N.E. Brigand

I drove 4 1/2 hours each way to the Open Class show in Paw Paw (review here) instead of watching the Atlanta regional webcast (which includes the ToC members, of course) that I had paid for via my FN subscription. But I knew I was all but guaranteed to see the ToC in Finals, for which I already had a ticket.

I picked Vanguard Cadets and would have picked Legends if I had a second choice -- but enjoyed several others nearly as much.

Your 2009 Finals review was one of the first things I read on my first visit to DCP, and the post that convinced me that these forums were worth reading. A highlight every year!

Thanks for the reply!

Thanks! So that's two awards BD was told they'd received only to have them taken away -- though as far as I have seen, DCI hasn't noted this particular correction anywhere.

Does anyone know the answer to this question?

So because you are not entertained, there is no reason to keep it around for those who are entertained? I'm thinking you don't mean that, but it looks that way in the above. I interpreted JB's statement as "Do I want to stay around [i.e. "keep myself around"] a form of entertainment that isn't entertaining? No." (I agree his phrasing there could mislead.)

Aw, shucks. I had only watched the show in various high camera feeds, and even live at Finals I was high enough up that I couldn't tell there was a synth in that position, which is one location of which I was suspicious. In fact, if you look at the Atlanta video at say, the 2:00 mark, you'll see that member, standing in the same place, is using mallets! And she spends a good deal of the time off to the side on gong and bass drum. At any rate, I never hear the synth. But I appreciate you telling me. (Earlier in the season, I asked in at least two different threads if Boston did in fact have no synthesizer this year, as appeared to be the case, and got no response.)

You misunderstand me: "you must have missed the several times I stated" my hope that your optimistic predictions proved true. When I said you prophesied "darkly", I meant that adverb in the sense of Blue Devils' 2010 show title: your optimistic claims for the future are hard for the rest of us to read. (We see but through a glass darkly.) I often use the greens for posts that are well expressed, sometimes even when I disagree with them. This is a discussion forum, so I respond to the quality of the discussion and not only its content. (For instance, if two people make the same point, but one is rude and the other polite, I might up-vote the latter, by way of encouraging civility.) That said, I also happen to agree with much of JB's aesthetic concerns, if not the action he is taking in response, and I appreciate him making the case as well as he does. Well, count me taken aback. I read your earlier comments in this thread to mean you did indeed catch wind of actual changes brewing. If you're "merely" reading tea leaves --and I acknowledge that you may be an excellent prognosticator-- I have to wonder even more why those without your special skills would know that now more than ever was the wrong time to abandon the activity! And I'm not sure what kind of "involvement" ought to be required of the average fan (whose career is not based on trend-spotting) in deciding whether or not it's worthwhile to continue spending money on this activity. If JulesBry thinks his summer entertainment budget would be better spent on, say, baseball, or windsurfing, because DCI shows are less enjoyable (for him) than they used to be, what further kinds of research ought he reasonably to be expected to undertake before walking away? Some people on DCP (and many more not here) are "just" fans -- people who love (or used to love) this activity and like to talk with other like-minded enthusiasts.

At Finals, Phantom's souvenir booth was by far the most crowded: before the show started, they had a crowd at least seven people deep all the way across; I couldn't even get close enough to see what they had for sale, much less buy anything.

This year I attended Finals for the first time, which was also my first time seeing drum corps in a dome. Unfortunately, I saw no other World Class shows live this year (I went to Allentown the previous two years, and to local shows in earlier years), so I cannot make a direct comparison of the same performance heard indoors and out. I did attend two Open Class shows this year, so I ought to have been able to compare Oregon Crusaders' show at Lucas Oil to the their show at Michigan City, but as I mentioned in another thread, OC's exhibition performance at Finals unexpectedly started 10 minutes early, while I was still looking at souvenirs, so I had to settle for listening to them from the tunnel to our seating area. I have heard every corps' performance this year on the Fan Network, most more than once. My seats were in section 543, which has a clear view of the field but sits on the left 15-yard line. For Blue Devils' encore performance, we moved across to the 500-level seats right on the 50-yard line. In both locations, I found the sound far muddier than I had in this year's FN recordings or the past two years at Allentown. My question: is the experience remotely similar for the judges? Where do they sit? If they had heard what I did, I can't see how music scores could go up from the most recent outdoor show. (And bravo to DCI's recording engineers for cleaning it up so much for the past three years' recordings!) One beneficial part of our audible experience, that I've mentioned elsewhere, was that bass synth was much less audible for us than on this year's FN recordings or in past experiences at Allentown. And BD's early French and German voice samples and Spirit's closing sample could hardly be heard at all. (In attempting these shaky comparisons, I have ignored some further auditory challenges we encountered at Lucas Oil. First, our seats were on the aisle, meaning that during quiet passages we could hear noise from the crowd at the concession stands through the tunnel behind us. Second, again during quiet passages, there was a high-pitched whine audible somewhere behind and/or above us for most of the show -- from lighting instruments?)

This is the first time since 1996 that the seventh place corps didn't score at least 90.

Actually, I'm all for that approach to drum corps, unlike RockyGranite with the concept of "JABOM/M" ("Just a Bunch of Music and Marching") that he introduced to DCP this year. However, once a corps decides to use their show to tell a story, they should at least make it intelligible and consistent. Spirit, for instance, focused our attention on one guard member when the voiceover talked about the importance of taking that "one shot", but focused on an entirely different guard member when the voice-sample announced that he was going "all in" on his big opportunity (as he made a rifle toss that wasn't all that high), only to put the first guard member back into the spotlight for the final image of the evening.

Yeah, it wasn't a huge error, but notable enough that when the Ott award was incorrectly announced as BD's, I wondered if that moment had made the difference!

While we're on this subject: did Blue Devils and Carolina Crown actually tie for the John Brazale Best Visual Performance Award, as announced by Brandt Crocker and repeated in Michael Boo's recap analysis, or not? In order for corps to tie for a caption award, that caption's average score for the Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, would have to be a tie, and that caption's score for Saturday would have to be a tie. I'm not sure which visual number I'm supposed to be looking at for this award (there is no caption called "visual performance") but I don't see any ties between BD and Crown under that heading on Saturday.

Contrarily, I wish that there was more consistency about how the introductions were handled, with the announcer welcoming the corps, addressing the DM, waiting for a salute, the announcing the start. For the audience's sake: everyone would know when they could talk with their neighbors and when they could and could not enter the stands. And for my own aesthetic reasons, because I don't care for the pretense that is life: pictures have frames, books have covers, drum corps shows have clear beginnings and endings.

Does anyone know why Oregon Crusaders started 10 minutes early? We were shopping for souvenirs at 6:20 p.m., planning to return to our seats in five minutes to watch OC's show, when through the marketplace hubbub we heard their show being announced! So we missed the first two minutes hustling back to our section and had to watch the rest of their performance from the vom. Oregon's show was done by 6:33, and the sponsor awards didn't start early, so this change was most confusing.

OK, this is most intriguing, to be sure, but... 1) You misunderstand at least some of those green-plussers. Having read Jules' thread just this evening, before having a look at yours), I up-voted it for eloquently expressing some of the same concerns I share about the design of today's shows, without either agreeing in total or planning to end my spectatorship. (In fact, I bought some souvenirs for the first time this year: shirts from Legends, SCVC, and Boston.) 2) You indicate later in this thread that the changes you darkly prophesy concern business rather than artistic matters, so it's not clear that they will help Jules out of this predicament. 3) How on earth could Jules and those supporting that thread be expected to know what you know? That is to say: Great! But what most strikes me about your post is the acknowledgment that things are indeed in trouble! This is not so far from Jules' thread, really -- tempered only by your special knowledge that this moment in time is the bottom of a curve (please let it be so) and not just a point on the further descent in to the abyss. What you say "usually" applies (in some fields) need not apply here. I daresay that most of humankind's institutions and creations have died and been lost, despite the claims of some along the way that better things were just around the corner. I hope you are correct and I'm grateful for your hint of optimism, but I wonder if it might have been offered sooner, to forestall the departures of people who really do want to enjoy drum corps. Is the "terrible timing" theirs?

Just read through this thread. An excellent post and pretty good discussion to follow. Much as I dislike electronics in drum corps, I'm still finding enough to enjoy to continue watching. I atttended my first Finals ever this year, and brought a friend who sees at most one show a year. Believe it or not, he liked the Blue Devils most! (Though he is something of a contrarian, and it may be significant that his college major, many years ago, was in art.) And I found much to enjoy in their performance myself, and stayed to watch the encore run, along with a few thousand other people. Blue Devils did receive much more than a golf clap during the competition, including warm applause at several points during the show. (And thankfully, so far as I heard, there was no booing either at their performance or their score.) That said, at least six other corps were applauded more loudly. I still preferred Crown, and thought they deserved to win. I would like to see changes along the lines you request. That said, I was shocked to find that BD's voice-samples were much quieter live than on the videos. The French and German sections, which are so easy to hear on the Fan Network that I was able (with a little help) to write up a transcription, can hardly be heard live -- at least from the 500-level, both on the 15-yard line where our actual seats were and on the 50-yard line where we sat for the encore. (Likewise Spirit's closing sample, "Welcome to Vegas", wasn't audible.) And bass synthesizer from all corps was much less of a problem in person than on the videos, or than it was live the previous two years at Allentown. There were fewer than a dozen moments during the evening when the goo was even so prominent as to be audible. So the show designers, arrangers, and technicians may slowly be waking up to the problems that eletronica has brought to corps.

As far as I could tell, only Boston didn't have a synthesizer. (Correction welcome!)

Sorry to hear this. I was really looking forward to part 2.

Is that South Park?

Blue Stars' show, which seemed so weak in Akron, really improved over the season. Best wishes to them for next year!

Of Cavaliers, Crusaders, and Scouts, all scored within one point of one another, I actually thought Madison had the best performance last night, though I think they use too much synth (though not compared to Cavs), and Boston has been my favorite of those three corps this season (but they lacked in energy last night, and had speaker troubles, as well). So if one were looking for slotting, someone with my tastes might suspect it worked in the Cavaliers' favor -- at least as compared to Scouts, who went on before intermission. I don't think any Cavaliers' discussion this season has given much attention to how their 2012 theme, "15 Minutes of Fame", is almost the opposite of their 2011 theme, "XtraordinarY" (probably my favorite show last year). Warhol's epigram is often interpreted as a statement that talent (or quality or achievement) means nothing: anyone can be famous, so it doesn't matter if you're extraordinary or not. Or as Buddy said in The Incredibles, "When everyone is special, no one will be". Is it possible the judges are bothered by the theme? That at least subconsciously their view is "Well, if you don't think what you're doing really matters, why should we?"

The price in Valley View, OH was $18.00. When the screen was still frozen after 30 seconds, I ducked out to alert the staff. The manager came in after about ten minutes, apologized for the delay in speaking with us --he'd been on the phone to the exhibitor-- and let us know that the freeze could last anything from five to twenty minutes longer. He said that if we chose to leave, because the program was not yet half over, we'd get a full refund. (He was wrong about the timing, of course: we'd seen 9 out of 15 corps before the Bluecoats.) I don't know if anyone left early. There were only about 30 people to start with, in an auditorium seating at least 200.