LoveKathyG

It is absolutely fine not to clap. This must be a personal choice. I have much more of a problem with someone telling me that I am rude if I choose to not clap than I do with someone not clapping. How dare you dictate what I do? Arrogant beyond belief. That said, I CHOOSE to clap for every corps to acknowledge the marchers' efforts.

Honestly, some things can't be explained. Either you get it or you don't. Marching might not be for you. It was transformative for me even though I do nothing that has anything to do with music in my post-DC life. I'd say that 90% of the people I know who marched chalk DC up to one of the most influencial experiences in their youth.

Oh... I'm going to get spanked for this, but... ...if all 30k of us at finals were black, gay, disabled, or all three. Or very, very rich. I sincerely don't mean any disrespect to black, gay or disabled people. The truth is that Hillary has a long, storied record of going where she can "feel the pain" of the disenfranchized...or clean up with the elite. She doesn't really have time for the 'tweeners.

All he's tried to do is make drumcorps better. LEAVE GEORGE ALONE! If only Chris Crocker had been around a month ago. The timing would have been delicious.

My take... If you want to be Mozart and thumb your nose at the establishment, great... In all sincerety, bully for you. But be prepared to die in a pauper's grave...or to be booed in Pasadena. It might not be right or fair to die poor or to suffer the angst of thousands of fans at the Rose Bowl, but you made choices that took you to where you are. If you want a different outcome, make different choices. As much as I miss Star, I respect the heck out of the decision they made to leave the activity. Their vision wasn't aligning with DCI's and fans' visions, and they made a different choice that worked out very well for them...and ultimately helped the activity too.

The parallel you made between movie making and DC is a good one, but not for the reasons you state. Film making at its core is collaborative art. It's communal. It's about community. When directors, producers, writers, studios, and others forget that, films flop. Film requires a fine balance between commerciality and art. Some stories, no matter how much they are loved by the writer, don't need to be told. Others, Mr. Shymalan, belong solely to the oral tradition. Film makers get in trouble when they get into "this film must be made because I have a vision" mode. DC is also a communal, collaborative art form. It's also about community. Directors and designers who take the attitude of "we just do things differently" neglect, alienate and hold hostage other segments of the community, including their own marching members. I cannot believe that every member of the Cadets last summer was thrilled with the rollercoaster that their director took them on. I love controversy in art when the artist shoulders the impact of the response to the criticism him or herself. That's not the way things do or can work in DC, though.

Les Eclipse - They folded in '86, but wow what a great corps. Loved their gendarme uniforms. I miss really big Canadian corps.

Funny you should mention this... I brought some newbies to finals this year, and for the first time in years I saw DC through fresh eyes. I kind of anticipated that they might find the rifles odd..but the just accepted it pretty unquestioningly as one of the things that makes DC unique. I actually distinctly recall the first time I saw a drum corps show. I was 13, and as much as the rifles did seem kind of like a weird piece of equipment, I was transfixed. I just thought it was the coolest thing even, especially all the tricks that were done with them. I have no problem with nixing the rifles, since I'm sure designers would come up with something fun. But they don't bother me either.

Overrated - Cadets by a ridiculously long shot. Yes they were technically impressive, but show design was abysmal. I cringed for the kids for 11 1/2 straight minutes. Theme was schlocky. Narration was badly written and badly performed. Content was preachy and trite. I still can't believe their staff had the huevos to put that tripe on the field. Underrated - Santa Clara. That show was understated, classy, simple yet sophisticated, artistically clean, and the ballad was stunningly beautiful. You have to be able to appreciate subtlety to love this show, but for those of us who can it is quite a treasure.

LOL! I freaking love Japan. That's so cute. At the same time, let me say that the moment I see drum corps with Casio keyboards on harnesses, I'm through. LOL (Unless of course, it's accompanied by narration, and then it's all good. heh heh)

VK winterguard did a blindfolded show in '84 and/or '85. Their blindfolds were pretty sheer, so their vision wasn't completely blocked. It was a very cool effect, nontheless.

LOL No, it was just me crazy bored with about 300 days on my hands before the next season starts. Thank god football starts soon or y'all would be subjected to many more of these inane posts.

The conversations about west coast’s limited exposure to drum got me thinking... What would happen if California decided to pull out of DCI? How about the whole western part of the US? California was represented by four Div I and eight Div II and III corps this year, which is slightly but not terribly higher than previous years. Eight of the 22 Div I corps...over a third of Div I...are from states west of the Rockies. Division II/III is even more dramatic with over 1/3 of the corps coming from CA and almost 1/2 coming from western states. At first I thought this had to be an anomaly since finals were in CA, but the numbers aren't substantially different in Boston '06. Of course, the first question that comes to mind is, How fair is it that a region that is a region that is so largely represented in numbers of corps gets finals so infrequently and won't be even close to a drivable distance for the next decade. But that's not the purpose of my post. I assume that western states directors were on-board with the Indy thing, and the issue of the infrequence of west coast finals has been debated here enough. The question I started to ponder today was sparked by a passing comment made by someone else in a buried post... * Could DCI survive if the western states corps pulled out? Could it survive if California only pulled out? * More importantly, would creating a CA and western states corps alliance that kept those corps touring exclusively in the west be good for those organizations? Would they be able to concentrate on growing the activity in the west? Would fan interest and participation actually increase? Would it be financially advantageous for these corps? Frankly, if I were a director on the west coast with an eye on innovation, a penchant for hair-brained ideas, and an interest in the expansion of the activity, I'd be proposing such a thing. I'd probably propose a true national finals every four years but push for more localized western states approach as the standard. There is so much talent, so much money and so many kids in the west. If you look at population patterns, percentage of high schoolers and college aged people vs. the general population is considerably higher in the west than in the Midwest and east. The interest in and proliferation of youth programs is no more acute than in the west as evidenced by membership in civic, faith-based and non-profit youth programs increasing by 162% in California over the last five years. However, just as more and more youth are choosing to stay close to home for college, I can imagine that drum corps may become more attractive if it became a weekend activity. Just anecdotally speaking, I can attest to the fact that the seven teenagers I took to finals this year expressed a real interest in doing drum corps if they just didn't have to spend their entire summer sleeping on gym floors. Yes, western states fans would miss seeing the occasional corps from other regions and not being able to compete with corps from other regions would definitely take some of the fun out of competition for the members. You have to wonder, though, how long it would take before the western states were so strong that the absence of other regions wouldn't have much impact. I think this idea bears out in other institutions that depend on membership, recruitment and involvement. There are a lot of instances of church communities that become way too geographically spread-out, and membership begins to stagnate or suffer. In a number of cases, splitting the church and starting more localized congregations has been really successful. On the flip side, I think fracturing DCI would seriously hurt Midwest and east corps drum corps. My uneducated observations lead me to believe that especially Midwest corps have many more factors in their favor. Taking away the presence of popular corps from the west could do nothing but harm these regions. I know it’ll never happen…but the idea is kind of interesting to me. While DCI has made some great marketing strides, we’re not seeing a huge increase in participation. Maybe it’s time to look at something radically different.

By far, my fav was Bloo's silent drill. I looked forward to it every night.

Phantom Crown Blue Devils SCV Cavs

The biggest reason I WOULD want to march Cadets: Because they have put out some really entertaining shows. The biggest reason I WOULD NOT want to march Cadets: Because I find the whole identity of "We do things differently" to be haughty and distasteful.

And if by "a fan" you mean a kick often used by the Rockettes, then yes...no...and maybe. :P

This was my perception too. The crowd was extremely polite with their applause, if only to prove that we are not, as a community, as evil as all the Thursday night booing might suggest. Where I was sitting, the post-performance critique was, "So much talent, really solid performance. 'eh' show." Even the Cadets alum sitting around me said they hoped Hopkins would let go of this narration "bone" after this season.

Heh heh You might have well have asked, 'What corps are you affiliated with?" The answers would have been the same. :P

Ah! You you illustrate the point I've been making all season. Cadets narration is insulting exactly BECAUSE it is so literal. EVERYONE "gets" Cadets show on first viewing. What's not to get? There's no subtlty. There's no nuance. Even the contemplative part about choices is hit-you-over-the-head preachy. Can you imagine a painting on which the artist literally paints the words "This red streak is here because I am angry at my mother?" Who would consider that interesting or innovative? Kind of the same thing with Cadets, in my opinion. I'm a writer by trade. (Hard to believe with all the grammatical and spelling errors I make, right?) One of the first things you learn in any kind of creative writing is that using a narrative voice is a cheap fix to a story that can be better strengthened by finding ways to weave descriptions and story arch in more inventive ways. Of course, there are exceptions. Some authors use narration brilliantly - Faulkner, for example. In general, though, it's used as a crutch. Narration, for Cadets, is a crutch. It's even better known in screen writing that if you can't make a script work or if you discovered you've missed necessary shots when you're in post-production, one fix is to add narration. But that's a LAST resort. There's always a lot of tittering in the Hollywood community when a movie's shoot has wrapped and major actors have to come back in later to add narration because that's the only way the production team could get the movie to work. That's the way Cadets show comes off. For me, the only way to get through the Cadets show is to imagine it as "Young Person's Guide - Part II." As a kid, I loved YPGttO. If I imagine Cadets show as a break in the event that illustrates how a drum corps and dc show is developed, it's all good. But just as I don't want a glossery of terms, no matter how well written, or a forward or prologue to win a Pulitzer, neither do I want Cadets show to win a chapionship. Art is at its best when it feels like you've discovered a special secret between the artist and you - when you open some mystical conduit of understanding, when you think about things differently, when you see things in ways you hadn't before or maybe even in ways they didn't previously exist. Cadets show and use of narration blocks me from having this opportunity. It's just not interesting, the show isn't inventive, and worst of all, it prohibits me from being inventive with them.

By "on the ground," he was talking about some falls the Cavs had. He wasn't sincere in his compliment of the Cavs visual score. His subtext was, How could Cavs have won visual when they had so many falls. The guy who called him out on his 'tude was saying, "Your corps is in enough trouble with a critical mass of fans. Let sleeping dogs lie."

A very naive statement. Winning championships does not make one a good director. Very telling you think it does.

Really, what does it matter? We love the controversy. We always have.

So, I'm kind of done... I was at Stanford last weekend, and I gotta say it... In a lot of cases, too many cases, drum corps doesn't look much like drum corps any more. And if you're cool with that, then good...great...congrats. In all sincerity, I'm glad you're enjoying it. For me, I'm kind of checked out. I left telling my friends and family that I'm tired of fighting it. I kind of don't care that much any more. Gibbskins or Hobbs or whoever you are...you win. Bring on the amplification. Bring on the electronics. Bring on the multilayered complexity and cerebral aestetics of a Supel Bowl half time show with thousands of aerobic instructors doing a really peppy routine as Melissa Ethridge belts out "Let's Get Physical" on a 100 foot phallus at the 50 yard line. Hell, let's make the rules changes this fall. Celeb musicians of any age need to be able to perform in drum corps, provided, of course, that they have at least one platenum record or People's Choice Award. I think Kajagoogoo really has something to contribute to drum corps. Talk about expanding drum corps' appeal, what high schooler wouldn't want to join their local drum corps if they had the opportunity to march alongside Peaches and Herb? (And as a quick aside, what are the chances Peaches and Herb are actually Ashford and Simpson redressed?) Come to think of it, maybe we better approve Patsy Award winners too. It probably isn't fair, after all, to exclude animal performers. I taught my dog to say, "I love you." With the pathos in that dog's voice...hell, he'd be a fantastic narrator. Bottom line, I'm not gonna get all crazy claiming that I'm done with drum corps. I'll be back next season and the season after that, if only beause there are too many people I love who I don't get to see any time other than drum corps shows. But this stuff that takes us further and further away from what can reasonably be called drum corps (i.e narration, amplification, electronics, zippered pants, horseless carriages...just kidding on those last two...one must keep one's sense of humor in these trying times) really does bum me out. Thanks for listening. I feel better now.

This story about Blast's long-term gig at Disney's California Adventure in the early 2000's appeared this week on one of the Disney fan sites... http://www.yesterland.com/blast.html