agtsu1186

I loved our hornline. When I think of what makes a favorite for me, it's balance, skill, and demand. So, as far as that goes, I would say us, and the Cadets. Though, they played a little abrasively now and then as far as my tastes go, the demand and skill level of their hornline was high. I felt like most of the top several, specifically BD and Phantom were very trumpet soaked, not that the Cadets weren't all the time either.

I don't know who I'd like to see in finals these days, but I wouldn't mind making finals top 14/15. It seems to me that slowly but surely, as long as this activity keeps itself funded, the "top 6" will continue losing definition. Now we are asking, "is it top 7 this year or what?" Well, of course not, it's still the "top 6" but 7th place was only a 10th away, and close only counts in horseshoes and hand-grenades. I think that eventually we'll all see the corps get better, and hopefully even out more. Because right now it's more like, top 3, next four, next 5. Anyway, that all being said, I guess it would be fun to have the Blue Stars in, Spirit out. They're just on the edge every year of being in or out. Of course, the Cavaliers seem to ride purely on name some years as well.

I believe doug did some arranging for them. I'm not going to sign my soul on it, but I want to say he did do some work for them. I also want to say that our visual people did some work for them, but I might just be making that up. I know they borrowed our beloved mello tech for a good 3 weeks.

I listen to Bluecoats, BD, and the Cadets the most. I rarely, rarely listen to the Cavaliers. Occasionally I skip onto phantom before I listen to us since I go by tracks in order on my ipod.

I think you can pretty clearly hear the chords from Firebird in BD's show, but they also put some spice of their own intermixed.

Jaimie Oakley was the colorguard caption head at the start of the summer, Trisha Gooley took over from assistant position. Stephanie Furnace was the visual caption head, Kevin Stahl was the assistant. George Wozniak and Dave Mackinnon were co-brass caption heads. I want to say Mike Macintosh was the percussion arranger and caption head, but I'm probably wrong since I never really paid attention to that. Doug Thrower wrote our music, Mitch Rogers wrote our drill. Tim Fairbanks was the colorguard kind of writer/stager. Drew Shanefield was the program coordinator. Tom Rarick sounds like a familiar name. We also had Bret Kuhn around. And Larry Hearshman was around now and then too. The rest of the staff was techs mostly. I can't think of anyone else for big staff positions off the top of my head, especially percussion people.

Helmets all the way.

White, because it's a whole lot less hot than black.

Hey, so we can all be perfectly clear, I'm not saying I'm opposed to Dave Glasgow, this new caption head, or the Bluecoats. I'm just saying my personal opinion, which comes down to, if you want to build a champion, you're going to need consistency, and synergy between the staff. My only wish is that the definition between what would be my opinion, and what would be my action, would be clear. Either way, I guess I'm going to have to be done with this topic.

I said nothing about where "DCI" thinks they should be, I said where the judge thinks they should be. Judging is going to have personal opinion in it. You said it right there yourself. They place people where they think they should be. If it were easy to just say, "Well, that kid missed a step off, that puts them in 6th place" the system could be completely objective. But, since that's not the case, it's going to have some subjectivity to it. Either they'll like the music, and say the guard work goes well with what they're playing and marching, or they'll simply say it doesn't.

I just would like to know what would happen if we'd stick with a visual caption head, like Steph. It might not be "fired" but it says something to the world when the Visual caption head "doesn't come back" and someone else appears instead. It's the same reason Dave is so protective of us in anything representing the bluecoats. He wants us to represent the corps in a certain way, and to do this represents us in a certain way, and it's something I'm afraid of. I'm afraid we're saying, "we didn't like the scores, so we're bringing someone else in so that we can hopefully get a score we like better." Which is also frustrating because I remember hearing so many times that we weren't concerned with scores. I'm honestly not anymore, I was incredibly happy with the season, the direction we were traveling... I just want to have Steph around to beef us up. Maybe it's not always the caption head, maybe it's design. Maybe it is the caption head, I guess I don't really know, I'm just a performer I guess...

Do you honestly think that all the judges do so completely objectively? I doubt it. Surely not every judge is going to say, "Ok, Crown plays with this type sound, so I'm going to listen for it to stay the same and characteristic for them, and give them a score based on that. And now we have the Cavaliers who play this way. I'm going to score them based on their own performance, and not compared to any other corps." I imagine it goes a lot more like this: "Hey, here come the Cavaliers. Man, they sure are good, those Cavaliers. I'm going to use my preconceived notion that they'll be excellent, and if they're not, I'll cut them some slack. Oh, here comes Phantom! They play loud. I'm going to give them points because they're everyone's underdog. Oh... Here come Crown and the Bluecoats... I guess I'll give them some points to let them know they're getting better, but throw them in the back." If judges were completely objective Pioneer would be just as likely to win as the Blue Devils because the scoring system would be based on Achievement, and knowing the level of achievement of a corps based on the difficulty of their material would matter. But, in the end what matters is being clean, and having general effect, and good marching. It doesn't matter how hard you tried, or how hard you worked, it's how clean your show looks.

To be honest, I'm pretty bothered. If we canned Steph because we didn't win, I'll be very upset. You can't expect one person to fix a visual program you've changed every year in a season. And she's the one they always call back when we hire a new guy and he mucks it up. I think they should've given Stephanie a longer run before saying, "Sorry, you didn't make us win, so we're going to hire someone else." I honestly think we just need more intelligent drill. But, I've also heard that many people enjoyed our drill a lot? My other argument is: How long were Dave and George around before people recognized our hornline and the success it has achieved? Think of how many brass caption heads we've had in the past 7 years, and compare it to the number of vis caption heads.

1. Cadets 2. Blue Devils 3. Phantom Regiment 4. Bluecoats 5. Crown 6. Cavaliers 7. SCV I would, despite hating the narration, place Cadets in first. Their show was intense, and excellent, just annoying. BD was clean as always, but I really only enjoyed the music. Phantom, us, and Crown I would interchange pretty freely. I hated the changes to Phantom's uniform, the guard outfits, and the visual stuff at the end. From our show, I thought we pretty much lived being "Criminal" but I guess the judges disagreed. Maybe if we would've slowed down time during the laser scene, or toe-led our closer, or even stopped to spin and play more often instead of marching. Crown had a similar and what would be "easy" to sell idea, as ours should've been. The Cavaliers show bored me to death. The music wasn't fun for me to listen to, the drill I've seen wasn't that exciting either. People said their first movement was fantastic, but I don't know, I haven't seen it still. And SCV I'm still not sold on.

Well, having spent the summer with the Bluecoats, I'm decidedly biased towards our show. I listened to Crown's a little bit earlier from the finals CD. The music makes sense with the show, I just still haven't seen the whole thing. So, I'll never really know, since I couldn't be in the stands to watch it. I just imagine people were drawn to the show for various reasons. They had horses, what American doesn't like horses? The played the william tell bit. Everyone has heard that, and can recognize it. Basically, the show was full of things most people are familiar with, and enjoy. That's pretty hard not to like. Our show had things people are familiar with, but they all had negative connotations. Goes with the territory of Criminal, though, I would imagine. Plus, our show had ONE major chord in it. People are more comfortable with major harmonies, instead of minor ones. The list can go on about simple things that people feel, and that could be why. Then, the simplest answer of all could just be that they had a fantastic show concept.