lowend

Was the open gate funneling people the souvie booths?

Why would anyone want that? Even if you take out the ick factor, which is impossible, his ideas just don't work anymore.

I'm wondering exactly how many of these kids of young men and women actually exist. DCI level flag and weapons technique combined with a high level of dance training? Throw in competitive high school band/college band plus WGI plus corps plus jobs plus school work. That's a huge ask for people in their teens and 20s.

Tired of high gas prices? Drill your own oil! Contact The Troopers!

Every activity as the same types: the constantly down and out, the lovable losers, the always almost-there, the lightning-in-a-bottles, the successful favorites, and the Evil Empire. There is some mobility, but not much. I'm an Alabama football fan and I LOVE being the Evil Empire of college football. We embrace and thrive off the hate. Yes, others will have their moments from time to time, but as long as we have Saban (and as long as BD has their management team) we will be at the top. The impressive thing about BD is how they have been able to groom, retain, and interchange leadership so seamlessly over the year. Ps....I'm not a BD fan. I don't really have a favorite corps at all anymore, just favorite shows from year to year.

Corps - 0 Marching Band Member - 8 (4 high school and 4 college) Marching Band Instructor/Director - Starting year 22

And this year they have turned 180 degrees from it. It's like all the avant garde stupidity from last year came rushing out this year.

THIS! There are things that are cool when first introduced, but become compulsory elements, formulas, or caricatures of the activity. The off the line, production, ballad, drum feature, and closer formula has been replaced with pre-show emoting, introductory narration, pit/battery intro, first hit (two minutes in), etc.

Here's the forecast for the next ten days in Birmingham. DCI Birmingham is next Friday. Nothing out of the ordinary for us. The chances of rain between 2pm-5pm are always high. Don't forget to hydrate!

I don't have a favorite corps, rather I have favorite shows. A corps will go on a streak of shows I connect with and then all of a sudden they will completely change direction and take some "baffle with bs" approach. I'll move on to a different group that is doing something accessible.

It wasn't any better in the south during mid-late June. We were around 100 quite a few days in a row then. We're still in the mid-90s this week and we're all starting band camps this week. If you want to avoid hot in the south, schedule it in April or November.

I'll give you that one. It's also one of my least favorite drum corps shows ever. I really did enjoy the accessibility of 17/18/19.

How many DCA corps have become mainly junior corps aged? It seems like a greater percentage of their members are younger and younger.

My kids were in the room, so I pre-emptively had the volume off!

I agree, but it's just as much a failure of the design community. If the only goal is to win then why not copy the thing that wins? So, maybe there is some mutual reinforcement going on? FWIW, I became aware of corps in the late 90s when my band director played the Blue Devils 97/98 cd for us at a work day one summer. I was hooked. My preferences for shows were based more on AUDIO recordings available online in those days than actually seeing the shows. I got to go to maybe one show a year and then watch the PBS broadcast. Cadets 2000 was the first show that I saw as a high schooler that really captured me. It was so well thought out, the melodies were full, logical, and flowing. The drill was nothing I had ever seen before and, as a trumpet player, that little soli where they played the other one's valves and the one dude waved...high school me flipped out over that! I can't tell you how many high school and college tenor lines I've seen copy that feature since then. YET, as wonderful as that show is, it would not perform well [that is the actual term the OP used] today. I would bet today's performers might just be able to do a better job of performing it, but it wouldn't win now. It might sneak in at the bottom of the top 12, but it doesn't have any of the "compulsory elements" that have to be present in today's shows.

Nothing prior to Bluecoats 2016 would be competitive now.

People need to learn to hold a camera still.

It is possible to be a "true fan" of something that is a mere shadow of what made it great during its heyday. The reason old school drum corps is "boring" is because modern drum corps is hard for the sake of being hard "effect" and is more spectacle than anything. In the words of W. C. Fields, "If you can't dazzle them with brilliance, baffle them with ########." There is very little in modern drum corps that is brilliant. It's almost like figureskating where the designers plug and play compulsory elements: jazz run, flutter, rhythmic stabs of block chords before snapping the horns down into a jazz run, extended Bb chords with the bass coming in on tonic halfway through, bass drops, bends, trombone glisses, odd keyboard sound patch, ethereal keyboard sounds better suited for prayer time at the local non-denominational church, guard has consitpated look but switches to huge smile after tossing a 5......

Talk about gatekeeping.

Here are a few: Some shows are too hard for the casual fan to enjoy/appreciate. The musicianship is many old school shows is lacking and makes listening to them unenjoyable. The current trends in costumery do not fly in some parts of the country. I've had students and parents turned off by what modern performers are wearing. The bulges and "fabulousness" especially turn off my straight male students. Modern DCI drum majors could be replaced and nobody would notice. They beat time and don't conduct. Drum corps is a niche activity and is nowhere near as important as we want to think it is. While DCI is still influencing high school bands in some parts of the country, in other parts directors know better than to try to copy what is going on in DCI. It's not the "marching arts" -- it's just marching band.

McBeth's Pyramid of Sound is never wrong!* *Except for when it doesn't fit the style, genre, amount of performers, instrumentation, etc. 😉

I'm very intrigued by their brass sonority on the Kings. It's not the brightness that I'm used to from them. I kind of dig it.

This article from Michael Boo list BD as winning a host of visual captions, but mentions Cavies winning visual performance. https://www.dci.org/news/world-class-finals-recap-analysis

Sure is. One of the few bands you don't hear....you feel.

Even better. Conn 20-Js. 😎