Mark in AZ

I also tremendously enjoyed Vanguard's show this year. Reconfirmed my personal feeling that SCV is my favorite corps of all time (no connection other than as a fan). It almost made me forget the bottle dance... Keep up the great work!!

Bump

Ain't going to happen...high schools and colleges will be back in session especially in the West. Of course I remember the days when there used to be drum corps shows all the way through Labor Day weekend. And the shows started on Memorial Day weekend. Ahhhh, the good old days.

Good luck to the Blue Stars!!

I firmly endorse these surprises, but in the realm of (semi) reality.... SCV doing the bottle dance and Troopers doing the sunburst.

Finals or not, I think that Academy gets a big nod for recovering from the sophmore swoon... I'm pulling for them in a big way.

Awesome news!!!

Latest that I have courtesy of Academy's Twitter account is that they are 30 minutes behind due to the rain delay.

I can't remember the exact date of the change from ticks to the current system, but I think it was sometime in the 80's. Now, we just have to give the judges the "impression" that the company front is good rather than having them stand in front of the corps counting errors.

Company fronts become much more prevalent when the tick system went away. Think of how many ticks you would get when you have 50-100 corps members right in front of the judge trying to keep in step and in a straight line...true suicide back in the day of ticks.

I think that this is good year. I can't remember the last time that I liked all the top shows. I was so-so with Cadets until last night. The kicked some a** last night especially on M&M.

I heard that a lot of corps are dealing with kids being out with the flu. Many of the corps last night had holes. It seemed to affect the Glassman the most from what I noticed.

Congratulations to Academy guard. I remember the first year in World, everyone was talking about how the guard was holding the corps back. This is a great drum corp example of not letting anything hold you down. Also, another shout out to the whole corps, the staff and especially Mark Richardson for coming back from a less than successful sophmore outing in World to this year where they are back in the mix for finals. It makes me realize that this Corps has staying power.

Way to go Academy!!! In the 80's by Atlanta. Academy is back

Great night for nostalgia...

I believe that this was the only time that a Div II/III move up ended up in finals. I wonder what the next highest finish in Div. I was during the era when the Div. II/III corps move up...

I saw a couple of holes in the Academy horn line early, but they closed up later.

My favorite show of the year so far is SCV (although I saw them in person and I'm a huge Copland fan). Music is great and the drill continues to impress (hoping for a lot of cleaning before Indy). My second favorite has been Crown, but they seem to have run out of steam. I thought that Cavs totally impressed tonight (unlike earlier in the season when I thought their show was flat). This year's Blue Devils is the first one in a while that I have liked. Cadets are a total disappointment. First, why did they have to do WSS again (for the hundredth time). There is so much Bernstein material that has never been done or done infrequently. What a great tribute it would have been to bring some new Bernstein material to the field and put the Cadet stamp on it. Also, they have brought absolutely nothing new to WSS and the show seems pretty boring to me. All that being said, the drill is fantastic and will be amazing if they get it cleaned up. However, I don't think that will win for them. Next biggest disappointment is PR (and coming off a championship year -- sort of like Madison 76).

SCV was awesome. Could they pull a Phantom and be lurking until finals week and then jump up and take it all????

The 12th place is between Colts, Troopers, Spirit and Academy with Crossmen and Madison as dark horses. I would say that Colts are at the head of it right now. It will be interesting to see when Academy gets back in the mix.

Academy bouncing back from their sophmore swoom...

Thanks for all the great replies, awesome. I also believe that there are lots of expenses incurred by drum corps volunteers that don't get deducted on their taxes. Ditto for in-kind contributions. However, I still want to emphasize that I believe that the real issue with these organization in Kentucky was that the organization should have been paying PAYROLL taxes for the parents' working to pay their kids fees. If your corps (or band or sports organization or etc.) has a deal where a parent can volunteer, the hours are counted and so much is deducted from their kid's fee, they are an employee and need to be treated as such.

"Metafiction" or not, I just hope that the concept is one that the performers can convey to the audience and that the audience can grasp....