skywhopper

Yes! Troopers and Mandarins (and SCV, too, I'd say) this year presented great examples of how embracing your identity can lead to audience support which in turn feeds competitive success. Other corps top to bottom should be looking towards these corps' examples when considering their 2014 show designs and their overall future strategies.

Indeed BD's 2014 application page says "Your financial obligation to the Blue Devils for the 2014 season will be approximately $1,500.00 - $2,200.00." The way that's written, I assume it includes uniform fees, camps, etc. Looks like Vanguard is $2,250 plus $300-450 in camp fees. But BD and SCV are the most financially sound corps, so they don't need to depend as much on member fees as most other corps. As for the total revenue, Garfield has done quite a bit of research into this area. Crown puts on a couple of shows, and does some off-season fundraising, plus they run an band-equipment sales operation and an online ticketing operation. Of course, the top corps probably get $200,000 at least in appearance fees and DCI revenue sharing. Could be a lot more than that, I'm not sure, and the impact of the TOC on that line item is not 100% clear.

1 Crown 2 Vanguard (I think they were far underscored in Music and Visual GE) 3 Cadets 4 Blue Devils (I personally don't understand the high visual GE/analysis scores, but more importantly I think they were overscored in Music Analysis and GE) 5 Phantom Regiment 6 Bluecoats (intriguing design, great but underutilized brass) 7 Boston 8 Madison 9 Cavaliers (nice visual design, but never clean, and their brass was a huge letdown this year) 10 Spirit 11 Blue Knights (great First Circle, too much other narration) 12 Troopers (sorry Blue Stars)

There's lots of innovative LED stuff going on out in the world, that might look awesome sewn into uniforms, on flags, or what-have-you, but it would likely be too expensive to do at DCI ensemble scale for a few more years. Perhaps that's a good argument for dropping the corps size back to 128.

Looks like Crown, with all fees, charges about $3400 total for camps, tuition, registration, uniforms, etc. Pioneer, on the other end of the WC results scale, is about $2500 with tuition and camp fees.

In your posts, every mention you make of DCA is extremely negative. All because someone pointed out that DCA is structured basically how you suggested that DCI's OC should be structured.

I'd love this. Lots of great John Adams takes in the past few years. Blue Stars 2010 did an amazing "Landing of the Spirit of 76" from Nixon in China (9:15-10:45 on the Fan Network 2010 Finals video). SCV did great justice to "The Chairman Dances" from NiC in 2008. And of course Cavies used echoes of Grand Pianola Music in their 2009 show. Plus a few corps that dared to do Short Ride in a fast machine 13 years ago or so. But I don't think anyone has done anything from Klinghoffer. I think you could do a great show from Nixon in China alone, too. Start with the actual opener, play it pretty faithfully, then take tidbits from the middle for the ballad, and finish up with an extended take on Chairman Dances, and that's an amazing musical lineup.

I feel about the same. Troopers 2009 was a grrrreat fresh take on it, I felt.

So, anyone have a more recent rulebook?

How old are you?

I still don't understand why you need to trash DCA. I would say that Open Class already operates much like you describe. Several OC corps only tour regionally. There aren't really enough of them to have actual regionals, except maybe on the west coast. OC used to have its finals in the same place as WC during the same week, but IIRC, the OC directors wanted the current separate setup. Still, if you're right about why kids would never want to march in DCA (despite the fact that many do), then why does anyone march in OC?

How about video screens on robotic wheels that move around the field and depict individual members executing visual moves flawlessly and sometimes impossibly. It's like synth for the visual caption.

You're skipping over the parts where he titled the post "why I usually don't take Cadets to the South" and said that it was "a mistake" to have done so this year. Regardless of the details of what he wrote or what he meant, he was impolite at best and rude at worst, and the post was not appropriate as an official statement from one of the top corps in DCI. Clearly the folks who got upset disagree. I didn't get upset myself, but I rolled my eyes and sighed at the kind of broad-brush negative characterization of "the South" that you never see when discussing other regions of the US. What does upset me is people trying to spin what he said as harmless or "just being honest". Honesty is often the opposite of politeness. There are dozens of nicer ways he could have made his point. The fact that Hop often "does a brain dump" is no defense. In his position, doing negative brain dumps on the Cadets Facebook page is not appropriate behavior.

As brilliant as the guy is and as many great things he has done for drum corps, he also has had plenty of bad ideas and made big mistakes and driven a lot of people away from the activity. But many people (Cadets alums specifically) will consistently argue that so long as he's doing it out of love, it's okay and everyone else should quit complaining.

Music City performed in front of a huge crowd at Murfreesboro and got a tremendous audience response to their terrifically entertaining program. They got more applause than this year's silver medalist, and they put on a more entertaining show, IMO, than all but three or four of the G7 who performed that same night. Thank you Music City for years of entertaining programs. You will be sorely missed.

Glad you admit you're a troll.

I take "bell front" to mean that the bell has to be the front-most part of the instrument when it's being held, which would explain why sousaphones are iffy and why trombones are not allowed. As for pre-show, there was some mention of a rule clarification in the past few years where it was determined that you can use any instrument in the pre-show. Woodwinds, trombones, pianos, non-electric guitars, etc.

That presentation is clearly written by George Hopkins. No one else in drum corps has his way with the written word.

What is your point exactly? Are you arguing that DCA should shut down?

Looks like Crown spent $300,000 more on its drum corps operations in 2012 than in 2011, an increase of 30%. Those cubes must've been expensive!

Heh, the G7 used the fact that the slogan is "Marching Music's Major League" to argue for dropping support for any groups that weren't clearly superior to the best high school and college marching bands... just sayin.

Actually the percussion sheets don't reward fitting the music. That's what the MA sheet is for. The Cadets percussion line was astounding, no doubt. They won drums for displaying immense skill with an incredibly difficult book. But their arrangements often did not fit the music at all. The best argument in favor of these sections I've heard is that they were part of the Side X Side theme in that they intentionally did not fit. I'm fine with generating some rhythmic dissonance if that's what you're going for, but don't call it harmony. This is a ridiculous thing to say. Fact is that Crown's battery and front ensemble arrangements were very challenging and spectacularly fun to watch and listen to. So they aren't the best percussion in DCI. You can be sure they did *their* best. And if some people felt their percussion arrangements were ultimately the best overall, get over it. If you can only enjoy the top percussion line and feel the need to #### on all the rest, you have a very sad life.

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Well, their shakos were part of the show.

If you can stand to sit with fans of a particular corps, several corps resell tickets in or near the "Friends" zone on their websites to anyone for the face value of the ticket. Crown this year had some seats available in a very good section IIRC. Phantom had such as well, in a slightly less good section.