NakedEye

Man, Bluecoats show is one for the ages. JUST INCREDIBLE. It completely pulls you in instantly and remains totally intriguing throughout. What a completely unique soundscape. Their guard always seems to have the most beautiful tosses of anyone. Boston also SO GOOD. Really fun and constantly interesting. Their guard is making everything look more effortless than possibly ever before. This is such a massive step up in design from the whale show. BD is trying very hard to sell this package, and they stepped it up tonight, but I still feel like I'm being constantly beaten over the head all the way to the ballad. Too much aggressive music and too much cluttered visual. Even this ballad, though pretty, seems much more bombastic than some of their past ones, lacking the wonderful sensitivity of last year's. Of course they will continue to refine. Phantom also in my top three. Really, really good pacing. Some of the best of the night. And truly exciting. Is 4th possible??? Crown's guard is a joy. So much confidence and that opening flag statement is literally fire. The whole corps is so, so talented that I want the designers to give them a more interesting program. They can handle it, so please try to not stay in the same envelope.

It's lamé - a staple of flags back in the hand-sewn era. Then it fell out of fashion and got pushed aside when the digital printing juggernaut took over. It's back and having a moment this year and makes a cool whispery sound in this feature as opposed to the louder snap of the polyester silk.

That was the first thing I thought of when I saw it. Even staged the same - across the front. And Greg Lagola, now with Bluecoats, was with Cadets in '92. I think that feature was his creation, or he at least had a hand in it.

Your thoughts are very similar to my opinion that's been forming the past few weeks. They have been on so late (EST) for me that I was waiting until I could finally get a good real time read this past weekend, and the whole package still seems problematic. Not at all related to the stellar performance quality, first rate writing, etc., but it is just....all...too...much. On high cam, usually by now, you can really see the design clarity of their shape/mass visual style, but this one is very muddy. Part of it is related to the costumes. Probably an unpopular opinion, but I'm not a fan of the capes. It would be different if they were used for some real impact moments, but there are really only two memorable ones. They turn backfield early on, leaving the only color in the guard, and then later, all do a swirl/turn with them that looks cool. Other than that, they just do standard movement with the billowing fabric making mudpies of their stellar posture and technique. And then there is the removal of them... I sincerely hope they better choreograph that because it is currently a mess of kids pulling yards of velvet over their heads and stashing them in the horses. Up close to the front and prominent. They have had some messy changes in the past, but they were better masked with other distraction and last year, they nailed it so you barely noticed the change to long coats until they were there. The costume under the capes also has so much plumage hanging off of it that it creates even more clutter. I also usually enjoy the Chandler explanations a great deal, but will admit I zoned out a few times during this one. It's like a Brittanica-level dump of dense information. The part where I really perked up was the bit about the Frankenstein novel. I thought that right there was enough for the entire show. There are so many really interesting themes to explore in that story that it could have easily been the whole concept. But instead they went way beyond that, so I hope they can do enough precision editing to make it communicate better. As in 2018 and 2016, with those similarly overly broad ideas, they encountered a competitor who had an extremely tight, streamlined, very precise concept and performance. This year they are facing two of those: Bluecoats AND Boston. It's going to be interesting. Ironically, I had it in my head during the offseason that BD, so often the trend-setter, would be the one to dial it back to a more no-frills show this year, as it just felt like it was time. They may end up in the non-customary position of playing a bit of catch-up.

Bluecoats have a really pure, tight design, even at their first show, with a lot of dirt. I think this will carry them all the way. It has all the makings of greatness, and is still full of intrigue, though in a more subtle way that the past two years. From what I've seen of BD, they need to edit their ideas. There is too much going on in it. Boston also has a really focused design, and that is a huge trimming of the excess from what they had last year. I really like it and I'm not surprised they passed Crown tonight. Crown is losing me a bit more with each viewing. Majestic and beautifully performed, but structurally feels like a rework of last season, with different characters. Also still has the same drill velocity problem, where they tend to move at a measured pace, no matter how much the intensity of the music increases. They are really all performing just remarkably for so early in the season!

I believe the construction is stainless steel. The company that built this will be building a 10-lane, 50m pool at the complex where I swim, to add to our ancient, 6-lane 50m pool. This is very exciting as there are never enough lanes, especially in the summer when we get kicked out in the mornings so the "precious darlings" can have leaky diaper swim lessons. One advantage of this building method is speed. They go in quickly and I believe the company has built them all over the world.

Same, please. 😁

Nooooo! Beyond his wonderful talent and distinctive writing style, he was always extremely kind to me at Magic and made me feel recognized and appreciated. A good guy who helped create some truly revolutionary shows. 😪 Very sorry to hear this news.

The high cam version may or may not be out there now... It's also a 🤯

So who gets to count the guy who was in both BD and Boston, or does he count as 1/2 an ageout in each? 😁 Apparently the story with that is (and you can see him in a Boston uniform in the BD ageout picture) he was an alternate with BD all season. Boston had a mellophone hole, I'm assuming late season, and BD sent him over to them. So Boston didn't have to do their final shows with a hole and the guy got to perform on the field for championship week - a win/win for everybody, and just a pretty cool thing.

DCI officially called it a three-peat. End of story for whatever delusional asterisk lovers are out there. The ironic thing is, if anything, it was even more impressive than one in non-worldwide pandemic times, because to get the second one, they had to assemble an almost entirely new corps, after two years of inactivity. That makes it worth at least the equivalent of a five-peat. 😂

All of your observations are good, but I have a take to add on Boston. My feeling is their design detailing "broke" a bit, which is what ultimately separated them from the upper 3. Part of it is some of the character roles they defined with the costuming and props got blurred. The horns and drums were dressed as the ocean, and often made wave forms, etc. The guard and pit where dressed in period sailor clothing, so those are the human characters encountering the ocean, and the guard especially acted out these roles. The props were either random platforms, or, when assembled, the ship. Much more abstract than the very realistic pilings on the front sideline. The whale was either the large tail flyover, shapes in the drill, or the solo dancer. So here's where it broke: once the ship was assembled, pieces of it were still sometimes moved/opened so people could pass through it, cancelling the believability of it being the ship. Members of the "ocean" were sometimes standing on the ship for features, etc. One minute the whale was a tiny dancer, then a giant tail flyover sinking the ship, then a tiny dancer again, being carried off by a sailor. It may sound like stupid stuff, but those inconsistencies can be enough to put cracks in the illusion they were trying to create, and you didn't see that in the upper 3. Everything BD did reinforced the cut outs theme. I've watched the final run over and over and there is just constant body shaping choreography everywhere. Bluecoats had a clear distinction in look and movement style between the garden/flower section and the "priests" section. Crown had the horns/drums as sort of the knight army and the guard as the court around Arthur and those roles didn't blur. So I think maybe a bit more design troubleshooting to go with their stellar performance level may keep them from getting tripped up again.

I may have just watched “not” the show 6 times in a row. Seeing something new each time. There are so many tiny choreographic moments everywhere that fly by. I was likely too busy screaming when it was live to fully appreciate how epic that run was. My goodness...THE GUARD. All sections were probably about as spotless as is possible to make them. Simply amazing!

Cadets did do that risky ‘86 show, though, with the giant hornline and almost no color guard, so that opened the door a bit. I think BD has a very large ageout class this year, so will be reloading. Of course they won last year with minimal vets, so who knows! My gut feeling is Bluecoats will punch through.

Roughly 125 pair short white socks. Used less than one complete season.