N.E. Brigand

DCE does a have prelims/finals structure. I don't know about your other questions.

I agree that it is possible to interpret the announcement on the Statesmen's website as "are not going anywhere [for one more year]", but their phrasing, particularly "Quite the contrary our future is brighter than Ever!!" does seem to be taken as a direct response to the rumor, mentioned by a couple people on these boards a few weeks ago, that the Statesmen leadership had told members that next year would be the last. A "brighter" "future" would generally not be understood to refer to just one year.

It's been asked several times what authority DCA actually wields over Renegades, who only perform one weekend each year under DCA auspices. Championship participation may be the only carrot that DCA could withdraw. Or maybe not. Perhaps DCA could have allowed the Renegades to appear under certain conditions, for instance: (1) the specific members responsible for whatever happened at the hotel be banned from returning (this assumes that these members can be identified); (2) a formal apology be issued from the corps to DCA, the Annapolis visitors' bureau, and the hotel; (3) that Renegades pay a hefty fine. Maybe these options were offered to Renegades and rejected by the corps -- we don't know. Or maybe DCA was under too much pressure to accept anything less than this one-year suspension. Was it a "leak"? Something was going to have to be announced fairly soon: Renegades couldn't accept members for next year without them knowing they wouldn't be attending DCA. Anyway, Renegades and DCA seem to have announced the news in that order, about three hours apart on Oct. 9.

So sayeth the main page of the Statesmen's website, in an announcement of a Nov. 24 first rehearsal for next season, their 30th.

You can find the date of DCA's announcement (Oct. 9, as I noted above) from their main news page. Some people may be confused about the date of that announcement because it says DCA's decision to suspend was made (or was "agreed" to by Renegades) on Oct. 1.

Then why would DCA release this before any of these threads started? I for one am not clear on which organization announced this first. DCP learned of the Renegades' suspension on Oct. 9 at 1:32 p.m., thanks to this post said to be copied from Renegades' Facebook page. (I'm not on Facebook, so I cannot confirm this myself.) That DCA press release to which you link, although it refers to a decision being made on Oct. 1, was actually posted on Oct. 9 at 4:23 p.m. So Renegades would appear to have announced first, by a few hours.

This was alleged on the Renegades' own Facebook page by Greg Gilman, their vice president, according to this post on DCP: "Our housing site complained, and DCA’s decision was to suspend the Renegades from DCA competition in 2013". If the Renegades don't want people speculating about their possible misdeeds and the suitability of the punishment, they should be more forthcoming than that Facebook post or the comments here by Mr. Rudnicki. As far as most observers can tell, they have neither defended themselves against the charge of "conduct detrimental to the good and welfare" of DCA (to use DCA's phrase) if they think that charge unfair, nor apologized for said conduct if they do not. Likewise, if DCA doesn't want people complaining that the penalty imposed on the Renegades is too severe, or that the penalty was posed arbitrarily, as Mr. Rudnicki has claimed here, they too would be more forthcoming. As it stands, most of us don't know what happened, why it led to so severe a penalty (e.g., did the Annapolis visitors bureau put pressure on DCA?), nor --as previously noted-- whether there was any punishment short of a year's suspension that DCA could have imposed.

Lee named them in the first post... What are you talking about? This is the first post: There's no corps named there, and no one has named it in subsequent posts. Who is he talking about? Edit: Oops! OK, I see it's in the next post. Sorry. Mea culpa.

Would someone please let the unwashed know which corps doesn't stay in a hotel?

Could someone explain in a few sentences how they embody those aspects?* I enjoyed Renegades' performance at finals very much, which was the first DCA show I've ever seen, and they didn't seem notably more disorganized or unpleasant than other corps that evening. (*There's a lot in these discussions that is mystifying to the novice! Apparently "Crunchy Frog" is/was a real mini-corps or ensemble? That placed 13th in 2004 with a score of 13? Perhaps by going over time, or having too many performers? And yet when people early this season said that Blue Devils ought to embrace their "dada" theme by flouting the rules, I can't recall that anyone mentioned Crunchy Frog. Oh, for a properly encyclopedic drum corps reference book or website!)

Thanks. So would it be correct to say that suspending Renegades was DCA's only way of penalizing them? Did they get themselves suspended deliberately, to put themselves in a situation where they had to move into such other avenues?

Regarding voting privileges, did I misunderstand that Renegades don't have those anyway? Regarding monetary fines, do DCA's bylaws allow them to fine member corps?

Well, that's what I'd like to know: is there in fact anything less than suspension that DCA could have done to penalize Renegades? From comments made in DCP's Finals thread, I gather that Renegades already don't have voting rights, because that requires both that a corps have one of the top ten scores and that they have participated in some DCA-sanctioned event before championships. So DCA couldn't take that away. I assume that "share points" are a percentage of the championship revenue -- do the Renegades in fact get that? If so, could DCA have prevented them from getting their take for this year, or had it already been distributed? If the latter were true, would DCA telling Renegades that they would get no take from next year's earnings have been a lesser penalty than suspension? If we were talking about an Eastern corps, I suppose DCA could have penalized them by limiting the number of DCA-sanctioned shows they were allowed to participate in next year, but that would be a punishment carrying no weight for Renegades. So again: what options were available to DCA?

What penalty short of suspension could DCA have imposed on the Renegades, given that the corps only competes in one weekend of DCA-sanctioned events each year? I don't know anything about how DCA works, so I don't know what Renegades get from them.

Careful, Michael. You may find your younger self waiting there to "close your loop".

So save the judge the trouble of having to make that distinction by not allowing electronics in the first place. Simple.

It sounds like they were inspired by this season's Raiders show.

If you search for "marching band video game show" on youtube, you'll find a few other bands have tackled the same theme over the years (dating back to at least 2006). I haven't watched them, so I can't say if this OSU show is better than the rest. (What do you know. I see one of the videogame shows is the 2011 competition show for Elder H.S., a school in Cincinnati. My roommate freshman year (21 years ago) had played quads in their band.)

To add to MikeN's response: there are at least five different licenses, and they may very well be held by different people or companies. Madison Scouts were able to get permission to arrange and perform "Empire State of Mind", and DCI was able to get the ("mechanical" license) rights to include it on the CD, but apparently because of the pending insurance commercial that Michael Boo talked about a couple months ago, they were unable to get the rights to synchronize that audio-recording to a video. In the case of using a pre-existing audio clip, as the Cadets did in this case, a "master" license is required to incorporate it into a new recording. I don't know whether a separate license is required to use those samples in live performance or not. But as for the music corps play, you can't assume that just because they lack permission to include them on CD or DVD, that they lack permission to perform them live. As for Fan Network clips, I suspect that in the short term they are treated as the equivalent of news reports, presumably subject to different standards of fair use. Long term, they would indeed be edited as per the mechanical / synchronization rights that DCI is able to retain. Look at FN video of any Crown or Cavaliers show last year and you will indeed find that some audio (passages incorporating vocals by Rihanna and David Bowie) has been edited out. Finally, as regards this point: That would be great! But DCI absolutely should keep its focus on maintaining or increasing the activity, and let history take care of itself.

Thanks for that!

Before all trace of the sampled audio vanishes, can someone identify one of the pieces for me? This is what I make out in Cadets' 2012 show: 1. Preshow Stephen Fry reading, from The Night Before Christmas (aka A Visit from St. Nicholas): "Twas the night before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse." (9 seconds) - TO BE RETAINED 2. Just before "Jingle Bells" Lucy speaking, from A Charlie Brown Christmas: "Look, Charlie, let’s face it: we all know Christmas is a big commercial racket." (5 seconds) - TO BE CUT 3. Just after "Jingle Bells" Jazzy choir (of Cadet members?) singing: "Oh, yeah! Oh, yeah! … Oh, yeah!" (10 seconds) - TO BE RETAINED? 4. During "Hark, the Herald Angels Sing" (and some other tunes in quick succession) 4.a. Charlie Brown and Linus speaking, from ACBC: "I guess I really don’t know what Christmas is all about" // "Sure Charlie Brown, I can tell you what Christmas is all about." (8 seconds) - TO BE CUT 4.b. Followed quickly by the Narrator (Boris Karloff) speaking, from How the Grinch Stole Christmas!: "Maybe Christmas doesn't come from a store. Maybe Christmas perhaps means a little bit more." (10 seconds) - TO BE CUT 4.c. Followed after a few seconds by four overlapping voices (5 seconds): 4.c.i. Linus reading from ACBC: "Behold! I bring you tidings of great joy." - TO BE CUT 4.c.ii. unidentified (male voice) speaking - TO BE CUT* (presumably) 4.c.iii. Buddy (Will Ferrell) speaking, from Elf: "Christmas Cheer, is singing loud for all to hear" - TO BE CUT 4.c.iv. Rudolph speaking, from Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer: "It would be an honor, sir" - TO BE CUT 5. At the beginning of "Angels We Have Heard on High" An "angelic" voice, singing "In excelsis deo" (4 seconds) - TO BE RETAINED? All told it looks like about 35 seconds will be cut. *What is the item I have bolded, that overlaps Linus and Buddy? I thought perhaps Jimmy Stewart from It's a Wonderful Life, but I can't be sure.

If I were a Blue Devil this year, I'd engrave this post on the inside of my ring... hahahahahahahahah I thought Jeff was referring to 2010. Yes, BD was the overall champion that year, but didn't Phantom win drums in 2010?

"And that's the hardest part. Today everything is different. There's no action; I have to wait around like everyone else. Can't even get decent food: right after I got here, I ordered some spaghetti with marinara sauce, and I got egg noodles and ketchup. I'm an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook." With that in mind, I check CorpsReps and find it appears that only one corps has ever played "Layla": a British group called Encore-Sandye in 1999.

Me too. I watched the prelim performances of the top five Premier Class corps (1. The Company; 2. Kidsgrove Scous; 3. Black Knights; 4. Jubal; 5. Juliana) and enjoyed them all -- although I liked the winner the least! Jubal competed in Open Class in 2011 (but on International sheets, whatever those are). They finished 33rd in World Class Prelims, between Music City and Legends, with a show that I found much less entertaining than this year's. Maybe because they opened with more than a minute of sampled music. (Historical recordings -- it was an anniversary year for them.)

Yes, you're right that one can't enter into a contract that supersedes the law. "Any Rule" is an exaggeration. DCI can't sell you a ticket with the stipulation that you agree to allow them to have pickpockets steal your wallet while you're in the stadium, or that sharpshooters will be randomly targeting some patrons for murder. Or the example that you give here. But free speech doesn't work that way. As the others have noted, the Constitution only prohibits the Federal Government and the States (Stu presumably objects to the latter reading, but which is based on Supreme Court decisions dating back to the 1920s as regards the "due process" clause of the 14th Amendment) from restricting free speech. The Constitution says nothing about individuals (or organizations, which are groups of individuals) being prohibited from entering into contracts in which speech is restricted. And that's what you're arguing for: that you and I shouldn't be able to enter into a contract in which we agree not to disclose certain information. Now, what about your objection that people may not even be aware of DCI's rules until they'd actually been issued the ticket? In such cases, upon having a chance to review the rules, I think such patrons would have the right to demand their money back if they objected -- before using the ticket, of course -- and DCI would give them a refund.