N.E. Brigand

We're not going to be able to come up with a consensus answer. Consider that some people were bothered by deaths in "Spartacus", which may be the most popular show ever. But this doesn't mean we shouldn't continue discussing. For myself, I would automatically exclude very little, but I would wish for the judges to be very demanding with corps presenting controversial material: justify your choice through superior design and performance, or be marked down accordingly. I agree with you that an eleven-minute music-and-motion production is generally not the right medium for deep thinking. Detailed storytelling and careful arguement are all but impossible -- only possible, I would say, with narration, and my feelings about amplification, of voice or anything else, have been expressed many times. (If I were a judge, tonight's DCE winner, The Company, would be shredded for that horribly written and nonsensical narration, no matter how much technical excellence they show in other regards.)

What's more, Jubal, who finished fourth, played "17.Any Beatles song by John Lennon or Paul McCartney" -- that would be "Eleanor Rigby".

71 years after "####"* was used in Gone With the Wind, the most popular movie ever? (And wikipedia says that contrary to legend, David O. Selznick did not pay the Hays Office $5,000 for that use: they had changed the rule earlier the same year to allow both "####"* and "Hell".) 62 years after "Give 'em Hell, Harry!" became an unofficial slogan of Harry Truman? (President Truman's own response to that cry from a supporter: "I don't give them Hell. I just tell the truth about them and they think it's Hell.") No. The MPAA rating system has justly been the source of much criticism. The reviewers may be professional, in that they are paid, but their expertise is questionable. *DCP is still stuck in 1938 as regards the homophone for "dam", apparently.

I don't know, Brasso. As long as DCI was clear when selling the tickets that attendance included a requirement to "participate" as directed by DCI, I think they could indeed do this. (Or "not participate": I was a competitor on a TV game show once and was able to have a few free tickets held for friends who lived near the taping site. A week's worth of shows was taped over the course of one day, and competitors not yet called for any given "day's" show sat in the audience in a segregated section right across the aisle from where competitors' guests sat. When I came into the studio from the backstage with the other contestants to wait my turn in the audience, I saw my friends and waved, but they sat stone-faced. They had been instructed (though I had not been told) that any interaction with the contestants could result in their and my expulsion.)

And I suppose the rules may be different in Europe: Black Knights, who took third in the DCE championships today, opened with "1. Music from any James Bond film", specifically "Live and Let Die".

Agreed as concerns Forte. Confused as concerns Revolution: the last I had heard was just after Open Class finals, when Revolution announced they weren't attending the World Class events in Indianapolis later that week because their equipment truck had been damaged to the tune of $12,000. At the time, it seemed very responsible of them to not spend money they didn't have going to Indy -- the kind of thing you've been regularly calling for of late. Does anyone know what happened after that?

While I disagree with your views on Constitutional interpretation (see, for instance, Richard Posner's review of the book Scalia recently co-authored with Bryan Garner, and Posner's subsequent replies to Garner and Scalia's attempted rebuttals -- but I'm no lawyer, and we can't talk about that in further detail on these forums anyway!) -- as a disinterested party to your debate with Brasso, I am quite convinced that you and skevinp are correct. Organizations are absolutely allowed to limit the speech of people at their events.

For those, like me, who spent their Saturday helping their sisters move, DCE still has the livefeed available for viewing: more than 10 hours starting with the Commodores in prelims. However, it doesn't appear to have fast-forward / rewind options, so you have to play it through from the beginning.

I don't think that Music For All's list can be taken as the final word. For instance, much of "4. Music by Charles Ives" is in the public domain, having been composed prior to 1923.

"I could never be with someone who likes Joni Mitchell. "It's clouds' illusions I recall / I really don't know clouds at all." What does that mean? Is she a pilot? Is she taking flying lessons? It's probably a metaphor for something, but I don't know what." -Tom Hanks as Joe Fox in You've Got Mail, written by the late Nora Ephron Not the film's best line, but ever since I always think of it when this song comes up.

CorpsReps indicates that Dutch Boy played music from South Park in 2006.

What a fascinating video! But also creepy: metronome assimilation!

While the Dadaists may largely have been atheists, that didn't come across in BD's show. If BD's designers even considered the subject, they may have rejected it for the very reasons we're discussing: too much of a turn-off for too much of the audience.* Or perhaps because they disagreed with that aspect of Dadaism: just because you create a show around a particular subject doesn't mean you endorse every aspect of that subject. *Not all of the audience, of course. Some might have enjoyed it: I seem to remember a joke or two on these forums about putting feet on the Icthys symbol in the Cadets show.

I think you mean Rupert, not Rudolph. Govenaires played that song last year. However, their theme was Vegas: the sinful city, not the sins of capitalism. This is a privately-owned forum; there is no right to freedom of expression here. This post has been edited by Geoff: Today, 05:05 PM <-QFT! Oh, the irony! Now, to look at Michael's original questions again: Is any theme truly politically neutral? Doesn't West Side Story encourage tolerance? Isn't that a political point of view? Does anyone reject the show for that reason? But imagine a show that instead promoted intolerance. Most people would object! Not because the material was "political", but because they disagreed with the specifics of the politics. Now, contra Brasso, I am not opposed to shows --on the field or on the stage-- that have a point of view. And as far as I am able, I will try not to reject that show for presenting a point of view different from my own. (The greater the artistry, the more forgiving I am likely to be.) But everyone has their limits, and it behooves directors and designers to know their audiences. Not having seen the marching band show in question, I can't judge for myself whether it actually promotes the Soviet revolution (and surely there are people whose ancestors suffered under the czars, who might have reasons to support a show that did so) or merely presented it. Unlike Stu, I think that such a distinction can indeed be made, even in marching band, but again without seeing the show, I have no idea how well this band managed it. The mere presence of 1917 Soviet symbolism and costume proves nothing either way. Cadets in 2012 caught but a few grumbles for presenting a show that arguably promoted Christianity. How would a show that promoted Islam or even atheism be received?

I think you mean Rupert, not Rudolph. Govenaires played that song last year. However, their theme was Vegas: the sinful city rather not the sins of capitalism. This is a privately-owned forum; there is no right to freedom of expression here.

Quite right. But can we hold audience members accountable too?

Well, his Second Symphony is titled To October and commemorates the tenth anniversary of the revolution. And his Twelfth Symphony is titled The Year 1917. But he had a very complicated relationship with the communist regime, and was officially denounced more than once.

I thought I read on these forums that SCV '89 holes were due to the corps discovering just before championships that two members (from the UK?) were overage.

Oh, my! They may be called a marching band, but that's drum corps in my book. All brass, and no amplification. A bit too short (8 min.) and a small playing area (indoors), but otherwise this seems to be at least at the level of the best DCI Open Class corps.

Officially fifteen years, though he would sit in with the band before that, according to his Wikipedia entry.

Thank you! I'll have to take another look at the index when I get home, and see how I missed them last night. "Drum and Trumpet Corps?" Very interesting.

I found (one of their songs is "Mac Arthur Park") and on youtube, but no such group appears in either CorpsReps or the History of Drum and Bugle Corps book, so far as I can tell. A Google search for the group's name revealed only one picture on this site dedicated to discussion (in French) of "corps de tambours et clairons". It shows "Francine Chouinard, tambour major du corps" on a page with pictures of other unknown groups named Abénakis de Saint-Prosper, Mariniers du Bic, Étoils de Rimouski, LaSarre ou Lebel-sur-Quévillon, and Inconnu. Les Cavaliers appears to be an all-girl group. Their wind instruments are all brass, but it looks like the sopranos have three valves, i.e., are trumpets. Murdochville is on the Gaspe peninsula. May of the pictures on the French-language discussion site were taken in Jonquière, which is about three hours north of Quebec City. Can anyone shed any light on this?

Do you mean, "No, there is no similarity between football and drum corps in terms of fans who prefer new vs. old?" Or, "No, the end of football (and football fields, and high school and college marching bands) would not lead to the end of drum corps?" Or no to something else?

Revisiting this discussion after reading a new article, "A Journey to the End of Football", in The New Republic. The nominal subject is the possibility of injury leading to the sport's demise, but the article is more of a historical and geographical ramble, and part of this paragraph (with my added emphasis) caught my eye: Apparently there are "dinos" in football as well as drum corps! Football died in 1971?

Where did I put my pedantic hat? Ah! there it is: Billy Joel's "River of Dreams" reached #3 on the U.S. pop charts in 1993. That was his last top 20 hit here. Well, four later songs made the top 20 on the U.S. Adult Contemporary chart, concluding with "Hey, Girl", a cover of the Goffin-King composition, which hit #13 in 1997. And Joel's "All My Life" did reach #94 on the Japanese pop charts in 2007. Maybe that influenced the Cavaliers?