PurpleKnights

Ohio State is a heavily military-styled band that looks and plays about the same as it did 80 years ago. I can't think of a worse comparison.

Old pits didn't sound rinky-tink? Bull. Compare the pit breaks in SCV '89 to SCV's 'Castle On a Cloud' pit interlude this year. There was really not a lot of complaining in that brief period between allowing amps and allowing electronics. Amping the pit has been a huge success; synthesizers have not. Yet.

Cadets 2006 was chock-full of schadenfreude for people who hated Cadets 2005.

The list is a lot longer than that. Sunset is one of the schools that reliably churns out drum corps members. Oregon Crusaders' vocalist and a few others in the corps are from there. I'm pretty sure one of Crown's hornline section leaders this year is an alum. That program is still going strong but with budget issues over the last year there were questions about whether it would continue to exist. Greg still judges drum corps shows.

I believe they said at the corps send-off this year that not a single one of Oregon Crusaders' 140 members came from Portland Public Schools.

I agree... Cascades are not at 75 members because of Oregon Crusaders (although it probably doesn't help), they're at 75 members because of a failure to recruit. I think the fact that Oregon had a similar size advantage last year as an Open Class corps proves that. There are some important things that help build corps: putting on an entertaining show (not this year), placing well competitively (not this year), and providing a good experience for the members (I haven't heard anything either way this year, but hopefully they did). Yet all of those things are secondary to building relationships in the high schools to get kids to come out. They plainly need to do better there. Cascades would be more competitive with 20 or 30 more guys on the field. Being more competitive gets more people to auditions... that's how you build momentum. It is... but with the state of funding for music education it's not getting any bigger.

Cascades aren't a Div III corps building from the ground up, they've been doing a Div I/World Class tour for 12 years and have been slowly shrinking since 2009. A few years ago they had over 100 members. If their goal is to field 85 members next year (that would be ten more than this year) while Oregon fields a full corps an hour away, I don't know if that's going to give them the momentum to continue to exist.

I wasn't paying as much attention last year... is this much disagreement between the two GE Music and the two GE Visual judges within the caption normal? Below the top 12 there is no consistency.

Those scores make a lot more sense than at Prelims. Slightly startled by OC's gap over Academy. Gives them an outside chance of topping Mandarins and even Colts! And the great rivalry between BDB and SCVC continues. Will be interesting to see the recaps. The disagreement between the GE judges at Prelims was unsettling to say the least.

Guitars are legal but banjos aren't?

Wow, some of those scores are bizarre when compared to recent shows.

I don't know if that banjo was supposed to represent a banjo. I think it, uh, was a banjo. That's the first I've heard of anyone taking issue with that.

Scores are higher across the board last year, that puts them 20th-21st depending on how Surf does.

No scores in that intermission?

I can't load this at all, am I the only one?

Having DCI Finals in Los Angeles in 2007 was tremendous for the Open Class corps (then Div II/III) on the west coast. I can think of several corps from California that competed that year that are now defunct. And of course it was the best-attended finals in decades. On the other hand, if finals were held in Florida that year it would have literally killed a few corps. I appreciate the idea that Indianapolis is fairly central. And I appreciate the benefits of stability and predictability. But for the sake of fans and corps for whom Indianapolis is always going to be very far away, I'd propose a compromise: Denver and Indy in alternating years. Or better yet, a different Midwestern city. It's unlikely I will ever attend finals in Indy as a fan.

No.

What he said. In a perfect world you'd like a GE Music judge to be able to watch a single corps and say "Yep, that's a 16.8," but in reality a good part of judging is comparison. A corps that goes on four or five spots before its true competitive peers (let's say at a 15 corps show the 'true' 7th place corps goes on right after the 'true' 12th place corps) is (arguably) at a disadvantage because the judge has to determine how wide a gap to jump and is (arguably) likely to err on side of caution, perhaps underscoring the corps.

If I were to take five minutes and cherry-pick the worst comments I could find from an average SEC football forum and post them here I would get banned. If that's the worst stuff you can find I think we're all gonna be okay.

I didn't read through this thread so I apologize if someone else has already said this, but after seeing the I&E schedule: Rehearsal ban on I&E day.

I think his order is pretty good but those numbers from 13th to 18th are too low. Last years scores are a poor predictor; the field in that range is just flat out better this year.

You can't be serious. At the risk of confirming your suspicions about how nasty we all are... maybe you need to get out more. This forum has a relatively low degree of anonymity and is closely connected to a small, real-world community. Half the users here are moms and dads rooting for their kids. This is a very nice, polite forum.

Don't worry about it. BDB will finish 20th right ahead of Jersey Surf. Take it to the bank.

You must have the worst cable company on the face of the planet, if it goes out during every live performance like the Fan Network does. I pay for Fan Network to follow the season, including the corps that don't get an invite to the TOC shows. Period. They're doing a mediocre job at best of letting me do that.

I actually think we're coming down the other side of the hill of overwrought experimentation and self-indulgent design. There's no show on the field this year more aggravating than, say, 2008 Cadets. If 2013 is the year that makes you throw in the towel as a drum corps fan (at a show with SCV 2013 no less), you're not likely to be missed, as there's no way you were going to shows and paying attention the last 5+ years.