Bob984

was at the Giants stadium show last night....here's a review general....traveled through major rain/thunderstorms/traffic....the great news is the weather lifted and was fine for the show....Giants stadium broke new record for me...$9.00 for an ice cream cone and a bottle of Sprite (and had to wait 20 minutes in line for the Sprite for people getting $5,000 worth of food (lol))...crowd was a little lighter than in past years.....but a good one... Surf.....young hornline has a full sound, and they have a competent drumline....the show has moments, but arrangements were a bit choppy for me....young guard is good.....overall, they are a solid div. II corps Raiders.....surprised me in the first part of show, as performance level was pretty good for this early....unfortunately, they couldn't sustain it, and major endurance/performance issues in the last 3rd. Some of the Superstar stuff worked, but they got pretty obscure in the later portions of the show..... Spirit.....performed well....percussion is talented and I thought they were very good for this early....that showed up in their score....good moments in the show, but again, musical arrangements were choppy..."Nutville" show a few years ago (which almost didn't make finals???), was so much better arranged and had more crowd appeal....just as something was developing in this show, it ends abruptly and goes to something elxe.......corps is talented, but effect could do them in at the end of the year, although people seemed to buy it more than I did tonight...... Boston....visual program is strong, and color guard staging/work is real good. That said, I wish I could say the same for the musical book.....I wasn't sure you could mess up "Ode to Joy", but they found a way.....I can still hear Phantom playing this in my brain at the end of their 77 show, 2 valves and all, and the absolute rush they produced the last 2 minutes....nowhere to be found here....then they also do Candide, and it can't hold a candle to either SCV's or Cadets arrangements of the past....show is so chopped from an arrangement standpoint, that I think they could have a ditto of last year....this corps will execute well, and they can perform, but there is no horsepower in this musical book..... Crossmen.....corps came out late in relation to others here tonight....performance dirt is hurting them a bit now......arrangements are not bad, but they could be improved massively with better endings and some tempo adjustments....I think the young drumline could be a surprise by the end of the year...the aggression is there, so once they start ewecuting....ditto with the guard.....If the corps can perform cleanly and revamp endings, they could be 8th......no changes and they could be 16th.... Crown........solid visual package.....also, musical coordination/scoring percussion/brass is outstanding....hornline has great blend...need more soprano sound.....show gets a bit obscure musically, but the arrangements do have continuity and make musical sense.....show has potential, and other than Cadets, clearly the "best of the rest" tonight.....and I don't see the "rest" in this show hanging with Crown competitively much longer...... Cadets........show is very different, and I am not sure I get the whole "story"....doesn't matter, as I don't go to a corps show to hear a story, anyway.....that said, the music is very exposed/difficult, and for 7/1 they played it very well.....drumline will be ridiculously good at end of year and will have a shot at another title...outrageous tenor lick in middle of show was flawless....I hated the uniform picture on the internet, but it works fine in the show...I think their visual book is better this year than the last several years......Although I had trouble grabbing onto the musical book, they perform it well...I think they will be very strong at nationals in all of the performance captions.....how much effect they can generate will really hold their fate....perhaps what will be interesting there is that music effect is probably the worst judged caption in DCI..... last words.......corps are talented and the kids work hard to perform well.....musical arrangers need to try to stop "polluting" the arrangements and work on the craft of writing arrangements that make good musical sense and have continuity, and this also needs to be reflected somewhere in the score..... looking forward to see more shows......GB