK. We're probably not that far apart, really. I would simply prefer that instead of creating new classes and herding corps into them against their will, we let corps chart out courses that fit their own unique circumstances. If you are suggesting an intermediate class that current WC corps can enter voluntarily, without losing DCI membership status or their position on the pay scale, that would be worthy of consideration.
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That should be so, because the "stronger, richer corps" are the corps that are persuading people to pay a lot of money for tickets and internet streams. Which show do you think will have a larger audience? One featuring the Blue Devils, Cavaliers, and Cadets? or one featuring the Teal Sound, Pioneer, and Cascades?
Depends. What were their scores the night before?
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1. Generational shifts have reduced the entire audience for the activity. As a consequence the total interested and available talent pool has also shrunk.
2. The remaining interested talent pool is being priced out of the market.
3. Dwindling of key audience demos will keep the activity off of mass media.
4. Current sponsor dollars are dwindling.
5. Grant and giving dollars are less available.
6. Corps operating costs increase.
The sky is falling!
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1- The financial model is unsustainable.
2- To much competition from other activities.
3- There is no oversight.
4-There is no real competition in DCI.
5- Theres no next generation of corps
The sky is falling!
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Honestly, I think we might be highlighting the fact that there are a lot of corps in World Class that shouldn't be.
The sky is falling!
Trying to keep up with the Joneses, even if only because DCI rules currently say they have to, is killing corps.Whoa, let's rewind here.
1. First of all, the rules don't say anyone has to "keep up with the Joneses". We've had corps enter world-class with an assortment of corps sizes, budgets, and tours. The most notable among those (Mandarins, Pacific Crest, Academy and Jersey Surf) are all still with us.
2. And what exactly killed Teal Sound? Do we know that it was anything other than a freak bus contract gone bad.
3. And by the way, they're not "dead" yet, anyway, just sitting out part of 2012. Frankly, we haven't seen a single WC corps die since 2007, despite the recession to end all recessions.
Might be time to reconsider the idea of the G-PickANumber.For what possible reason?
1. If you think paying top corps more and showcasing them in their own special shows is the answer....well, DCI is already doing that.
2. I can't imagine how you would think any of the rest of that G7 proposal would help a corps in Teal Sound's position. Taking away shows? Taking away pay? Taking away voting rights?
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The standard of systems that follow deterministic laws but appear random and unpredictable. Chaotic standards that are very sensitive to initial conditions. The kind of standard that make small changes in those conditions that can lead to quite different outcomes.
So what does that mean? Do you have a serious suggestion for how to establish a performance standard for world-class, or not?
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And believe it or not, synths are nothing new to drum corps. There was a corps in 1985 that took a nightly penalty for using synth in their drum solo (Boston Crusaders).
That is incorrect. Boston only used the synth once in 1985 competition.
There were also Class A and A60 corps that did no regionals or world championships who used them locally. A few who at the time were quite good for their size and stature (1987 Rocky Mountain Magic).Exaggerating again? I believe '87 Rocky Mountain Magic was the only A/A-60 corps to do as you describe.
Now, there was one other corps to push the electronics rule....Knights were using illegal equipment in early '86, and they may have been taking repeated penalties for it, IIRC. But when informed that continued infractions would result in disqualification, the corps pulled the plug on the electronics.
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I guess after reading everyone's arguments, I think that there should be some sort of performance standard, or get rid of the whole class system.
What performance standard did you have in mind?
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I don't want to bring them up again, but the Cascades took a year off to get there finacial house in order, the Troopers took a year off to regroup their financial situation, why did they not lose their World Class status?
No - the Troopers were sidelined by a unanimous vote of the other DCI member corps. By that vote, they were ordered to take a year off and get their house in order. Had they failed to do so to the full satisfaction of the DCI participation review committee, they would not have returned to world-class the following year.
We also seem to forget that when a corps misses more than one season, they must return via open-class (i.e. Magic 2002, Capital Regiment 2009).
Those are two methods by which a corps can lose world-class status.
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for anyone to say one had more impact than another is just not valid...
Why not? These changes were pushed through with a far higher ratio of conjecture vs. fact in the boardroom.
No matter what a change is , it doesnt happen over night. Impact sometimes takes a while and this activity has been a subjective one right from the beginning so to really have any statistic would merely be an at the moment assesment of an activity that if you ask the same question 10 minutes later or on another social site the outcomes would be very different...OK....show me the social site where the consensus is that A&E grew the drum corps audience. I'll even give you 15 minutes.
But then of course those who dont belive that will always say they know people who know people who told them to justify majority...lolI'm not contending that a majority of the audience left over A&E.
I am not saying i am for WWs..so let me make that clear bfore that debate starts AGAIN..lolWell, you must understand how that misconception comes about. Your participation on these threads focuses on arguing with the people who share your view.
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If corps like BC or anyone else gets in top 3 it should only be because they are the better corps......
Of course.
Why does all of a sudden being the best and knowing how to do it become a dirty word..............whoever is best wins or top spots..thats itWell, no, it's not that simple. One only needs to look at the first two shows of the 2011 and 2012 seasons (where judges didn't have access to yesterday's scores) to see what kind of variability we would have if judges called it as they see it.
And of course, there would be closer competition if corps received equal pay for equal work. Why should we be surprised that the same corps are on top every year when they get paid more every year?
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I make no claims that it is complete, but CorpsReps yields these stats...
1982 Number of Shows/Scored Performances Prior to DCI Championships for Top 6 corps:
37 Garfield Cadets
36 Madison Scouts
34 27th Lancers
34 Phantom Regiment
26 Santa Clara Vanguard
20 Blue Devils (Champions)
My data shows 23 for BD in 1982, while Garfield does weigh in with 37. I have Madison at 38. though.
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It makes much more sense to me to focus on having more drum corps than bigger drum corps. More drum corps means the opportunity to have more shows. More shows have the opportunity to attract more people and be visible in more communities.
They should investigate ways to make it easier for drum corps to start and to survive financially.
I nominate barigirl78 for a spot on the DCI board.
Limits on drum corps size and drum corps spending might help. (I reallze that's probably something the bigger, wealthier corps would never agree to)We do have a limit on corps size, and that should stay in place. (I only brought that up earlier to show where Shadowtron's logic would lead.)
However, I don't see how we could reasonably try to limit what all corps spend, as they raise a significant portion of that money themselves via dues, donations, souvenir sales and external fundraisers.
We're already seeing shows with a really low number of drum corps. All we need is a few more corps to fold and you'll have to reduce the number of shows.That is what was happening in past years.
I know a lot of my thinking is different from the way DCI thinks,
but I work in a business where financial ROI is crucial. No business adds to the cost of making their product unless they can make more money in return. Yet, drum corps add costs to what they do for no other ROI than the hope of an additional tenths of a point.That's one of the things that made the phenomenon of drum corps possible....in the earlier half of it's history, drum corps was particularly adept at doing big things on small budgets.
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Participation is a large factor when comparing current DCI vs proposed DCI. A summer tour with any D1 corps offers far more than even the best high school programs. So participation will increase as well as long term attendance. Obviously the 150 limit would change.
Well, then, we could get more participants right now by raising the 150-member limit. No woodwinds required.
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WW's = More participants
How does that work? A 150-member corps today will not have any more participants if woodwinds are legalized. They can't....the rule says no more than 150 members.
As for the smaller corps....well, as you say, what makes drum corps special is the level of excellence. If I remember correctly, your opinion is that the smaller corps offer nothing that woodwind players can't already get in their marching band programs. Therefore, they would only try out for the 150-member corps, which can't get any bigger.
The perception of drum corps may never change but having more attendance and shows would be nice. Short term losses (if any noticeable) will offset with long term gains due to increased participation.But since your claim of increased participation is invalid, we'd be left with only the short-term, catastrophic losses.
All but the DCPers think instrumentation is why people go to shows. It's that DCI corps are by far the best performing in the marching activity.Wait - which is it? You just said attendance hinges on the number of participants. Now you say it hinges on quality? If quality is the only reason all these people go to DCI shows, then more participants won't change anything.
Furthermore, attendance trends do not support either of your contentions.
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Actually, they do in this case. Post-season revenue sharing is based on how much revenue DCI makes, and the Atlanta show is one of DCI's revenue generators.
Crowd size at a show run by a third party (like the show in Dublin, OH, tomorrow) does not affect the bottom line for the corps....but it does at the 15 or so shows that DCI runs. And of course, when a corps hosts a show, their own bottom line is affected by how well their own show sells.