mad_scotty

what? i couldn't vote for the bridgemen bass drum assassination?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7LcGnP3HY_A thats tango maureen from rent, a snip of it at least. of course, its entirely possible its something completely different. someone who had never heard of phantom of the opera might think an audio track of 89 phantom was a weird rearrangement of the new world symphony and firebird mashed up together.

nope, i was wrong, the dude it called "rent" was right, it was tango maureen from rent.

no, i know what they are talking about, i've heard it before, i really think its a piece of an old standard

find someone with an I-phone. theres a free app available that lets you sing a couple of bars of a song into the phone, and it will search a database of over 100,000 titles for one's that match. for real.

depends. is the regency still associated with both the corps and the school?

this has been going on for years. when you look at the top corps from the 70's, you could freeze frame any set in their show, and put a ruler on the screen and every form was just perfect. and you could have randomly picked any member from some of those hornlines and set a glass of water on their head and told them to march the show and they would have done it without spilling a drop. i mean, they were machines. big, powerful, slow moving machines, though. corps very rarely even approach that level of execution anymore, but the visual packages are faster, more complex, and more generally interesting to look at, and execution, both in forms and in individual body carriage, are the trade off. its a shame that modern corps members don't all get to see a little of both styles though. i mean, most drum corps fans under 25 think old school moves like company fronts and pinwheels are so simplistic they are laughable, and have no idea that a big, slow moving turning line is really the most difficult to clean move you can put on the field. it might not be as dangerous as some of the modern kaleidoscopic jazz running stuff, but its so exposed that anyone in the stadium can pick it apart and see one person 3 inches out of the form. literally. i have nothing but respect for old school corps who pulled off those old school moves so cleanly back in the day. i wouldn't want to see drill go back to the old military parade style, but i wish the judges and audiences would appreciate the occasional big, in your face, slow developing impossibly clean military move, theres a place for that in drum corps too.

i'm sure the kids do want the extra rehearsal time. they are at a stage in their lives when they are very prone to being ultra gung ho and make decisions based more on trying to prove themselves than on whats in their best interest. thats why in world war two the army used 17-19 year old soldiers as shock troops in amphibious landings, and followed up with older soldiers. thats why frat houses are full of kids drinking themselves into a coma to prove how much they can handle. thats why when i was that age i was out killing myself to run more laps, do more pushups, drink more drinks, inhale more drugs, stay up more hours, heck, i even marched drum corps!! i made a lot of decisions, some bad, some good, but i was constantly pushing myself, trying to prove myself to myself and to others. but these were decisions i made for myself as a teenager and young adult, and they are certainly not all the sorts of decisions i would make on behalf of a group of teenagers whose well being i was responsible for for a summer. there's a pretty big difference between being 19 and willing to take on exhaustion and heatstroke just to prove you're as strong and worthy as the vets standing on the line next you and being 40 and pushing a bunch of kids to do it so you can pull off a little more in your show and get ego points at the winter staff meetings. it's about maturity, and putting others needs ahead of yours, and being willing to tell someone to rein it in a little before they hurt themselves or someone else by being more enthusiastic than smart. these are lessons most people grow up and learn, unfortunately, not all of them are practiced in the insular world of drum corps.

are you claiming that the cadets have never gone over 12 hours rehearsal in a day, and that george hopkins was never the corps director and responsible for the training schedule on any of those days? i'm confused, what facts are you looking for here? because those were the two factual assertions in the paragraph you highlighted, we all know they are both completely accurate, and it is still my opinion that this is a solid basis from which to derive the hypothesis that anyone who does that must be placing scores above their members welfare, because otherwise they wouldn't flog their corps like that. i've been to shows where the cadets showed up looking gray faced they were so exhausted, and after performance if you saw them in the parking lot they looked like a bunch of zombies. star used to be like that back in the day too, look like a bunch of whipped dogs half the summer. whether you think thats excusable on the parts of their staffs or not, or you justify it by saying its about being better, not just the score, or thats what the members signed up for, so the staff has every right to do it or not is one thing. but are you seriously questioning that the cadets have a history of using pretty extreme training methods, including marathon rehearsal hours?

i think thats a valid point. i also think that if a corps goes over 12 hours in rehearsal a single time for the summer, that they weighed the marching members experience (not to mention their health and safety) on one hand vs. a chance to gain a couple of tenths in scoring on the other and chose scoring. the cadets have made that choice more than once in the past. scoring comes out on top for hopkins, and there's really no way around that one. in the current cadets management list of priorities scoring is higher than "giving the members the best possible experience", and thats just a fact.

it isn't proof, i just thought it was an ironic counterpart to the huffing and puffing my first remark elicited.

i've watched all of it a couple of times, but this time i just watched the first 5 seconds to make sure it was the right clip ;)

i should have been more specific, i meant mediocre for a perennial top6 corps like the cadets. everyone has a different level they use as a baseline every year, and for the cadets typical level of achievement this is a real off year, brass-wise, and their score reflects that, not a judgement about narration or script content or the direction of the activity.

the 08 cadets have a weak trumpet line that can't play in tune consistently, the hornline as a whole is mediocre, and the show isn't particularly clean in any area that i can see. and they are in 5th place, which is where a show with that level of difficulty and execution normally ends up. anyone who tries to read more into the cadets scoring than dirty trumpets and a sort of blah show is fooling themselves. i will say this, every corps claims its all about the experience. some mean it, and some don't. it's been fairly obvious to me since i've followed this activity that the cadets never mean that, they are in it to win it, and look at scoring as a validation of their efforts in a way very few corps do. so yeah, i bet it will just kill them if they get 5th this year, and they will all come back next year caring about winning more than anything else, just like every year. but i doubt they will all drop out and stay home, or go try out for devs or cavvies hoping for a ring. first off, most of them probably can't play in bd's hornline or march cavvies basics block. but mainly, i bet they are all happy where they are and want another crack at it next year.

Is it just me or does the BD show this year reference (of all things) their early 90's visual package? There's a clear pinball from the Tommy show (90), and they also riff on that odd looking semi-cottonbowl logo piece they threw into the 91 show (with finals in Dallas that year, no less). Those were the two most obvious ones to me, anyone else see any classic Devs visual motifs cropping up in this show?

was that youtube link to a clip from the golden child? because i want the knife wasn't a blue devils quote, or a drum corps quote, it was a funny scene from an old eddie murphy movie and everyone said it there for a little while.

i know most people hate to make generalizations, but i'm not one of them. you are a typical phantom phan, no sense of humor at all. where do they find you guys, anyways?

i know most people hate to make generalizations, but i'm not one of them. you are a typical phantom phan, no sense of humor at all. where do they find you guys, anyways?

outside of the 9 guys in green shirts i think everyone in the stadium knew that cadets won in 92, with madison a close second. i've always suspected cadets win in 93 was driven as much by a latent desire on the judges part to make up for that gaffe as anything else

jesus wept.......but crown was pretty good!

In the business world the most frequent compliments I get are my calmness under pressure, my ability to break an issue down to the most relevant points, and my problem solving skills. I learned all of these skills in a single summer under Scott Stewart with the madison scouts. It was hard getting that summer, I was a very poor starving college student, I paid my way through school, and drum corps was a financial disaster that resulted in my dropping out of school for a semester. My only regret was that I didn't somehow find a way to march the two years before, I had been offered the opportunity to join Madison each of those years and elected to work both times. I wasn't in a committed relationship at the time i marched, in fact, one of the benefits of marching was going away and not thinking about a girl i was trying to get over for a whole summer (another was running into her a week after finals and seeing how disappointed she was when she realized i came back from tour feeling strong, happy, independent and completely unconcerned with her.....lol). but anyone who was close to me and felt invested in my future saw the changes that occurred in me from drum corps and felt it was well worth every sacrifice. the thing people who haven't marched drum corps don't get is that from the outside looking in the most important thing you do is put on a uniform and march a show, and the biggest thing you do all summer is march finals night and get a score and a dvd. but from the inside, the least important thing about drum corps is the 11 minutes a night you spend performing. the real importance is the people around you, the inner strength you find to push yourself to be as good as them, and the lessons learned and friendships you build. at 35 i still talk to my seat partner 3-4 times a week, i can still run 5 miles without collapsing, and i still have a basic set of problem solving skills that seperate me from the pack and make me a go-to guy at every business i've worked at. drum corps is worth it.

my 2 cents: i like themed shows, i like it when the entire show works as a cohesive whole, the same as i appreciate when i buy a cd and it works in complete form, not just as a collection of random songs. but i hate that drum corps requires thematic material to score well. as much as i enjoy theme shows, i'm equally capable of enjoying a show where there is no connection connection between the songs: the opener is fast and in your face, the second chart is a good upbeat guard feature, the third is a rocking drum break, theres a higher faster louder concert piece and a ballad closer ending in a company front hosing the stands. i guess my problem is that my ego just isn't so fragile i need to cling to a system of judgementalism and show everyone else that i'm more snooty or egalitarian than thou. i'm really just in it for the drum corps, and if the songs are hot, and played with fervor, and i get my higher faster louder fix i'm fine. if carolina crown wants to kick it 07 style and tell a story with a front middle and end thats cool, as long as they don't lecture down on me the whole time, and if phantom wants to take me on a harmonic journey of songs whose sole link is that they all sound good together, i'm cool with that too. i just hate that dci can't seem to find a scoring system that can appreciate both styles of design as equally valid and worthy. because in the end, the hypercomplicated storylines aren't about design, they are about coming up with a script to sell judges in recaps----"no, it wasn't that our show is lame or we didn't execute properly, you just missed the intellectual intent behind it, therefore you should score us higher tomorrow, wink wink"----give me a break!!

obviously if they disagree with a guy who is capable of cutting and pasting a carefully chosen image of a picasso they must be neanderthals, right?

80 devs, mmmmmm....i have it on my myspace page, gotta love the sop work in the closer!