Derek Smith

Sorry this is unrelated, but I really agree. I think the best way to make the fan base grow and the activity not go by the wayside is for the fans to continue to do their best to bring out new people to see an actual show -- band students especially. On topic, the show announcement seems pretty interesting... but without any information I'd want to see about repertoire.

Usually Crown doesn't do a show announcement or anything like that until very late in the game. This year they might be catering to the people who always give them hell for not doing a show announcement until later on, eh?

Very good idea, thanks for the link. I'm extremely disappointed with the video quality of this year's production. Even without the extras, it's painfully clear they're cramming too much crap on too little disc space.

As a drum guy, I personally hyped hearing the drum judge's tape on the DVD the entire season. It's a cool thing to listen to after never getting to hear a tape throughout the summer, and just a bit of extra validation for the hard work put in throughout the season. From my perspective, it's certainly disappointing to lose the extra video tracks (camera angles) and audio tracks (judges, designers), and I'll definitely be writing somebody a letter. Having the extra space taken up by the widescreen aspect would not affect their ability to throw the judge's audio tracks on there (the audio files being very small in comparison) -- they probably just didn't want to go to the effort to mix the judge tape audio with the corps production audio like they did last year (which was at times awkward, and also completely unnecessary). I mean, at the bare minimum, just throw an .mp3 onto the DVD's that people can listen to on a computer or through some easter egg on the DVD menu -- that would require minuscule disc space and effort. The widescreen aspect wouldn't have been as much of a problem either if they had stuck with the 4-disc format they've been using the past few years, as well. Less content for the same price is bogus. This year's DVD set does a disservice to the members of the percussion and color guard sections in the top 6 corps, but of course I knew these features were dropped and still bought the thing because my team is on the disc. tl;dr amirite... /rant end

The Shure SM57 is standard. The thing is indestructible.

Word on the street (from a roommate in the band) is that the Clemson band had a lot of awesome stuff planned and in the work for this that ESPN turned down (brief story line with Lee Corso shrinking Howard's Rock and stealing it, the tiger wearing the Indiana Jones gear chasing after Corso, etc.) -- an awesome idea that would've been cool. They shot the scenes with some of the band members and Lee Corso at the College Gameday set during the Clemson/Alabama game (unfortunately, the team came out and flopped that weekend). Anyways, ESPN said that the band couldn't march any drill, and that they couldn't use any of the story-line that they had come up with. I mean, if ESPN wants to show marching bands, the marching bands should be marching, right? Whatever though, I'm just passing along the conversation with my buddy on the line there. EDIT: Also, all of the bands were asked to do their own arrangements of the tune and to put together something that showed their unique school spirit.