JulesBry

I'd just like to point out that as far as I'm concerned, up/down votes are meaningless on the thread I started. That's why I added the poll. If people want to make a statement one way or the other, that's the place to make it.

You know, this is a great suggestion. In some ways, it's one I've practiced for a long time as best I could. I've had a tradition of buying one or two t-shirts a year. One for the corps that surprised me (in a good way) the most, and one for my favorite corps in general (when I could afford it). As a result, I have quite a collection of t's dating back to Bluecoats '98 (a huge surprise that remains one of my favorite shows of all times) and as recently as Jubal 2011. I don't have a ton of money to give, and just getting to a show is about all I can afford. Most of the t's I bought were in the discount bin (except for a few that I just HAD to have). If I lived close to a corps I liked, I would volunteer to help, but the closest one to me is a OC corps about 4 hours away. Not exactly the kind of thing you can do for a few hours after work. However, the Cavies' brass director just took the UK Marching Band position. Maybe I'll find a way to bend his ear a bit. :-) That being said, for those who can give/pay more, I think your suggestion would be excellent. For me, my voice/keyboard is about all I can use with any effectiveness. If I'm alone, I'll be alone and find something else to do. If not, well, hopefully DCI will listen to us before it's too late.

This is all well and good until your son-in-law tries to turn your daughter into a cyborg. All kidding aside, I like the analogy. And perhaps some separation will do me good. If and when I come back, I'll be sure to do it with as much of a fresh perspective as possible. In the meantime, have fun holding down the fort (forte?) for me. And have a grand time at the wedding!

You're exactly right. They have no obligation at all. But if they want to remain financially viable, they can't afford to lose a certain number of paying customers. If DCI wants to ignore every objection, that is certainly their right. And they may end up being fine (proving that those of us who care enough to write multi-paragraph diatribes are a much tinier minority than I currently think we are). More power to them if that's the case. But what's the harm in declaring the reasons behind a person's choice rather than simply disappearing with no explanation? Are honesty and free speech really so offensive?

Thank you for a well-written and heartfelt letter. I appreciate your sentiments, and though I disagree with you on several points, you have done DCP a service by explaining your feelings and your imminent exit. Unfortunately, we can now both wait for others to call you overly dramatic because you chose to explain your action rather than quietly exiting the board. Nevertheless, I wish you well and hope to have future discussions with you somewhere, somehow.

I'm sorry. Did I offend you by being honest? I didn't mean to hurt your feelings. I don't like people who run out of arguments and make up for it by calling people names, so I'm sure the feeling is mutual. I said I was taking some time off from DCI, and I am a man of my word. I'll be out of the activity next summer, and perhaps longer (until I notice that I'm missing it). In the meantime, I'm sticking around here just long enough to clarify what I've said, defend personal attacks from people like you, and see how the poll develops. As soon as this thread dies down, I'll be gone from DCP as well. And you're welcome to throw a party when that day comes. Finally, let me address the "attention" issue. I completely wrote this letter to get some attention. Why? Because I care about DCI and (more importantly) drum corps. I fear that it is in decline and if it isn't stopped, we will lose a beautiful and uniquely American art form in the coming years. I certainly could have bowed out silently (along with another 40 DCP poll takers who agree with me) and DCI wouldn't have noticed...this year. But over the next few years, if sales were to wane and things got worse, they'd be wondering what happened. By standing up and expressing my opinion, at least I've sounded a warning--whether or not DCI chooses to investigate further is entirely up to them. I sincerely hope others who agree will do the same. Send letters to DCI. Send them to corps you used to love and no longer do. Speak up. Because if we don't, we'll lose a very precious gift. And if you only watch DCI for the synths, electronics, dancing, and obscure themes, then by all means write DCI expressing your opinion, too. I've always said that if I'm the only person who feels this way, or if I'm in an extreme minority, I'll leave and never look back. I don't want to kill the fun for huge numbers of people. In fact, my motives are exactly the opposite of that. But I do want some empirical evidence either way.

Because we love drum corps and we don't want it to disappear. If we are more than the minuscule minority you think us to be, and DCI continues to ignore us, the activity won't have the finances to continue. If my rant encourages others who are planning to leave quietly to say something, and perhaps causes DCI to make some changes so that the activity sticks around for a few more years, isn't that a good thing? If nothing else, shouldn't we find out exactly how big or small the dissenting group is before writing them off as crybabies? I'll point you to MikeD's post about Cadets '05 and mine about some other controversial/non-controversial champions. Please know your history before you insult people with sarcasm. Great. Go to a WGI competition and enjoy all you want. In fact, now you can go to WGI, BOA, and DCI to get a triple helping of what you like. I like brass, percussion, and drill. Where do I go to get that without a side of WGI? DCA. Except that the closest competition is a couple of days' drive away. I do. In fact, I was among the minority who really liked SCV's 2011 show. And I'm a huge fan of the Cavies' innovations of 2000-2005. I also loved Crossmen '96 opening the show with nothing but flags and drums. Innovation can be good, but it isn't necessarily good. What I see from DCI today is that anything new or different is automatically good. I just don't think that's an ideal system of judging, and it's turned me off to the organization as a whole.

Except that it's more than 2. If you check the poll on my open letter, you'll see that it's more than 40 out of the 250 who have responded. That's a pretty high percentage. And there are another 90 or so who aren't happy with the direction of DCI, but are sticking around in hopes of things changing. If they don't, who knows how many of those people will be bolting. Of course, even 130 people wouldn't be noticed by DCI, but if (and I do say IF) that is representative of the community at large, can you see that DCI could have a bigger problem on its hands? And the truth is, getting rid of electronics would fix a lot of things. I don't think you or the lady from Kansas would even notice their departure. And if DCI created sheets that allowed judges to be completely honest about what they like and don't like, so that placements changed a bit from night to night, I think you'd see a lot of the other people stick around and come back. I'm not asking for a wholesale restructuring of the activity. I'm just asking DCI to do some research and find out if the preliminary findings from my focus group are at all representative of their fan base at large. If it is, they had better make some changes, or the two of you won't come close to making up for the 130 of us.

MikeD already pointed out the 2005 controversy. (And I was livid with the Cadets that year--they used to be one of my favorite corps, but I absolutely hated their shows from 2005-2007. So much so that I now like them with an asterisk because I'm afraid they might try to do something like that again, and I don't want people to think I approve of that style of show.) I would also ask if there were similarly angry reactions with Blue Devils won with Phenomenon of Cool in 2003. I don't remember this kind of response, but I wasn't on DCP or anything like it at that time. There were lots of people angry with Cavies early in the 2000s. Were they all Cavies-haters? I doubt it. This, "if you don't like the BD show, you are an awful person because you hate the kids and everything they do" kind of BS is ridiculous. I just don't like the show, and haven't liked the last few they've done. I think DCI isn't bold enough to call a spade a spade, and it bothers me that the judges are in lockstep on what is and is not good art. Plus, I like brass and percussion more than synths and amplified voices, and I don't think I'm alone. If I am, I'll leave permanently (rather than my planned temporary hiatus to see if my mind changes) and no one will notice. This really isn't any more complicated than that. Please don't put motivations in people's mouths.

That's a great way to end DCI. No audiences will make it awfully hard to fund tours. So how many youth programs do you donate to (and ones in which any of your children are directly involved do not count)? Any that bore you to tears on a regular basis? If DCI were to become completely boring to you tomorrow (perhaps it immediately reverted to 1950's drum corps over night), would you continue to support it exactly as you do today? Or would you, say, write letters and try to get others involved in making the situation better?

Except when they don't. When's the last time the judges decided that an "innovative" show didn't work? I'd love to know. According to DCI, if it's never been done before, it's automatically perfection. Would you expect every professional art critic to like every "innovative" work ever hung in said gallery? That seems to be the case with DCI judges. To me, that doesn't pass the smell test. I'm not saying that they're being bought off or anything, but I am loudly proclaiming that there is no diversity among DCI judges. That may be because the system doesn't allow them to express professional opinions, and if that's true, it's a shame. But in any case, DCI is NOTHING like the world of visual art (or even the larger body of music) because it is judged in such a way as to reward "innovation" regardless of the quality of said innovations.

Do you honestly think there was ANY chance that judges would give BD anything less than a high score for anything they put on the field? Can you imagine them receiving 2/10 even at their first show? It had the chance of exploding in their faces from a crowd perspective (and in a lot of ways, I think it did), but BD (along with many of the G8) could field a show based on dog excrement and the judges would love it.

I'm a step ahead of you (but only one). I emailed the letter to DCI the same day I posted it here and on Facebook. I'm not holding my breath for a response, but I'll be sure to let you know if I do.

One other thought. Let's take a guess that there are 50,000 DCI fans in the US. I think that's pretty low/conservative, but we're going to make that guess for now. And let's say that my poll is skewed toward people who are old and unhappy about the direction things are going. Instead of 15% who are leaving and 35% who are unhappy, it's actually 10% and 20%. That means DCI will be losing 5,000 fans this year, and could lose 10,000 more in the next few years. How many MMs are aging out this year and will conceivably become "new fans"? How many of their parents and friends will stick around for the long term? Will they be able/willing to contribute financially as those who are leaving have been able to do? Even if my poll is so skewed, that 5% are leaving and 10% are unhappy, can DCI replace 7,500 fans in the next few years? And if there are more fans (which I think is most likely), those percentages equal even more fans leaving and unhappy. I'm trying to give DCI the benefit of the doubt, but if there is ANY accuracy in the poll at the top of this thread, DCI can't ignore such sentiments and survive. These are the kinds of questions that need to be discussed at the highest levels of DCI, and the kind of questions that cannot be ignored.

I eliminated one of the answers, and I sincerely hope those who chose that answer will now choose a different one. I wish I had never included that answer, but I just didn't think it through well enough from the start. Sorry for that. For the sake of accuracy in figuring future percentages, there were approximately 40 votes for "Not really, things have changed, but I don't think they're as bad as he says" when that answer was removed.

I'm glad you know more about my thoughts and motivation than I do. Thanks for telling me what I meant to say, because I really had no idea what I meant when I wrote my letter. For future reference, you might try taking what people write at face value. Unless, of course, they give you good and clear reasons not to (like showing up around here next summer).

Cavies 2011--the entire intro was pre-recorded? Really? That's drum corps? Blue Knights 2011--the entire intro was pre-recorded? Really? That's drum corps? Crown 2011--a show based around featuring a synthesizer Glassmen 2012--a show based around featuring a synthesizer Cavies 2012--a show with significant synth features that could have been played by horn lines (that bass line was even more atrocious because the tubas weren't playing anything at the time) Cadets 2012--(I think they eventually took it out, but) wrecking a beautiful solo with a horrible synth patch echo Just to name a few, while leaving out all BD references.

Probably not, but it's also not what sent me away. I thought Boston's use of lighting under the veil in the Les Mis show last year was absolutely breathtaking. One of my favorite moments of the year. But you know what, that moment also featured a brilliant soloist with gorgeous accompaniment. Had it been a synth (either on the melody or accompaniment), I don't think I would have even noticed the lighting effect.

For the record, "she" is a "he". :-)

You know, and I probably should have said this earlier and/or in my thread, but if I close my eyes, I kinda enjoy listening to BD's interpretation of the Satie Gymnopedie. As soon as I open my eyes, it falls apart, and the rest of the show is completely annoying in my opinion, but that moment is pretty nice.

Nope. Just went to the FanNetwork. The Atlanta shows starts with a close-up on the Drum Major where you can clearly see a synth in the pit.

Thanks. I've learned a few things about DCP. There are a lot of copy cats (how many open letters are there now?), there are a lot of opinions disguised as fact (from the beginning, I couched this as, this is what I feel and see, let's see if anyone agrees), and there are a lot of people who can't deal with honesty and openness (I must have an ulterior motive/be a BD-hater, because no one could actually say what I've said and mean just that). But that's OK. People are free to say and believe what they want, and the marketplace of ideas will eventually sort out who is right. Maybe it's not me. I'm okay with that. I'm a big boy who can handle being wrong. I just want someone to prove it empirically. If I were to plot a bunch of random points in Pyware and then give it to BD to march, it would be very hard and somewhat chaotic, but I'll bet they could do it. It might even be the hardest drill ever marched, but that doesn't mean it would necessarily be good or fun to watch. I could do the same thing with notes and rhythms. They could say that the theme was "random" and march it perfectly. Every element of the show could be completely randomized. It would be impressive from an intellectual standpoint, but it would be the most painful show you've ever seen or heard. Should we encourage them to do that next year? It would be impressive to those who know what's going on, but I don't think many would stick around to watch. This is my point. Not everything difficult and/or innovative is good. Which of the DCI automaton judges has the guts to tell BD that they think their design stinks? According to the last several recap sheets, none of them. And that's a loss for everyone. Diversity of opinions is a powerful thing. DCI has no diversity. That being said, I'm glad you enjoyed the show, and I'm glad others did, too. I don't judge you or them for enjoying what you want to enjoy. But I saw a lot of people who didn't, and not only who didn't enjoy it, who were confused and/or disgusted by it. That, to me, is also a problem, and something DCI needs to think about. Too late. I've done this before every show I've ever attended. Unfortunately, there's considerable travel involved to get to shows, so it's quite an investment just to get there. I don't think I'll be excited enough to do that next year. If finals had been in any of the places where I've been to for shows recently, I don't think I would have gone this year. If you quoted this and sent it to my email three years ago, I would have said you were crazy. I can't tell you how far my passion and love for this activity has fallen in recent years and especially this one. You can't change who or what you love. It simply is what it is, and DCI is definitely not "it" for me at current.

Maybe I need to buy some Crusaders apparel before I walk away.

At best, that's a guess on both your part and DCI's part. I'd like to see empirical research that shows a clearly causal relationship between increased use of electronics/voice-overs/downplaying traditional marching for various dance moves/at best controversial and hard-to-understand show ideas and an increase in participation among marchers. If that's why kids are signing up to join DCI, then do the study, publish the findings, and shut up every "dino" who's complaining. Some dinos won't give up, but at least we'll know who the rational ones are. I'm calling the bluff. I have more faith in the musical youth of today. I think they're signing up to push the boundaries of human ability. And whether or not there's a synth on the field, they will still be doing that. In fact, I would love to see BD spend all the time they spent on this show and use it to perfect a show like what Crown did. You talk about unbelievability--THAT would be a reason for me to stand up and cheer my lungs out for BD. Not because I want them to be Crown, but because I'm reasonably sure they could do Crown's show even better than Crown could do it. And that's saying something. And better yet, if they were to take on the challenge, do a slightly more traditional show, and do it better than anyone else, I think they would still see huge numbers of people at their audition camps. Of course, this is all my opinion, and yours will be different. The only way to settle this is through real market research--something DCI seems unwilling to do. So, let them put their head in the sand. Time will tell which of us is right. And for the kids who are involved, I sincerely hope you are, because if you aren't, there will come a point of no return, and DCI will wither on the vine.

And I'm asking them to do a little market research to check that their opinions are well-founded. I don't believe that these rules changes are the reason kids are joining corps, but I do believe it's turning away long-time fans. Maybe I'm wrong. Do the poll and prove me wrong. If I am, I promise I'll shut up and go away. Heck, I'll just go away anyway (after I respond to a few more posts on DCP, because, doggone it, someone on the Internet is WRONG and I'm the only one who can fix it!) :-)