westcoastblue

You are trying to defend all Scouts on this thread, and possibly all threads past and present. God Bless you. Really. I think you might be the good exception to the many Madison Negative Alumni Nancies that give grief every year. I am glad you like the uni and hope your claims to support them in their modern-day, up-to-date show design is legit. Go Madison! I wish nothing but the best for their 2017 competitive season. It would be so awesome for them to return to the top six. I am behind them all the way. Perhaps my small annual donation to the corps each year is some tiny part of that realization as well as my positive thoughts and reactions to the efforts the Men in the superman suits bring to the field every performance. Always a Madison Scouts fan. Most often, and with due cause, not a Madison Scouts Alumni fan.

Great show! Ballad needs to go away wholesale or vast majority. It is embarrassing and the euph solo- just NO!! There is not one beat of championship in that tune as of now.

You are right . . . nothing wrong with that- UNLESS you think you or the alumni base, or any faction of the alumni base think you have the creative answers. Drum corps is changing too fast, is too sophisticated, too multilayered for most alumni to do much good other that sending money and wishing all the modern-day marchers and staff well. Based on my experiences, the Madison Scouts Alumni are by far the worst at knowing such and at stepping back and letting younger, more informed talent pave the way. These guys know the past and are driven if not haunted by it in a good way. Dropping competitively is a complicated dilemma and is rarely if NEVER improved by alumni that think because they placed higher back in the day that that have legit answers to current day issues. Give money, not grief.

"little brother"? How old-school Madison of you.

Defensive without being analytical. Perfect poster child for a mid 1990's Scout that cares more about some un-analyzed reality of modern day drum corps than those currently thinking "I want to be a Madison Scout?", BUT IN 2017, not 1995. Try to think. Try to step back. To assume even 1% of what I am saying is true. Sigh . . .

Case in point. Shallow. Un-thinking. Cares about his experience WAY more than that of the 2017 marcher.

And ladies and gentlemen, the Madison Scouts continue to eat their own! Predictable and sad. Pathetic and needless. It is the decades of inbreeding. Years and years of it. Lies told to too many marchers in the late 90s early 2000s and probably beyond that created an unhealthy, uninformed, poor-me attitude alumni base that will forever and EVER be the corps' biggest albatross unless the current leaders eventually, as many corps have done, decide that that 20 years or so of alumni are a lost faction (with a few exceptions I am sure) and should not carry nor influence ANY creative design decision ever! The costume is beyond on point. ####! It is perhaps the BEST uniform on the field this summer. The show has taken the creative turn it needed. Let these members of 2017 do their thing. Stuck in the mud, sad, poor-me alumni- IT ISN'T ABOUT YOU. NEVER HAS BEEN. NEVER SHOULD BE. KEEP YOUR #### QUARTERS. Let these men march and play, spin and drum a 2017 production. It is their time. Their era. They DO NOT WANT To do a tried ### 1990 show. Just like you did not want do a tried ### 1970 show when you strapped in.

I love your enthusiasm. Who' heading this thing up? What has been their biggest accomplishment? How much of what ever that is can they take credit for? Having marched somewhere is not really any measure of teaching success. What is the evidence of the teaching success of the staff below the head dude? Etc.

Naw. Not really. I am sure they care and have some skills, but the game is much more tight than that. To them all my best. Hoping for a much better show design in 2017.

If it was 1987, sure.

I do not know Sal. I do know of his past accomplishments. Most seem distant past accomplishments. I hope they add younger and more varied design influences.

Based on the scores from their prelims, it looks as though several groups will place in that 16-23 world class range. Four or five of those top groups have much better shows than quite a few world groups, but maybe not the talent? maybe so? I certainly see room above Spirit. Interesting to see how Thursday shakes out.

GE: Bluecoats Percussion: Bluecoats Visual: BD Colorguard: Crown Brass: Crown

As a self admitted homer, I agree that getting rid of the thing is an eye sore and unworthy of this design team and the members. Crown's tarp things were still a bit awkward, but handled in a more creative and sophisticated way. With the ending change on their list, I am not sure this will get fixed. However, if a plan to fix it and the ending were in place prior to Allentown, they have plenty of time. To fix it and add a major wow to the beginning and end of the show, it could make the difference in placement.

WTF? I am completely slack-jawed, shocked, and in awe. This may be the most amazing transformation I have seen from a drum corps in one season. Bravo to the staff and most importantly, the members. I can't imagine the amount of rehearsal time that has gone into changing and not cleaning. It can wear heavily on members, especially this time of year. If they can pull that off since SA, they have the talent to clean up fast. I love all of the changes. I like the mannequins. I hated those stupid stages- hope they are really gone. Guard shows the most growth and they are not holding back. I really am just at a loss for words. BRAVO!

So interesting. I see the activity way more diverse corps to corps now than even 5 years ago. BD is NOTHING like Crown, is nothing like Cavies, is nothing like Phantom, is nothing like BK. Your take on things are of course yours and I respect that. But, this reminds me of our current political situation in the US. I am boggled by how any two people can see and hear something and have polar opposite reactions. Donald Trump is the savior of America, Donald Trump is a complete idiot. Crown is the best drum corps to ever step in a field, Crown is the worst thing I have ever seen or heard. It just boggles my mind. Is there really something on the water? Not saying you are right and i am wrong. just on opposite pages.

All this talk about body being forced and only five moves that everyone does over and over is unfounded. I think you have perhaps just stopped really watching, noticing, trying to appreciate something that is different from what you know best (It happens as we get older). Example of great movement and all extremely show driven: Blue Knights 2015- ( I will avoid using my own corps as an example). And I would like to mention that it was Scouts that raised the body ante, dancing while playing some hard stuff in the early 80's. The activity got better as more tried to do the same, with many failing at first.

HUH? Yes, but don't you want demand? Your statement seems to say that corps could march at 132 beats a minute for the whole show and as long as they are in step, their show should carry as much value as anyone that demonstrates more variety, which I think almost always leads to better GE.

Quote of DCP thus far this season. Love it! So true. I think judging gets harder and harder, though we still love to bash those guys and girls.

I love your loyalty. While not trying to p### you off, I fear I will. A few thoughts here. The positives first: They sound like Madison in a new way. The music is refreshingly not arranged like anyone else's. The deliver the old Madison swagger in spades. The soloists have finally risen to a level that can be somewhat compared to their glory soloists. The re-done JCSS music is fun in a nostalgic and associative way. They are finally loosing their old marching style for a better, modern version. The show is overall quite exciting. The areas of needed attention: There are ten main voices in the drum corps orchestration palate: metal keys, wooden keys, aux percussion/timp/piano, high brass, low brass, snares/tenors, bass drums, electronic effects, electronic doubling/boosting, silence. Madison, uses few of these stand alone, or in creative combinations. On this concept alone, Scouts are five years behind.

My response, any staff that walks into a burning building and turns that s### around. Some efforts in my drum corps life time: 1987 Regiment 2003 Scouts 2011-13 Spirit of Atlanta I wish I knew names to give. These weren't slight adjustments, but saved from total destruction scenarios. BRAVO!

Dan, Without going into too much detail about the show design, I will just mention a few things. The show lacks variety. This is what makes it old school to me. Lots of similarity in the drill movement, staging, pictures, orchestrations, and how members get from one place to another. As they should, the sheets reward effective use of variety, which can include the tried and true visual and musical devises, the state of the art, and the innovative. All corps, including those in SOA's competitive tier can make use of these types of devises to up the interest, layers, effect of the production. The show also comes across as if it were constructed the old school way: someone writes the brass book, then someone writes the drum and pit book, then someone writes the drill, then someone remembers the guard is a part of the show too. Lastly, if asked what show theme is the most overdone and predictable and should be avoided, especially by young, building, re-inventing yourself groups? boy meets girl/girl meets boy, etc. If done, it has to be extremely special, unique, re-worked, super clever, refreshing, for it to not come across as cliche, tired, been there/done that. It is also a popular theme with many high school bands. And regardless of the amount of or arrangement approach to playing "Georgia", "Georgia on My Mind", etc. I don't care to hear it done less than it has been many many many times in the past when the corps was much healthier. It is as if no one on the design team knows these things or really thought them through. Since I would rather not believe that in 2016, I assume all these choices were made on purpose for a reason I do not fully get.

I truly hope that all the talk about getting the financial ship righted and solid before spending money they don't have kills the corps forever. They have made two comebacks since their start. A third will be tough. As those of us who have been in the activity a while know, two things kill a drum corps: money problems and alumni. Seems SOA had both issues, albeit not all of their alumni. A few things about the show design and a counter argument to those that seem to be greatly downplaying its importance. Members, teenagers, young 20 somethings are not the same as they were in '75, '85, '95, 2005. Their world is one of a faster pace, and wider variety of things by which they are entertained. They are more eclectic, worldly, informed, etc. With their design choice being late 1980s early 90s, will the members look back after the season is over, or even now and know they could have placed higher, maybe 10 spots higher with a modern-day show? There are many designers out their that have those skills, and not all the big name people either. I think they have to have a good tour experience and a good performance experience doing a show that allows them to be fairly compared to their peers. This show is not that. I am not sure why.

What I thought was great about the 2011-2013 shows was that they did seem like old Spirit to me, but in a much more modern setting. I will always argue that the "Southern" show theme is a very short dead end street. It seemed the 2011-13 designers dropped the Southern rehash, but went to the other stuff Spirit had done and was famous for doing: jazz/swing, fan-friendly shows, time and place, etc. The 2013 show even had Sweet Georgia Brown in it as a ragtime pit feature (which was really well written and played) and a horn hit. The tune fit their 1920s theme, and that is when the tune was written. That was all smart to me. I understand that they did still loose members to other corps during that time but their retention % was going up every year. I loved that they were different than everyone else and ENTERTAINING. I assume that after three solid years back in finals ( they should have been solidly in 11th all three years in my opinion) the shows would have become more sophisticated and competitive as the talent and retention increased. We will never know.

Fine. Call me what you like. I just think you cannot solve problems without being honest with yourself, something Spirit and its well intentioned but uninformed and misguided alumni seem to struggle with through the decades. Yes, decades. Did I mention . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . decades?