BigW

I'm on record with that, Jim, and I will repeat that. I'll preface it by saying I am a God -fearin' person, not church-goin Right-Wingin' Republican. I think you know that much about me- we did march together... In this activity, you WILL march with, be taught by, teach with, be judged by, judge with people of ALL lifestyle choices. One thing you will also learn from marching and being involved in this activity is TOLERANCE, RESPECT, and dare I say it, Long term FRIENDSHIP regardless of those differences between the people you interact with. Maybe that was the BEST thing I learned from corps. If people have an issue with those things and want to be involved... they need to think hard about things. That's another Mom and Dad's son or daughter over there who's exhausted and needs cereal, who's maybe not looking forward to this rehearsal because they've had a bad day yesterday and obviously needs someone to just talk to a bit. Does it matter what their lifestyle choice is, or will you give them a smile and a kind word of encouragement and some good advice? The way I was brought up, the Christian thing to do is love that person and help them out. At least that's my sincere and personal beliefs on that. I may not toe the party line on that issue, but I know truth, good people, and friendship when I see it. That should not be a Berlin Wall boundary between people. Just my 2 cents here. I promise the one guy I won't knock on his door and yell about Mr. J.C. If he brought it up, I'd talk to him, but if not, I'd still be glad to be be his friend and talk about corps any time.

The person who got me to join corps felt the same way you do when I discussed this with him.

For Baltimore, it is ALWAYS good advice to take light rail or Subway to Harborplace and leave you car at the parn and ride. I recommend Vaccaro's for dessert in Little italy and D/Alesio's for dinner. If you are willing to do a once in a lifetime deal and spend the 70 bucks for the meal and tip, I HIGHLY Recommend Fogo De Chao. Their website is there if you search for it. It may be the BEST meal I have EVER eaten at a restraunt. If you leave hungry it's your fault!

They're gonna get in trouble for the synths. They'll be talking about that for years too! And NO, the one bari guy is NOT me and the one Contra is NOT Ream.....

Interesting thought. I like it. It makes me think very seriously, which I appreciate very much. In some cases, that's quite right. Many people don't look for help until they've hit the skids. It's why the Prodigal Son parable is a good one, I guess.

We did pray before contests (optionally) BITD and gather in with one of our vet snare drummers. I'd say- if people seek it out voluntarily, a good thing. Knowing something is available if you want it- a good thing. It could help some people a lot if they want it-- but not all will want that.

I noticed something about some of the Cadets when I went to WCU. they were either like Tom, very humble ladies and gentlemen who KNEW they were good, but NEVER threw it in your face, let their performance and self discipline do the talking. Tom did the accessories lecture and demo for my Percussion class while still an undergrad. I STILL have the notes and use them as reference for when I judge. Some liked to remind you how great they were, when they... really weren't as good as they liked to remind you. Not sayin' who there. Tom, Billy Pease, Barb Maroney, John Miliauskas, all very, VERY good peeps from Cadets I was honored to have known in that time and done some stuff with.

There's a lot on my mind when I read this. My guess is many will be offended by something I will say, but I'll try and stick my tuppence in here. Back in the day, I saw stuff like this going on, heard about it, watched it. Got involved in some of the goofiness myself. You read much of the "History of the Westshoremen" thread, we talk about it. I was mixed up with Chumley's smoke bomb, for instance..... I'm no perfect little angel myself. I remember listening to some of my college classmates discuss how, in their elite DCI unit, they snuck a couple of sixes on board the bus during tour. Where are those "no-good troublemakers" now? Two are College Directors. Two are still working with DCI corps in important positions and are quite respected. All are excellent educators. They turned out just fine. With one or two notable exceptions in the Westshoremen, we all pretty much turned out fine, got some degrees (At least one Pharmacist, Psychologist, and Minister in the mix), hold down a decent job, work hard, and are pretty good citzens, even with all the craziness that we all were mixed up with in one degree or another. I'd say we beat the percentages of normal society. For those of you who have never performed, (we used to call you folks 'normals' in our corps by the way) one thing remains a constant from when I was active to today. You give up a lot of yourself on tour. Your choices are limited to what cereal and how much milk you put on it in the morning, and what you squirt on the hot dog at lunch. You're expected to put up sometimes with people you don't get along with off the field, but you MUST cooperate completely with them at all times during rehearsal for everyone's good. Don't kid yourself that everyone loves everyone else in the same corps. That's untrue. You put up with getting yelled at by staff and comrades, and dealing with very regimented, demanding, and extremely stressful situations constantly in the rehearsal and performance environ. You live inside a bus with little personal space, on practice fields, competition stadiums, and on gym floors. And, you get to pay 5+ grand a year for this privledge. It's not easy to do this. It never was and never will be. It's something all of us who have competed in DCI or DCA understand implicitly. Really, you could go have a pretty rippin' good vacation and get in lots more trouble with that 5 grand in Cancun. And.... we have people worried that young adults are blowing off steam in various ways that young people blow off steam in this extremely intense pressure cooker of an environment? Maybe the issue isn't the behavior itself, but the environment that generates said reactions, that to me in some of these circumstaces are understandable. We didn't have nekkid competitions on our busses, but we did do other stupid things back then that were about as goofy. Look. My parents told my sister and I we represented the family, and to act like we were brought up. I didn't know this until a couple of years ago when Dad let it slip, Dad checked on me frequently with Chuck Saia(Our wonderful Business Manager) as to whether I was acting up. Compared to a lot of us, I was pretty well behaved, so Chuck didn't tell him quite everything. The point is, Dad checked up on me. It's okay to do that. It's no crime as a parent to be concerned and talk to staff and management about your kid. When you do this activity, you grow up FAST. VERY fast. You learn to be very mature, self reliant, and independent quickly, or you end up failing. Like I said, for the most part, we have turned out just fine, and the corps kids in the future will, too. If you took offense by anything I have said, I don't mean to give offense, I'm more trying to explain some things from the viewpoint of a veteran of the trenches to people who haven't been there. There are real issues. I've said before that this activity ain't Care Bears and Rainbow Brite. I have no real answers. This isn't Parris Island or the USNA D and B complete with Tac Officers hovering around, but it seems some folks might be thinking that's what it should be. As it is, there's enough steam on the popcorn kernels as it is from what I know, see, have heard from kids from yesterday and today, and personally experienced. You don't want the kernels popping.

Thom is one of the people I've never heard a bad thing about. He's not only a top end educator, but is also a real person and treats people with kindness. My guess is Tom Aungst and Bill Pease took that with them when they went on and did what they did and now do after working under Thom at Cadets. They're both the same way.

Well, I guess the Trilateralists and the Bildabergers must be picking the panels, huh?

Loaded question- what happens when the keyboards are simulating Low Brass (a common thing in DCI right now) and they go out of balance?? My guess is the ensemble music judge can speak up. What if they break up or get buzzy or staticy?? is that a performance issue? Another loaded question...What if the elecrtronic instrument is a digital xylophone or percussion instrument/used as a percussive timbre? Yet another question: what if a sampled sound effect causes balance problems with the music ensemble? Can the ensemble music judge discuss it since it disturbs the ovaerll balance of the ensemble/total sound projected to the box, or should they ignore it? Please understand something. I have no idea what the DCI adjudicators are clinced to do or not to do. When there are serious questions about scoring or evaluating, the judge in any circuit will (at least SHOULD) refer to the sheet/placemat and read it carefully to remind them of priorities and what they can and should do or not do. IIRC, those sheets are fairly nebulous about how to handle electronics. You could be correct. I could be more correct, or the correct answer is in a gray area between us. I don't know. I could care less who is right or wrong- but I'd like to know a proper and definite answer.

Based on some of the previous comments and from what I saw in the recaps- What if they had a more "sympathetic panel" to meet your standards? BD was still 9-0 vs Crown. I have a feeling the most desireable combination for you would narrow the gap by at most .3 to .5. Perhaps the more sympathetic panel that you desired judged an earlier round. And guess what- BD still won every round. Had Crown won one of the preliminary rounds, your conspiracy theory may have carried some weight, and the operative words are "may", and "some".

The same guy I think it is? Part of the problem might be that electronics are danced around on the sheets, IIRC, Jeff. They seem to be avoided there. Another issue. Who gets to jump in and give the corps the pimp hand when it's poor and in what captions? Accusations could fly that "YOU'RE JUDGING OUT OF CAPTION!!!!!" You know the game. You know many people like to stick the index finger out like a pistol and yell that when they can. Yet another issue. You may have the argument "Oh, come on, Jeff, You've dumped us over something electronic involving one person or a very few people running it and it's such a teeny-tiny facet of out most wonderful program and you penalized the whole corps of kind, sweet, deserving, hard working young people! It's just one teeny tiny eensy beensy failure! Why take it out on us!? You got something against us!?" Have I sat in on too many critiques on both sides of the table or not? I think that might be why people are avoiding it, Jeff. They want to avoid the acrimony after the contest over it. It may not be worth it to them. Just kinda thinkin' here about it is all.

I will be at the show. I'll be at the Glider afterwards, as per my usual thing. As late as it will be, drinking anything then driving home=bad idea. A good meal and usually great conversations with the corps people there to finish off the day, perfect.

Great show conceptually, but some of the drill design/tranitions looked really cluttered and mob-sceneish. It really hurt the show and kept them down. The horn book was quite good!

If by getting it right you mean making people happy and giving them something they'll remember for many years that they saw and enjoyed, yes. It depends on ones philosophy. Also, "vague idea of a show" regarding who I think you wish to denigrate is wildly inaccurate. The show was exactly what it was intended to be, in terms of the art form and aesthetic they pursued as the show goal and objectivbes, nothing was vague. The objective was as crystal clear as Surf's in terms of what they were going for in that regard. If it were as vague as you claim, it would not have done as well as it did in Effect. Nowhere near as well.

Fran, BITD when we were competing against one anoher, that show has always had a great cachet to it as a show that people want to do WELL at. I'm proud to say we got a win there in 82, and you guys got one back at us the next year. One of the real old school shows left. Predictions? See some real score movement from several excellent open corps at Scranton since they were rained out from getting a number last week. And what Jeff will say.

From what I know, BD was and is big on rehearsal pacing, everything culminating at the rehearasl's end to one full run through to sum up and cap off what had been learned for the day, and also as a refresher for perhaps things that had NOT been worked on for that day to keep them alive in everyone's head. Also do bop runs to make sure if there were changes that the continuity issues also sunk in within the context of those changes. They also had Mars (their rehearsal site) wired with a predeccessor to Dr. Beat YEARS before that caught on with everyone. They've made a business out of sharing their knowledge now with System Blue, which I think is a wise thing and good thing. The problem I see out there is while you may understand System Blue and be cliniced by it, APPLYING it within the context of your organization is the REAL trick. I've only seen one local/area HS band rehearse that came close to that level of having it all together. Jeff knows who I mean. Many people think they can just copy something verbatim like that and then they wonder why they're not winning all the time. It's because of the dynamic nature of people and personalities being so different, talent levels being different, the human aspects. Just my two cents. From what everyone says out there, BD works smart and hard, emphasis on the smart end of things. Cadets works with the emphasis on working hard, maybe not as smart, they tend to have the belief their superior work ethic will overcome any and all obstacles, Cavies before this year, a blend of both ends. Any system in place the Cavies have wouldn't have saved them from that train wreck of a program their new staff inflicted upon that corps. I have no idea where Crown fits in to the spectrum. With Klesch there, my guess is he's more the hard worker type given his background, his Brass specialists, may be more the work smarter type. At least I still have hair on my head as compared to Eddie Otto and Mike Klesch. God has a sense of very good humor about such things. I need some pie. Be back later. Still full from Fogo 24 hours later, man but would just like a piece of pie...

Gah, double post somehow, my apologies.

Being a favorite to win, yes, that's a lot more difficult of a circumstance. Making finals, no, not if they're good enough. It's possible that they're the best corps out there- There are no absolutes, but the odds would be pretty long of that. If they were, they get into finals, maybe something happens there. Really their goal is to make finals and get placed correctly within 1-2 places of where they "could or should" be, and then let the Finals Panel figure out the mess from there. The only real solution would be to clinic West Coast or enough DCI people who could theoretically be out there to do a show that would meet the bylaws. The question is expenses, or whether you'd make the clinic a web conference online and whhether that would be acceptable to the DCA membership. If enough people would be willing to work from all ends to acomodate, I think some workable solution could be found, but there'd have to be some degree of give and take from the sounds of things from all three of four ends of the matter.

Going on first is not necessarily bad for Prelims. The panel's got their experience from seeing whom they have seen this season, and they should easily be able to get the corps in the right rating area to start things off. Then, it becomes an issue of lining everyone else up appropriately. They know the situaton, they'll keep it in mind and get the Gades where they should be.

Great idea for your corps to do this- good luck with the endeavour. Just make sure all the visa/passport issues are all understood and clear.

You know, if they did a "Mothers of Invention" show, yeah we'd be on the sidelines jaggin' our heads going "Yeah... cool... yeah..." and still I think most of the crowd would be cryin'. I'm beginning to think as a composer Zappa might be one of the top 10 greatest American composers. Short List Ellington, Gershwin, Copland, Maybe John Williams, Bernstein, He might be in there somewhere. And Fran- THAT is the crux of things. I sat and talked to Cameron after he came back from tour with BD in '81. He explained things to me in really good detail. What they call "System Blue" now was in place, it's just that it didn't have a name for it, and it was well reasoned and thought out from an Educational Methods Level then, and was refined, added to and improved over the last 30 years. They know how to rehearse, grounded and understood fundamentals, they know what they want for an end result and how to get it without killing the kids- it's formidable. As for 1930, yeah it had the feeling more of a 1930 Fred Astaire movie production and aesthetic than any reality. It didn't grab me, either, nice, but- eh. Reminds me of my Uncle Willard. I talked to him about Riding the rails in the period. He told me Rather than be poor and without work and staying in Pittsburgh, he figured he might still have little money, no job, but he could travel and see the US by riding the rails. He'd pick up jobs at CCC camps, and move on, and saw a lot, did a lot. A VERY cool dude whom I know our family were all very fond of. Heck, he even conned my Grandpap- his Brother-in-Law into riding in a motorcycle sidecar out to Chicago for the World's Fair in period. MY Grandpap in a sidecar!? He was one special guy to be able to pull THAT off. Crown has one huge piece of the puzzle. They need three more. Visual package a bit spicier and a guard that's not so bland. And, a percussion section that can at worst finish second to BD by .2 or less in a worst case scenario. Fogo blew my everlovin' mind. Steak better than any steak I have ever had, Lamb even better... Chicken that tasted as GOOD as the Steak and Lamb...even the dinner rolls were REALLY good! That stuff just comes out on the skewers, oh baby. Want to take everyone there, unsure what they would think, though. I'm STILL full. Maybe not eat Wednesday, man....

BD's show is about Dadaism. Ive said on the DCI forums that I can see why this show has people reacting virulently to it. Not everyone would or should like it. That's part of Dada. Ben, Dadaism is anti-art. it's like BD gave everyone a middle finger and shot the moon at them musically and visually. Here's an example of Classic Dada art: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fountain_(Duchamp) By the way, Duchamp became a main driver of Futurism and heavily influenced Zingali. I know this because I heard Zingali say this to my very ears at a WCU director's Clinic in 1984. But yes, BD did the drum corps equivalent of putting a urinal on its side and telling everyone it was art. For this, I loved them this season. Then again, you guys know I'm always a bit of a soup stirrer and troublemaker. It was not my fave show, I loved Turandot a ton, but I also loved BD for the concept and attempt. Again, not everyone would get it, and I don't expect nor demand them to. What I do expect them to get was this: An unbelieveably fantastic horn line with a sound that debunks the whole "G Bugles are superior and more powerful" crap does not guarantee a win. Dressing up the guard as "Crown Man" and "Carolina Girl" wan't innovative. Seen how many HS bands do Superhero shows the past few years. The show was of high quality and sounds incredible- but it didn't move me in any direction other than, "Wow, their brass ensemble is powerful, clear and pristine as ####!" The Theme was nice feel good eat at Cracker Barrel stuff, which is fine and good, but not really daring or original. Their percussion were 3rd IIRC by a decent gap vs. BD. Crown's guard and visual aesthetic weren't in the same league. It's more than having a big stankin' beauutiful horn line. And here you have ME, a HORN guy who is saying this stuff. It's a repeat reaction by many of the 1996 DCA results for the same reasons. IF Crown can get their percussion up to BD's level AND if they can come up with something still accessible, but less Cracker Barrel feel good and more Fogo de Chao, they CAN beat BD. Speakin' of Fogo de Chao, I'm goin there for dinner tonight in Baltimore after visting the Smithsonian with friends. We plan on hitting the NASM, and the Hirschorn Museum of Modern Art, maybe some other ends of it too. (Yeah I DO like Dadaism/Modern Art that much...) I am SO ready to eat there... Check this stuff out! Unreal!!!!! http://www.fogodechao.com/index.php?id=164