N.E. Brigand

Oh, I didn't realize BK were marching strings.

The "roots" metaphor that keeps turning up in these discussions jogged my memory, and I sought out a passage, not about drum corps, but perhaps applicable here. Grist for both sides' mills in the one long paragraph, from which I've excerpted four sentencs of argument: --"For those living in the days of its branching growth the Tree is the thing, for the history of a living thing is part of its life ... The wise may know it began with a seed, but it is vain to try and dig it up, for it no longer exists, and the virtue and powers that it had now reside in the Tree." --"Very good, but in husbandry the authorities, the keepers of the Tree, must look after it, according to such wisdom as they possess, prune it, remove cankers, rid it of parasites, and so forth. (With trepidation, knowing how little their knowledge of growth is!)" --"But they will certainly do harm, if they are obsessed with the desire of going back to the seed or even to the first youth of the plant when it was (as they imagine) pretty and unafflicted by evils." --"The other motive (now so confused with the primitivist one, even in the mind of any one of the reformers): aggiornamento: bringing up to date: that has its own grave dangers, as has been apparent throughour history." I leave it to others to decide who in DCI are the "vain", the "wise", the "reformers", and the "cankers"! (Source: Letter #306, c. 1968, in The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien. The actual subject was the Catholic church.)

I can only choose between the two I've seen --and neither was live-- and pick Constantly Risking Absurdity over 1930. (So I won't vote and skew the poll, which presumably seeks to place this year's controversial production.) But despite my great fondness for the theme from Umbrellas of Cherbourg (which is a pretty good film, by the way, if you're prepared to bathe in romanticism), I didn't much care for Absurdity the first two times I saw it, in the 2008 Quarterfinals broadcast and then a year later on DVD. The show is completely lost in multicam. Figuring that there had to be some reason the show placed ahead of Spartacus, I gave it one more viewing, this time in high cam, and it immediately clicked. (In multicam you see tight shots of individuals running, or walking invisible balance beams, but not how each of them is a piece in a beautifully arranged visual feast.) I now like it only a little less than Phantom's show, and of 2008 performances, I listen to the Devils less often only than Phantom and Crown. As to 1930, I've seen it only in the 2009 Quarterfinals broadcast. Then I was very concerned when I heard in the pre-performance interview that there were chairs strewn across the field. I had not been following DCI for a great while --apart from having attended two QF broadcasts (the other was 2004)-- before attending my first live show in ten years just a week earlier. There I saw the Blue Stars and their tables, which read as annoying clutter to me. I figured the Devils' chairs meant more of the same, and was blown away -- 1930 was definitely my favorite of 2009. I wonder if the design is more appropriate for multicam, or if it was just better filmed? I've only heard Winged Victory on CD. Over the past year, I've been slowly viewing all the performances available on DCI's DVDs, and have yet to watch 1997, 1998 (both of which I've had on CD for years), 2003 (which sounds like a great year), 2006, and 2007. I find Victory less enjoyable to listen to than Phantom's On Air, Crown's Triple Crown, and Bluecoats Criminal, to name just 2007 shows. I haven't seen or heard Through a Glass Darkly yet. A few weeks ago on the forums, someone referenced the Ingmar Bergman film by that name. Does this year's Devils show make any reference to Bergman? Or to the Biblical verse which was Bergman's source? Wikipedia's page on the phrase, which notes, inter alia, the Devils' production, observes it is a paraphrase from 1 Corinthians 13: "'For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face', in reference to limited knowledge of God in this life, compared to the complete knowledge expected for the afterlife." Is BD's show secretly every bit as religous as Pioneer's? Then again, you know the saying about the Devil(s?) quoting Scripture!

I really love the piece and look forward to seeing BK perform it on Tuesday. Coincidentally, after asking a couple days ago about the relative quality of their "Nimrod" performance vs. Crown's, I stumbled across the following quote from an essay in an entirely unrelated field -- indicating a different subject that someone finds perfect for Elgar: Source: David Bratman, "Liquid Tolkien: Music, Tolkien, Middle-earth, and More Music", p. 150, in Middle-earth Minstrel: Essays on Music in Tolkien (ed. Bradford Lee Eden, Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2010). I like Bratman's comparison to Barber's Adagio, and naturally that led me to think of SCV's 2000 version, with that amazingly expressive guard soloist, spinning that rifle as if he's gone made mad with grief. The DVD multicam view, for once, gets the right backfield image there when he heaves it away.

Look, normally I'd just blow that off--your opinion, your choice, so be it. Doesn't exactly give a good impression of the non-partisanship of the moderation though. Of course we're all well aware that DCP is a terrible medium for unbiased discussion anyway, but the staff could at least maintain a pretense, huh? It seemed like an honest opinion to me, and arguably was borne out by the performance, given that four other people made a point of faulting the brass sound.

Would it make a difference? PR's storyline certainly varied from both the history (so far as it is known) and the famous 1960 film. I recently read a thread here from 2008 in which a poster, setting out for an early season competition, was wondering if the closer would feature a mass crucifixion.

I don't know how much it applies in drum corps judgments or in music criticism generally, but sometimes in criticism of the literary and dramatic arts, a snobbery toward "mere" entertainment can be observed. In one film history I've read, a prominent critic is quoted saying that the very best films must be a little boring. I think critics --and judges?-- in their efforts to be objective, can be afraid of their subjective responses. Also they may assume it's easy to generate emotion, when "higher" things should be aimed for. When many reviewers were panning Oscar Wilde's plays for being simply collections of jokes, George Bernard Shaw answered that he was apparently the only person in London who couldn't write a Wildean comedy at the drop of a hat. Or back to drum corps: if Phantom Regiment won in 2008 Finals, as some say, merely by generating that audience reaction, why didn't the rest of the corps just do the same thing?

While I understand the distinction you're making, it's not a question of the spelling. A show has an effect on an audience (with an E, meaning "power to produce results; efficacy; force; validity; influence"*) because it affects an audience (with an A, meaning "act on" or "move") -- the difference is just one of noun vs. verb. Affect can be a noun meaning either "feeling or emotion" or "expressed or observed emotional response", but used this way it is mainly a term restricted to psychiatry. And it doesn't work in your sentence; substitute the definitions and you get either "a show has an expressed emotional response on the audience" or "a show has an emotion on the audience", which don't make sense. *As you say, effect has other meanings, which may be more pertinent to the question of "General Effect".

Yes, occasionally critics do review films and plays that they walk out on. I've read dozens such. The argument runs: one needn't finish a bowl of rancid soup to describe it as rancid. It's generally frowned on, but I have no problem with it as long as the reviewer cops to it, as in: the first act was so awful I fled after intermission.

Not having seen any of the shows yet, I visited the corps' respective websites to learn a little. Thus having cheated, I won't attempt any summaries. Anyway, I couldn't find anything about the Bluecoats' concept. Of the other three, only Cadets offer a full scenario, while Crown gives just a brief sketch, and Cavaliers profess not to have a story. However, some comments from their descriptive video were interesting to hear, especially in light of some DCP discussions: "How do you portray irony or heartbreak or sarcasm through composition?" -- Drew Shanefield "We're introducing some new sounds. We feel that electronics are the voice of the generation. They're here to stay. They're not replacing anything we're doing acoustically, they're just augmenting, creating new textures that we're doing with the acoustic sounds." -- Mike McIntosh* "You'll find that the colorguard will not be trying to tell a story that's already been told before but instead they'll be creating different moods and working within different environments that audience members are going to take different things from. What one audience member sees is not going to be the same thing that a different audience member sees." -- Andy Toth** *Please forgive a brief Osgiliation: McIntosh's statement brought to mind a quote from "On Fairy-stories" by J.R.R. Tolkien: **And another: Toth's expectation echoes the foreword to the 2nd edition of The Lord of the Rings: (Finally: kudos to Crown for spelling "in medias res" correctly in the description of their 2009 show.)

Ditto.

Don't the corps set the judges' guidelines? Are the corps who aren't pushing "something new, fresh, and creative above all else" deliberately ignoring what they themselves put in place? Or do they think they are providing shows that fit that criterion? And did the corps decide at some point that the SCV "Phantom" redux was no longer the way to go?

A general question inspired by this review: has anyone heard any response from corps directors and arrangers to fans' negative reactions to the "goo"? Do they not hear the problem? Why do they say they need the synthesized bass?

From the repertoire list above, it appears there are three pieces that are each being played by two different corps this year: -"Asphalt Cocktail" (Mackey) -- Bluecoats & Pacific Crest -"Nimrod" from Enigma Variations (Elgar) -- Blue Knights & Carolina Crown -"Primacy of Numbers" from Naqoyqatsi (Glass) -- Blue Stars & Glassmen For people who have seen one or more of these pairings: how do the two versions compare in arrangement, musical execution, and visual accompaniment? I haven't seen much comment in this regard (though I probably overlooked some remarks) apart from what can be pieced together from individual show responses -- e.g., some find Crown's "Nimrod" too slow; others say that BK's is too fast.

Cavs at 91.25 or 91.85? The latter (in the other post and on DCI Scores) puts them less than one point behind BD in Louisiana.

There's no annoying electric guitar or bad lyrics in SCV's versions of the Phantom songs. Hence they improved upon Andrew Lloyd Webber, in my opinion.

I think that many people would be in favor of more parody. I always enjoyed both the Bridgemen and VK. Precisely the pair of paragons to pursue if parity in parody is to prosper.

Well, I suppose 0.0 would be a group that stood still the entire time and played no notes -- or whatever the minimal requirement is to avoid any penalties. And there's surely a wide range between that and what the weakest corps managed to field by its first show of the season.

Thanks, all. I suppose I'll have to see the film sometime to compare.

I have a question. I'd only seen this show, and the rest of 2005, for the first time a few months ago, on DVD. (And only heard it on CD for the first time shortly before that.) There the oral drumming struck me as pretty clever, if somewhat over-amplified. But what is the "Bjork-speak"? Is that the high-pitched squealing vocalization a little before the drum-speak, that accompanies the industrial percussion sounds? It doesn't sound like what little I've heard of Bjork. Or is that else-when in the show?

Could you (or anyone) please explain these references?

"Now or Never".

Phantom of the Opera.

Some say the show will close with fire, some say with ice.

You may still enjoy it that way, but the effect is much diminished. As the best drum corps is designed to have impacts on a live audience that the video cannot catch, the best films are designed to have impacts because of the large screen size. I agree with the film critic who said: it's the difference between watching sharks while scuba diving and watching goldfish in an aquarium.