nguyenbr

i'm surprised no one's mentioned BD's gold medalist show from 2003. "chaaaaaa"

Mandarins.

Drum corps has always been one of the best deals, financially, despite rising tour fees. Housing and meals are taken care of, and let's not forget top-notch instruction on your chosen instrument. You can also view it as a sort-of vacation if you consider that one free day you get in some distant touristy location :-). I would say it's comparable to a summer semester spent in college paying for tuition and books, although I will concede that finding scholarships for drum corps isn't as streamlined as it is for school. But as people have said, the money is out there. In fact, I know that some corps offer need-based scholarships to march. Along those lines, I think it's overdue for some rich corps alum to set up a scholarship foundation to help out kids who can't march due to finances. I call BS on whoever thinks that delaying an internship by a year or two will cripple their future finances. You have your entire life to work, and it's not like while you march you will mysteriously forget everything, making you a less-qualified candidate for your future career. Financially, maybe you'll retire at age 66 rather than age 64. You can't seriously argue that you'd trade those memories of aging out for an extra year of the rest of your life.

Looks like the scv drumline is heavily promoting their annual jonz dvd, moreso than previous years. No, I'm not being paid to post this, i just thought i'd share some of the hilarious videos that they have on their website... one of them is a collection of people saying "this is going on the jonz dvd" and another has a fun little impromptu freestyle session courtesy of the snareline. warning, it had me cracking up at work... http://jonz07.scvanguard.org/

All right, I just read/skimmed through this entire topic and this post I quoted above resonated with me the most. Yes, I feel the narration is cheesy, but I couldn't really put my finger on what exactly was cheesy about it. This post pretty much sums it up nicely. For the record, my friends who are less of drum corps geeks than I am didnt like the show, mainly for the cheesiness factor. My beef isn't with narration itself. Its the script. I hate hearing them say lines that insult my intelligence. I hate when they speak as though we are some kind of elitist club of musicians who would like to remind others of how hard we work. I hate that they paint drum corps as an activity for kids who don't fit in with the rest of their peers, because I don't really see myself as a socially awkward musician whose only haven as a teenager was to do drum corps. And as an atheist, I can do without references to God. From the outside, it would appear that the Cadets' narrators are speaking on behalf of all drum corps members when they say "WE believe in this and that" and that sets a pretty pretentious tone from the start. But like I said, I am not against hearing the human voice during a show. I am waiting for a corps to come out with a show that includes narration that is as intelligent as the music is complex. I want to hear witty lines that makes me laugh, emotional lines that make me cry. My other gripe -- in the vast world concepts that are possible to perform in a drum corps show, why do corps do shows about drum corps? BK did it a few years ago, and now we have a show on the field reminding us about what it's like to reset and hearing instructors give comments. When you turn on the TV, you can be transported to any place imaginable. When was the last time you said "I am really looking forward to watching this TV show about making TV shows!" as opposed to the other kajillion possibilities for tv shows out there?

personally, I care about placement because 7th place doesn't get all the bonus features on the DVDs. This is a very important factor in my decision whether or not to actually buy the dvd's...

I don't post very much here but I thought I'd add my thoughts to the mix. People will bootleg stuff for as long as there is a demand for the bootleg material. Bottom line is, the source material wants to spread because people want to listen to it, and people want to share it with others. If DCI produced copyrighted material that people didn't want to listen to, they wouldn't have any issues with bootlegging. That being said, DCI is losing real dollars when one of the primary avenues through which their material spreads is digital piracy. What they should be doing to mitigate it is giving people what they want, at a cost that the consumer is willing to pay. For example, I like that it's only $3 to get an APD -- this gives me a economically feasible, morally superior alternative to asking "a guy I know" for a copy. Much like how I could get the latest 50 Cent album illegally from the internet, but since I only want one or two songs I can easily just get them from iTunes. Or, I can watch a low-quality version of the music video on demand at Yahoo Music Videos. My point with all of this is, it is better for DCI when there are low-cost alternatives to bootlegging that DCI has control over and makes some kind of money from. $80 for a finals dvd, and $40 for div 2-3 is an absurd price to pay for any kind of media. Why not stream the shows for free, but have them be supported by ads? I know a ton of people who got hooked on the TV show "Heroes" because they stream episodes for free on their website. Completely legal, and arguably more accessible than bootleg versions on bittorrent. And to top that off, these are the probably same people who are going to buy the box set when it comes out because of the higher quality and the extra features.

I think part of the problem with DCI is that they don't reach out enough. DCI's status as a 'niche' activity might be self-fulfilling -- It may just be that we consider drum corps a 'niche' activity because DCI treats it like one. Case in point - Who knows how many people would buy those CD's and DVD's if they were browsing the music section at their local Borders store. I see people buying other performance recordings all the time, like Blue Man Group, Cirque du Soleil, etc. Instead, we are all forced to visit a website and purchase them for 98 bucks (!). Or, what if DCI made their apd recordings available on iTunes and not just through their own proprietary website? It's a risk given how much money would probably end up going to Apple, but the potential benefit of all the random people finding out about DCI could be enormous. I like what the BD/Cadets organization is doing with BDE, in which they get a small ensemble to perform at corporate events, sporting events, etc. Why is it only them who is doing this? It can't be that BD and Cadets have sucked all the talent away from other all the drum corps, can it?

On a personal blog or on Myspace I think it's fine for someone to declare their affiliation to their corps and also show their own personality that may or may not be acceptable within corps guidelines. The reason I say this is because the medium is a personal page. When you read it as an outsider, you should be taking it as a reflection of the person, and not of the corps that they happen to march/have marched with. Even though the words you are reading are posted by a corps member, it is wrong to believe that this person's entire online presence exists on behalf of his corps. If it was an official corps blog or myspace page or whatever, I guarantee you won't find anything that doesn't fly in a corps handbook. Of course, I agree that there are also gray areas. For example, I wouldn't advocate publicly dissing another corps ever like someone above me mentioned. It's actually a good thought exercise to think of how someone else might think of your online content in the context of your corps affiliation. But I still think it's wayyy too idealistic to think that everyone should adhere to their 'drum corps' personality whenever they do anything online.

drum corps is a very classy activity compared to most mainstream sports. Generally speaking, people associated with the activity will root for their favorite corps, but still show tremendous respect and appreciation for other corps. It helps, as people above me have said, that the Cavaliers conduct themselves with tremendous class.

regiment hands down, but if the scouts were playing Boston 2001's arrangement of Gabriel's Oboe, that would be a pretty solid runner up.

3-way tie for 4th, you heard it here first

ditto on the multi-camera negatives. they zoomed in way too much on Blue Knights' whirpool drill move... my favorite part of their show! Capital Regiment had pretty smart drill and a smart show... thought they should have been ahead of Blue Stars. Wasn't really sold on the Blue Stars' "freedom" concept. I was very impressed with the Glassmen dissonant - silent part towards the end. Yeah, the xylophone in SCV's show overpowered the whole corps towards the beginning. Wonder if it was the mic placement or if it really was turned up too high. I liked seeing that Rosander drill in the Scouts' show. the Crossmen's radio section drew a lot of laughs! And I had to laugh at that mildly offensive "taco" comment. I was reserving my judgment of the Cadets' show all season until I could actually see it... and I must say that I think its very well done. People who dislike the Cadets are just drinking too much haterade. Nobody likes a hater. Cavaliers, wow. what a genius concept. At the same time, Phantom's show was my favorite musically. Makes me wonder, would a show like phantom's ever beat a show like Cavaliers', everything else being equal? is it even possible to implement genius visual concepts while retaining the emotional power of Phantom's music? Whats up with the announcers being so critical of each corps? I don't remember them saying stuff like that before this year. My friend suggested that maybe it's part of DCI trying to legitimize drum corps as a sport.

it might happen. but here's something to think about: SCV has a tendency to score worse on finals night than on semis. Last year was the first time since 2000 that they actually improved their score on finals night. Let's hope that trend doesnt rear its ugly head again...

good for DCI, but my dream of ever attending DCI finals in northern california just went down the drain. Hopefully there will be a regional up here next year to make up for this.