cixelsyd
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Posts posted by cixelsyd
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Surprised no one has waded in to address the specific questions.
20 hours ago, happycomposer said:With these things in mind, I wanted to ask about Zingali's work and its influence. If I have my info correct, the tick system was fully removed before the 1984 season.
Yes. It started with the brass caption in 1982 and 1983, then percussion and visual followed in 1984.
QuoteConsidering Zingali's work with 27th and the Cadets, were the tick system's "tear down" judging sheets changed to more appropriately judge the innovations of the activity, ie more complex drill?
I would expect a range of opinions on this... but to compile all that I have heard from testimony of the people involved, there were frustrations with the various limitations imposed on caption judges that pre-dated the innovations to which you refer.
For instance, prior to the 1970s, the captions for bugles, drums and M&M were judged entirely in teardown mode. Caption judges assessed "execution", looking for errors and almost entirely limited to deducting the same fraction of a point for each error. There was little they could do to address the three qualitative aspects of errors - tolerance (the dividing line between error and successful execution), severity (how bad/obvious is the error), and duration (how long does the error persist, and how do performers recover). Execution judges also could not consider the difficulty of what was being performed - only whether they perceived errors. Results from one show to another could vary quite a bit from individual judges having different levels of tolerance to error.
Several changes were made during the 1970s to start addressing these concerns, but they primarily added "analysis", more judges to give credit for what was being performed. Percussion also had a "degree of excellence" subcaption at one point. But "execution" judging still had the same limitations.
The change from teardown to buildup enabled the "execution" judge to become a "performance" judge, free to make and quantify all the subjective assessments alluded to above.
All that said, I think there was another change that was at least equally important. Prior to the 1970s, there was very little communication from judges to corps staffs. This underwent a massive transformation, with post-show critiques and recorded commentary becoming standard practice by the 1980s.
QuoteI also recognize that Zingali isn't the ONLY innovator at this time - even in drill, I know people often cite 1980 SCV as an early instance of asymmetrical drill.
I prefer to call it "free-form" drill, as asymmetry was not a new thing at all. Drills were only symmetric for a brief period in the 1970s. Prior to that, the rules required you to start on one goal line and finish on the other.
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2 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:
USBands was sold legally.
Well, I am quite sure it was not sold illegally.
Just to avoid any possible misunderstanding, when I said Blue Devils were "taking over" USBands, I understood that to be a legal, consenting arrangement that was announced publicly... not a hostile takeover.
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2 hours ago, keystone3ply said:
Are you referring the a potential new "Cadets" organization? Or "The Cadets of Memphis"? 🧐
Any subsequent corps that lawyers can link, or portray as a successor.
At this point, you probably cannot bring back Marion Cadets - they had both name and uniform similarities. The whole Erie area is probably banned from starting anything right now, despite having had corps of their own in the past. And forget anything tied to the Bonfiglio family. Surprised they are not dragging Blue Devils into it just for taking over the band circuit.
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8 hours ago, Tim K said:
I’m not a lawyer, and no I’ve never played one on TV, but I’m thinking the right lawyer could have some of the bankruptcy judge’s rulings overturned. The wrong lawyer could also have them etched in stone. For one thing, Cadets is such a generic name in drum corps, just look on DCX and you see tons of corps named Cadets, and maroon and gold uniforms are not trademarked. I could see where FHNSAB, Holy Name or Garfield attached could be too close to the original, and I could see where people associated with Cadets beginning a new corps with the same name would be problematic, but there could be room for compromise, namely if alums not associated with the corps in an official capacity wanted to restart it. The question for me is would it be the same or has too much water passed under the bridge?
Apparently, all that matters is whether lawyers will name the new corps as a defendant in a civil suit, rightly or wrongly.
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10 hours ago, ContraFart said:
I saw someone from that corp fall in Buffalo because we were in a baseball stadium and they still had the mound up
I see no record of 2002 Cavaliers competing in Buffalo.
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1 hour ago, craiga said:
That's the problem. There is no nationwide age of consent. They vary by state...some are 16 or 17, and a few southern states are, incredibly, lower. I don't know how you enforce constantly changing laws on a group that travels 10,000 miles in 60 days...
Actually, it is simple. Simpler than DFTK. Only requires the first two letters.
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2 hours ago, IllianaLancerContra said:
Raising age to 18 would mean everyone is a legal adult & able to consent thus getting rid of adult-minor ‘consensual’ (where minor is not legally allowed to consent) problems. There would still be the problem of non-consent staff & member as well as non-consent member & member assaults.
Raising age to 18 could help. Not a 100% solution, but at least a partial solution.
Following that "logic", we could just throw all victims and reporters out of all corps. Make it an operating policy to do that. Look, no abuse victims in drum corps!
I thought the point of the youth activity was to... benefit youth.
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And if my 18th birthday is in July, must I transfer from the OC corps to a WC corps that day, and learn a new show mid-season? Or more likely, I simply cannot march either OC or WC that season because no one will have me?
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10 hours ago, scheherazadesghost said:
But I do have the heart to sympathize with young people who may not understand that. I don't jump down their throats for not thinking like a fully grown adult who knows the full spectrum of options available to them.
All marchers are taking participant safety training. The goal of that should be to ensure that they all know the full spectrum of options available to them.
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7 hours ago, olddrummer34 said:
Alumni groups are ALL ADULTS. Soundsport groups DO background check staff, but the participants are all KIDS.
SoundSport has no age limit. Some SoundSport teams field "kids", while some others field "adults"... and still others are all-age.
Likewise, "alumni" groups are not always exclusively alumni, nor are they always exclusively of a particular age group.
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13 minutes ago, DCP NewsFeed said:
With a target of raising $100,000 by the close of 2023,
I admire their ambition. But that target date seems overly optimistic.
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2 hours ago, garfield said:
My screen name, almost as old as DCP, is in honor of the corps.
Careful - that might be enough to make you the next co-defendant.
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It just occurred to me that religion is not mentioned anywhere in the report. Anyone know why?
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8 hours ago, Chief Guns said:
Spot on Jeff.
Example.....1999. Finals in Madison Wisconsin.
Scouts had a PHENOMENAL show that deserved and earned every applause it got. But you can tell they was feeding off homefield advantage, and they should have. They got loudest ovation of the night. So does that mean that they should have beaten BD/SCV? Or finished in front of the Cadets or Cavies? No they shouldn't have.
And that's not me bashing the Scouts for all the Madison fans out there. Jesus Christ Superstar is one of my top ten favorite shows of all time.
A few thoughts:
1. I do not think anyone is suggesting that GE be judged purely on volume of audience reaction.
2. While home field advantage does exist in certain places, it usually does not apply to DCI finals. Finals has an audience that travels in from all over. Take an example from around that same time - 1997. There was a hometown corps in the Orlando finals and in peak form, but the corps whose crowd response measured on the Richter scale instead of mere decibels hailed from over a thousand miles away in Madison, Wisconsin.
3. Regarding your rhetorical question - should 1999 Madison have beaten top corps in GE - that is the wrong question to ask. Recall that in GE, Glassmen beat Madison. Madison did not even surpass Blue Knights in the effect caption, settling for a tie there. Seventh overall, tie for sixth in "effect". I have no particular dispute with the overall results. But the degree to which "effect" captions take performance into account (and conversely, how much "performance" captions account for design) blurs away whatever distinction we were trying to make. That is why I posted this earlier...
... because in practice, the "effect" caption reflects the overall placement order with hardly a tile even one spot out of place.
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2 hours ago, Chief Guns said:
And over the last ten years dating back to 2014, what corps won with a "golf applause", because I can't think of one.
Looking over the past ten years, GE judging resembles this:
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17 hours ago, MGCpimpOtimp said:
I'd just like to point out that a corps can still be educational if it has a base of required knowledge/skill to enter. Are we saying that Julliard and other college music schools aren't educational because they don't teach people how to read music?
I am not. But in the spirit of analogy, if the Julliard of the 1950s and 1960s was taking kids off the streets and teaching them starting from scratch and continuing to state-of-the-art expertise over 10-12 years, you could certainly point out that the present Julliard has a much narrower educational focus.
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Also worth noting that the military does not claim education is its mission.
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20 hours ago, scheherazadesghost said:
I've never been seduced by the notion of ubermensches filling the ranks for drum corps to aid in higher competitive rankings. By this I mean, only accepting the "best of the best" (again, who defines "best" and is the group that defines "the best" diverse? does it include women? does it include gender diverse peoples? people of the global majority? No? then I fundamentally can't agree to their definition of "best.") That's because I believe "best" stems from the hard emotional and intellectual labor of collaboration across difference and the unique kind of growth that comes with it.
The turn away from this being an educational activity to an almost wholly-competitive one is lamentable. The very educational process that Terri described earlier has been so incredibly valuable and influential for so many people. It was for me.
15 hours ago, scheherazadesghost said:An example of a crucial goal would be the Mission Statement: "To bring the life-changing benefits and enjoyment of marching music performing arts to more people worldwide. We do this by creating a stage for participating organizations to engage in education, competition, entertainment and the promotion of individual growth."
Education is listed as the first dang method for achieving their mission. That's probably intentional. Are their member participants aware of that? I'm not so sure anymore, given the adjustments to many of their own missions to eliminate education altogether. Concerning.
My own response to your quoted observations (aside from agreeing with these sentiments) would be only to point out that drum corps provides an opportunity for participants to learn (be "educated") about competition.
Meanwhile, I imagine that DCI and their corps believe that the current activity is "educational". To be candid, though, the "curriculum" is now analogous to masters and PhD programs, while the elementary education which the drum corps activity formerly provided is now delegated to literal K-12 schools.
With that in mind, to whatever extent scholastic marching arts experience is a prerequisite to DCI participation, any DCI corps will have their demographics dictated to them by the (mostly affluent) schools from which they recruit. Add that to the irony of DCI, a private club operating for 50+ years and still structured on its founding principle of exclusivity, suddenly showing interest about inclusivity.
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18 hours ago, jwillis35 said:
I don't think the changes were done in some mean-spirited kind of way to exclude kids, minorities, and those who were less fortunate.
Agreed.
I would go further. I am surprised no one (especially Bluecoats themselves) have not raised this observation. Compare the data they have gathered on their auditionees (1126 in-person, plus 217 virtual) with the 165 selected for membership. There are no demographic differences in who makes the cut. None. Not even socioeconomic status.
QuoteFor many who do not have good local band programs -- or none at all, and who live in communities where these opportunities are limited or do not exist -- why would they bother auditioning for a corps that is looking for talented college kids? Consider that many of these shows are complicated and filled with music that requires the sensibilities and desire to learn complicated repertoire of this nature (Classical, Romantic, Contemporary, Jazz, New Age and on and on) that one gets from a good music education.
This raises another thought.
From reading this thread, it appears that we are all in consensus regarding inclusivity. We want to know that everyone is welcome to participate, and if we could, we would make sure everyone had the opportunity. But "inclusivity" (opportunities) is different from "inclusion" (outcomes). And the outcomes, as you point out, could reflect who are interested (or disinterested) in participating in the first place.
Use of the term "inclusion" instead of "inclusivity", along with the use of terms like "underrepresented" and "underserved", create the implication that demographics of your organization should match those of the general population. Inherent in that is a grand uninvestigated presumption that people of all races, ethnicities, genders, identities, sexual orientations, socioeconomic statuses, and so on, have equal innate interest in doing what DCI drum corps do now. I would not make that assumption.
QuoteIt's nice to know that many of these organizations are taking a serious look at what their purpose should be. It's going to take money, but more local involvement in the community and more inclusion and diversity can only be seen as a positive for music/visual arts education and for drum corps.
Those last four words, though, might not pan out. It seems that modern drum corps non-profits interested in serving less affluent youth are doing that by developing separate program offerings that are not drum corps (and therefore, are not as inaccessibly expensive).
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2 hours ago, HockeyDad said:
Well, actually, Blue Stars came back immediately, first as a cadet corps, then as an A60 corps. They were not inactive for decades, or even for years.
Or even at all. Blue Stars had an on again - off again feeder corps that was on again performing in 1982. In 1983, the original parent corps stopped competing, but the feeder corps re-entered competition.
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3 hours ago, LabMaster said:
I believe there is no future for the Cadets. Saying “a comeback seems unlikely”, infers a comeback is possible. It has been mentioned and confirmed that no assets remain. None. A comeback is not possible. There is no cash left
They were in an ironically similar situation during the 1958 season, when the corps still went to Legion Nationals in Chicago, wore plain white shirts/shorts and borrowed instruments from other corps, and finished runner-up just 0.3 short of the title.
But there is this one key difference:
Quoteand if there were, it’s going to lawyers. Either theirs or the plaintiffs.
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3 hours ago, Jeff Ream said:
because in the end, as you state, the corps vote on it. so if they didn't like the system in place, they'd try to change it.
too many on here continue to espouse the view the judges dictate what is judged, and thats simply not true.
Maybe you are misreading their intent.
Did you think that is what I meant when I posted "the issue there is what judges reward"? If so, I hope my subsequent post clarified my understanding. I am well aware that judges, designers and instructors all steer the creative direction of the activity. Some of them switch between those three roles at different times or in different pageantry circuits, so they are not diametrically opposed factions to begin with. In fact, change usually comes when all three arrive at consensus.
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16 minutes ago, Jeff Ream said:
and who creates the sheets?
Not a simple question.
If I recall correctly, modifications to the sheets normally take the form of a rule change proposal. Anyone can write a rule change proposal, but the rulebook says only corps directors/staff or judges can submit a rule change proposal. Proposals are developed by a committee of judges, designers and instructors, subsequently published, then discussed and voted upon in a series of caucuses at the DCI annual meeting. Certain majorities of instructors, and then corps directors, must be in favor to approve a rule change.
So to answer your question, many people create the sheets. The two primary categories of people are corps-affiliated staff and DCI-affiliated judges. The bosses of both groups (corps directors and the DCI Judge Administrator and Artistic Director) have some potential input in the process, should they choose to use it.
Why do you ask?
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4 hours ago, FormerXyloWhiz said:
5 – Defense counsel for torts do not work on contingency. They bill hourly rates. When an organization is sued, they turn the paperwork over to their insurance carrier and per their contract of insurance, the insurance company assigns an attorney to represent them. The insurance company usually pays all costs associated with the Defense including the hourly rates and costs. The org being sued is usually not paying the legal fees themselves. They may have their insurance premiums increased, but outside a few outliers under the rules, the org’s assets are usually not directly on the hook if they have the insurance.
6 – Speculation: this particular case against CAE is an instance where the org likely is having to pay out of pocket and any assets are potentially on the hook as a result. When CAE was established it would have purchased the required liability insurance. However, I would have to imagine their insurance refused to be involved in this claim because the claim predates the insurance contract. If you get in a car accident with Allstate insurance coverage today and switch to GEICO insurance coverage next week, GEICO will not cover the subject incident from last week. It predates their contract. Whatever insurance CAE has likely denied any coverage as the scope of the claim is outside the date range of the contract. So CAE has likely had to directly pay ALL defense hourly billing for the claim against them. DCI on the other hand, actually existed as a business entity and theoretically would have had insurance at the time this incident happened, so they may have insurance coverage for the legal fees.
So if I am reading these two points correctly, what this means is that if an organization with skeletons in their closet retains their besmirched name, reputation and insurance coverage, and does not rebrand/reorganize as CAE did, they actually stand a better chance of both:
- organizational survival
- providing some compensation for victims
DrumCorpsAF Minisode – The Cadets are Dead
in DCI World Class Corps Discussions
Posted
The Madison Scouts are so old that they forgot they existed prior to 1938. Evidence of their activity in 1920 was just recently brought to light.
On the all-age side, the St. Peter Govenaires go back to the late 1920s.