ronsell
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Posts posted by ronsell
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My family loved to meet at DeKalb for the DCM Championships. The last year I could convince them to attend a finals show was in Pasadena when the use of amplification was the last straw. The drum corps activity has lost at least 40 tickets a year from my group who no longer enjoy the activity. I feel very bad about this but, the activity I once could rave to all about, no longer exists.
I appreciate all your comments and analysis re DCM but it's really history. Corps are not what they once were and bringing them back to a favorite venue is not going to change that.
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Does anyone know when the 2008 DCI Cds will arrive?
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Long time reader, first time poster, here. As a former Cadet member, there are a couple things that bother me more than anything else. Let me start by saying I am very much against narration. With that being said, I will not go on about why I hate it. I and 10,000 others could probably write a detailed ten page dissertation on the matter. However, there are a couple things I would like to share, from my point of view.
The first is the fact that I believe it is CRUCIAL people voice their concerns about this subject. So many times I have read, "enough with the flaming, stop with the hating, enough with the criticizing, stop with the negatives..." People need to be heard. If you don't like something you see, let it be known! You probably aren't the only one.
When I marched in a div. III corps, the director told us something I will never forget. He said (somewhat revised) you perform for four different groups of people. The first is yourself. This is the most important. You must love what you are doing, and truly believe in it, because at the end of the day, you are the one who has to live with it. The second is for the crowd. This is almost equally important. You are putting on a performance, not barking into a mirror. If the crowd doesn't love what you are doing, or understand it, what is the purpose of the performance? (mid-90s Madison knew that) The third is to the judges. There are certain criteria that you are judged on that you must abide by. You cannot just be a crowd pleaser, you must also march in step :-) The last is to the critics. The people that write about you (professionally, not on forums). You usually don't worry about these people.
With ALL OF THAT being said... I believe this forum is an outlet for the crowd... THE FANS... to be heard. We are not the critics, we are the people who want to root for them! We are the fans! And you can't ignore what the fans want. If everyone said nothing, just to be polite, this would continue and everyone would just grit their teeth during the Cadets' show. No one wants that.
In 2006 I watched the Cadets walk off the field into the lot behind Camp Randall. The guard had tears in their eyes. Not because their season was over, but because they were pretty much booed off the field. In 2007 everyone in California was laughing at them because the plot of the show was so ridiculous. This year, people are just getting fed up. As an alumnus, it tears me up inside to see this and I wonder how long it will go on. (I don't believe the solution is to stop people from booing. The REASON they are being booed must be addressed)
A close friend of mine and I were discussing the show. He said something that truly sticks with me. He said, "I remember when I used to go to a corps show, see The Cadets and think 'wow.' THOSE are THE CADETS. They would perform their show and you knew you had just witnessed something awesome. Now you see them and you just laugh at how absurdly childish and cheesy their show is."
Now, contrary to that last line, and through my own experiences, I KNOW what a world class organization the Cadets are. I know the values they teach, and how many great people are in that organization. Unfortunately, the average fan only sees the product on the field. The product on the field is what gives you most of your reputation.
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It's June... it takes time to clean that high velocity stuff.
It's always dangerous to generalize. Yet, there definitely is, I sense after seeing Drum Beauty and the Madison show last night, a lack of really exciting show designs this year and generally in the past several years. While there are some very good performances already and some neat moments, there simply aren't any screaming crowd responses. Last night at Madison there was one, only one genuine standing ovation. Perhaps you have to be an "old timer" to remember how a particular corps show brought you screaming to your feet several times in a the 11 minute show. Do the new designers not care? Are they incapable of writing an exciting show? Or are they simply not interested in the crowds response. That clearly is the attitude of Hopkins and his Cadets. What a shame that the hard work and talent of all those young people should be in the hands of someone who uses them to further his own agenda.
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Yet again a dissenting opinion is labeled trolling.
I think we are all missing an important fact that is becoming more apparent every show I experience.
The amplification that is occurring right now is, for the most part, being very badly utilized. What was argued and accepted to be a means to utilize special colours and exotic instruments in the pit has become an excuse to crank up the mallet instruments and generally distort the acoustic relationship between the field music and the pit. Doesn't anyone have a problem with seeing the musical efforts of all those hard working, accomplished battery players being mixed together and coming out of, usually, two mediocre speaker towers? It's very sad that the tremendous efforts of the marching members can be overcome with the slight movement of some jerk at a sound board. The aural difference between the electric sound and the acoustic field sound diminishes the field sound. It also, as we see to our dismay, has become the means for some corps to "push the envelope". Thus, for example, The Cadets shows the past few years. The hard working, extremely talented, kids in the corps are the ones who have to listen to the nearly dead silence that follows their show this year. At least, up till now, it isn't greeted with the venom it received last year at Pasadena.
The synth issue is the logical next step in the transformation of drum corps into what might be termed a "super band" program. DCI is in pretty serious trouble now and, I believe, if they continue to allow the extreme fringe to dictate their artistic product they will soon have alienated a very significant portion of the base that pays for the activity.
RAS
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Glad to get such strong positive remarks re the sound on the DVDs. I must go back and check my system. So many years of screwwing up the sound has probably made me too quick to jump to the negative.
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Phantom isn't the only visual show that was poorly shot. BUT!!! The real negative is the horrible audio! Compare the CD recording of any corps you want with the DVD. Every time a corps get loud the DVD audio gets less. Very poor quality. If T. Blair were to even acknowledge the problem he would cry there just is only so much info thay can squeeze onto a disc. I say there is no excuse for putting out a DVD product that is barely better than the Video Cassettes. DCI should get a complaint from everyone on this; especially from the performers and staffs of every corps. <**>
News From DCI Winter Meetings
in DCI World Class Corps Discussions
Posted
Why not cut all the BS. Just prerecord the corps and have them sync/march the show. The amppeople will be in heaven.