ordsw24

A. Spaeth's work in BOA is amazing. 2001 PCEP is no doubt one of the best shows in BOA ever.

It's mostly staging now with BD.

Guard is PR's strongest caption this year imo, at least right now. They do a LOT of work, and their weapon tosses are both more numerous and more difficult than in the majority of years' past. Also, their weapon section is significantly larger than in years' past (= more difficulty). If PR has any problems this year, the guard is not one of them. Also, their movement book is great this year... The all-movement "Rockord files" (old-school, fast-paced ripple effect using flags and rifle tosses down a vertical straight line -- usually 3 across -- that showed up in a lot of Regiment shows in various combinations in the late 70s & early 80s) is pretty KICK A**. One criticism I have from years' past is that PR's guard often added movement for movement's sake alone. It was not particularly effective or all that difficult...more like window dressing. This year, they have some great movement statements that are purposeful and tend to involve a great deal of training/ technique. I don't know names, but I remember reading a guard instructor had been promoted to guard caption head this season. She (I belive it was a she) is doing a wonderful job imo.....the guard is clearly one of the corps' strongest assets this year.

So I just watched PR twice...once last night before bed and again this morning. The show grew on me a lot by the second reading. I really do not get what all the fuss and criticism in this thread is about. The show is just fine and will do respectably well in August. The guard has a very meaty book and when cleaned up, that caption will really shine. They are doing some really great things....impactful rifle work/ tosses and the all-movement "Rockord files" section is amazing. The hornline sounds great. The music/ arrangement is very red-meat Phantom imo.... and you have to give credit for no narration and ixnay on an over-reliance on electronics. The drill will improve over time as things are added/ cleaned up. Honestly, reading some of the posts on here, I thought the show would not be good at all. It is quite good and overwhelmingly, the many comments attached to the video I watched are very positive and encouraging. Maybe these commenters are naive; maybe some posters on here are too jaded, maybe it's a combination. Either way, Phantom won't win this year, but they will represent very well and finish in the top 7. The sky is not falling.

Actually, as drum corps evolves and changes (not necessarily arguing for the better, but it is constantly evolving), it makes sense that every aspect of the visual package is analyzed. There have been many WGI shows where having rifles made no sense -- really made no sense, whether it was due to the show's theme and/ or the show's historical period/ place. I know there have been glaring examples of this in the past. Yes, the rifle could be seen as a guard object unto itself, devoid of its associations as a weapon, and this is what most audience members have done with shows where rifles made no sense -- just ignored the obvious and sometimes comical anachronism and enjoyed the show anyway. But why not take a look at whether it makes sense to have rifles/ sabres considering a show's theme? Drum corps & WGI have become more and more distanced from their military roots over the years. Some would argue too much so, but I for one would not want to go back to the "good old days" of required color units, and strict M&M guidelines that basically required military style marching, etc. Also, if drum corps is to appeal more to a world-wide audience and grow, doing what the Cadets are doing -- using equipment that can be manipulated similar to rifle/ sabres without being/ appearing as rifles/ sabres might not be a bad thing at all. Many people outside of drum corps from other parts of the world that do not have a gun culture like we do here would be quite perplexed, even turned off, by seeing rifles and sabres used (celebrated) in a drum corps show. That's not being PC, that's just reality. The US gun culture is actually quite an anomaly when compared to the rest of the world.

I really like your post, and I totally agree with you about BD's production this season. I disagree, though, that a show should not take more than one viewing to (fully) appreciate. I have found in the past that certain shows grow on me considerably with each viewing, and it's always exciting to find something I never noticed before despite multiple viewings of a show. In fact, I actually believe that a truly great show needs to be viewed in multiple viewings from multiple angles in order to be appreciated, but that's just me. Coming from a WGI perspective, I really welcomed the advent of multi-focused shows, which if I am not mistaken were at least in part created/ perfected by current and/ or past BD designers. With multi-focused shows, you very literally either have to let your eyes relax and get fuzzy to attempt to take it all in, or you have to choose to focus on one element going on among several happening at any given moment and zero in on that. To a point, this has always been the case in DCI -- but it has been more about choices you make, such as whether to focus in on the percussion, the color guard, a soloist dancer, or the entire field. Generally speaking, you can view the show's entire package and your brain feels like it is taking it all in. But about 20 years ago in WGI, a few shows really started to explore the multi-focus avenue, where at times, there were several elements going at any given moment actively competing for your attention. Your brain simply could not take it all in as a cohesive whole, and to try to do so became almost disconcerting. Designers have many clever ways to direct one's eye around a show, guiding our attention from one element to the next. In traditional design, various elements complement each other and do not compete for your attention (if they did, it was not by intention). There might be a lot going on, and the design might be complex and very creative and effective, but it is clear to the viewer what is being emphasized. In contrast, with multiple-focused shows (not my term btw, WGI used it to describe these shows when they were introduced) there are sections in which there are no clues as to what the designer wants you to watch -- you literally have to choose between competing elements that are (if well designed, anyway) discrete and equally arresting, yet still tied to the overall concept of the show. I only saw BD's show once this year, but I would not be surprised at all if the designer(s) of BD 2013 did not also design some of those early WGI shows so well known for being multi-focused (Bishop Kearney most clearly comes to mind). I absolutely love this type of writing/ designing. When done well, it can be very engaging, exciting, and cerebral. The various layers and elements are just more chock-full of goodies to be uncovered and explored with each successive viewing. This type of design also can demand more of the viewer, something I believe gets a bit too much resistance in the pageantry arts sometimes.

"New Morning for the World: Daybreak of Freedom" by Joseph Schwantner. I would ditch the narration (or scale it back massively) and possible ditch the entire theme (black civil rights). The music could work thematically in any number of ways. I particularly like how percussive and brass-focused this piece is. There are entire sections (some of the slow sections) that could be cut (original score is about 24 min.) making editing/ rescoring the piece for drum corps pretty straightforward. The ending is really quiet, eerie, and haunting. This composition would definitely stand out on the drum corps field and be challenging to produce, but imo could be re-tooled into a really interesting and dynamic drum corps show.

Have to believe someone else brought this up (don't have time to read through every response..but glanced through a lot of them) but 1989 Cadets of Bergen County used the Tricolor in their Les Miz production. I remember there was a pretty bold yellow stripe running along the edge of the flag out of respect for the official French flag I assume. That yellow stripe made if fairly obvious it was not the official French flag, but it was still visually very much the French flag for the purpose of the show, if that makes sense.

Cadets early 1990s (as others have already mentioned) gets my vote. Great design & extremely high level of performance. Also, PR's 1993 guard book sticks out as exceptional. I believe this book struck the perfect balance between movement and equipment. I'm a huge fan of dance/ modern dance, but sometimes, on the drum corps field, too much dance can seem like busy work and superfluous, and/ or can't be fully appreciated. Also, this guard complemented the music and show so well. Some of the guard work received really big audience responses not just for the work itself, but also because it was so well coordinated with the overall show design and music. As for Suncoast Sound...I can see what posters are saying about them, but wasn't this more of an overall design effort than necessarily innovation in the guard caption? I don't particularly recall the guard being that revolutionary... what sticks out more is the soloist and the entire show design/ construction being more "winter guard" like.

Wasn't there, but I don't know what's more sad in that video..the reaction to the second place score, or the half empty stands for retreat. Was attendance down this year? Boxingfred, good post above, but you forgot about the mini reign of Star of Indiana. Their money really scared everyone.

I'm not claiming DCI judging is inept across the board and I agree that no judging system will ever be perfect. The goal should be continuous improvement. However, I am stating there are not insignificant deviations from the "norm" -- i.e., there is (at least one) judge who is consistently scoring a corps significantly lower than other judges in whatever caption he is judging -- in comparison to 2 nights before and 2 nights after his adjudication. Or, in other words, several judges are scoring said corps higher in these captions, thereby creating a "norm" and making the lower score/ placement from the judge in question a deviation from this norm. It's been a little while since I've had stats, but what I'm describing is pretty much the basic definition of a deviation, and this is data that presumably could be graphed and identified with a basic software program/ Excel (with some work). There is the case to be made that this one judge has it right, and the other judges are going on name recognition of the corps or designer, or are misinterpreting the score sheets, etc. Nevertheless, there does exist a deviation that perhaps warrants closer inspection because both parties cannot be "correct" in absolute terms as the score sheets are written. In any case, if I were the director of the corps in question, I would not want to see his name anywhere on the finals line-up because they can expect a hit to their score. All that said, I really appreciate crest99's response... scoring fluctuations do make for a more exciting finals week. There is no denying this.

Sorry if this has been asked/ clarified on here before. We all know "bias" exists to a point....each judge inevitably brings his or her own set of expectations, knowledge, perspective, interpretation of the sheets, etc. to the field. Totally get that. I'm just wondering if DCI has any kind of tracking system and remediation in place for considerable fluctuations in scores from one judge to another, and in particular, if one judge differs from the general consensus of the rest of the judging panel in a particular caption on subsequent/ previous contests, placing them 1 or 2 spots lower. Corps can have an off night, but the "content" caption should not fluctuate very much in one day, right? And I don't mean fluctuations in raw numbers, but in placement/ relational terms. It's pretty easy to track these types of variations once you notice them (I'm a bit of a recap breakdown geek). There is one judge who is scoring one corps a lot lower than other judges in whichever caption he is judging -- and I'm not just talking a few tenths -- it's sometimes literally a point and half or more difference in just that one caption from one night to the next compared to another corps right next door in placement (scoring said corps lower and the other corps higher = 1.5 or more net difference). This judge may be perfectly justified in scoring the corps in question so low compared to other judges, but 1.5 in one caption is a huge difference from one night to the next, (again, comparatively speaking in relation to the corps it has been placing next to all season) so this discrepancy matters and possibly warrants a closer look imo. It would seem a computer software program could track anomalies such as this. Any ideas if such discrepancies are tracked, and how DCI handles them? Edit: I'm obviously not going to name the judge or corps in question (there may be and probably is more than just this one example), but one judge/ one corps across all captions he's judged stood out in particular to me as being lower than his judging peers.

I mean this in the nicest and most complimentary way, but Crown 2013 reminds of a really good BOA show, especially with all of the body work (which BOA has tended to adopt more fervently in the past 5-10 years than DCI) and especially the running dual arrangement, which many BOA shows have done. The Freebird/ Firebird show especially comes to mind, but there have been many others. Not saying DCI shows have not done this type of arrangement before, because many shows have, but it's definitely more common and more pronounced in BOA. Also, Crown percussion this year definitely seems more tamped down (much like a BOA show), and the electronics and narration, well, that just screams BOA. Again, I'm not criticizing Crown, I'm just surprised they are not getting more flack for what I've mentioned above. Based on many posts on here, I expected a much more "red meat" DCI show. It's really anything but imo.

Can't wait for Thursday.

I have not seen Crown's show yet, but just based on the uniforms, they are definitely looking very BD-ish. Very, very BD.