Quad Aces

And she’s from Marian Catholic, so double bonus...

Has Phantom released an official title yet, or is the best that we know so far that their show will be about Joan of Arc?

Buy your ticket through a corps. For a very small markup ($10 or so) which acts as a fundraiser for that corps, you get to sit in one of those “blocked out” seats. Just make sure you get it early - all tickets through the corps typically sell out by about the middle or the end of July. Then you HAVE to buy the Ticketmaster tickets in the end zones or on the 5 yard lines if you still want to go. Or you will have to turn to the reseller market. Been doing this for years. If you do your research, you can have your pick of pretty good seats, as each corps gets different seats to sell.

So Sue Blenski is still involved with the corps? Doesn’t that mean that Roman by default is too?

I agree - this is a small sample size, and wasn’t done in a “Texas” year. Being a non-Texas year this year, you will probably see a number of bands from Texas (Hebron, Flower Mound, Ronald Regan, LD Bell, The Woodlands, etc.) make Finals next year, as well as a number of bands from Texas make Semifinals. To do this more accurately, you would need to take these “non-off years” into account.

I wanted to mention this, but wasn’t sure how to work it in to a DCI World Class discussion. Marian Catholic has made Finals at Grand Nationals for 34 years in a row (up until this year when they came in 15th), while winning 7 times (three of which were in a row). The streak of 34 years in a row making Finals, considering there are about 100 of the best bands in the country that start out in Prelims, is a streak that is unparalleled in any organized activity. Factor in that they are a private school with the high cost of a Catholic education (I don’t believe any of the Finalist bands this year are private schools), and lower enrollment and budget compared to their competition as a result, and it is even more amazing. Marian’s enrollment I believe is a little over 1000, while this year’s Grand Nationals Champion, Carmel High School from IN, is about 5000. Marian’s tuition is probably close to $10,000/year, while Carmel’s is free. So it becomes difficult to ask Marian’s parents to contribute more financially to their children’s band activities. I can only guess at Carmel’s budget, and would say that it easily is nowhere near Marian’s. Someone suggested that these top national public band programs’ budgets could easily be in the $250k/year range. Suffice it to say that Marian probably won’t be using 10 giant video screens any time soon in their shows. Greg Bimm, the director at Marian for all 34 of those years (and more) is a legend and a master at what he does. He does have a couple of assistants as well, which are brilliant in their own right. One of Greg’s past assistants that he had for a while left to take another high-profile national job at Wando High School in South Carolina - this year Wando came in 6th. Congratulations to Marian for being one of the (and possibly the) best band program in the country - because their success isn’t limited to just marching either - for all these years.

Never mind - scheduling conflict. It helps if you actually read the article instead of just looking at the schedule 😀. Hope it returns for 2020.

You beat me to it. Does anyone know what happened with the Midwest Regional from last year? It was great taking a trip down to St. Louis, and it seemed very well attended.

Ah - got ya. Yes, that is very true. It’s not too often you get a California band for example (let alone a Hawaii band). And there are some very good bands in California.

I politely beg to differ in that “few choose to make” is a bit of an understatement IMHO. You do get quite a bit of bands from outside the Midwest to attend Grand Nationals. This year alone there are bands from Texas, North Carolina, Tennessee, South Carolina, Arkansas, Utah, Georgia, California, Florida, Oklahoma, West Virginia, and Oregon.

“Ladies and Gentlemen, on the field in competition, the 2019 Tarpon Springs High School Marching Band. Their show is titled Ready Player 2”.

I can understand that too, but to a point. Isn’t it like hiring a convicted bank robber to be a teller at a bank?

Thousands? How about just one? Or have someone else double up on their duties and pay them more accordingly. Anything should be preferable to hiring someone whose teaching license was suspended for sexual misconduct while teaching for yet another teaching position.

I strongly disagree with this. This person cannot possibly be that good to where a suspended teaching license for sexual misconduct is trumped by their ability. Without being close to any of these situations, the impression that I’m getting is that these hirings may be either the result of nepotism, or this may be some form of closed network where the guilty are being protected for whatever reason. There is no valid reason where a corps director can give the ok on a hiring like this in good conscience, knowing that he/she is not considering the rest of the organization that they are responsible for. I guess the other possibility in these situations is that the directors involved really think that instances of sexual misconduct such as these are not that big of a deal, or everyone else is blowing the situation out of proportion. Either way, incredibly terrible decision making that doesn’t show the responsibility of the care of the whole organization being taken seriously. The boards of the organizations where decisions on these directors haven’t already been made really need to realize what they have gotten themselves into here.

I will never understand why a corps (or other organization) decides it’s ok to bring in someone with a background like this. And now we have a number of examples of this very thing. So there is absolutely no one in the entire world without a stain in their background that can do their job the same, if not better? Really?? How does that hiring conversation go? “So we’ve got this guy who got his teaching license suspended for sexual misconduct.” “Great - we have to have that guy, he’s hired!!” For the love of God, why would you even go there? Don’t the people running the corps have the ounce of forsesight it takes to realize that it is going to be a very bad thing to do? And yet they do it anyway? Don’t people running a corps have a responsibility to look out for what’s best for all of the people involved, and not just what’s best for a single individual? What makes the people with backgrounds like this SO special, that the corps that hire them absolutely cannot exist without them?

Was in the same type of situation. Was a groomsman in a wedding of a good friend of mine (old trumpet teacher) in finals in 2001. He follows DCI and still decided to get married on Finals night, despite my objections :) Still to this day, 2001 is the only Finals that I have missed going to live since 1989. He is now divorced - go figure...

I posted this in the BD forum and didn’t get a response, so I thought I would try it as it’s own thread. DCI’s Artistic Director said on the Season Preview Field Pass podcast that by the end of the season BD would be doing something on the field that no one has ever done before. Does anyone know what that is?

I remember DCI’s Artistic Director saying on the season preview Field Pass podcast that by the the end of the season BD will be doing something on the field that no one has ever done before. Does anyone know what that is?

Ah - forgot about them this year. Thanks for the reply!

Does anyone know why OC has 13 corps in their finals and WC has 12? Thanks in advance!

But should the BD rookies really be considered rookies? How many of these “rookies” come with experience from another top corps? How many of these are true rookies to drum corps? The term “rookie” these days doesn’t mean the same as it used to, so drawing conclusions from the number of rookies in a corps really doesn’t mean much IMHO.

Not bad, but what did I miss - is the season over already??

Does anyone know why SCV is not at this show? I’m going to it, and don’t get me wrong, I’m excited to be going, but how can this be considered a regional if SCV isn’t going to be there?

Kdaddy beat me to it - drum corps music today is pretty much original music anyway. More often than not, you are lucky if you hear more than a few bars of any of the pieces listed in a corps’ repertoire. What the corps are currently putting out is the arrangers’ ideas that are influenced by the rep.

The only thing I would like to respectfully take exception with what you said is the “innovative” part. I’m curious as to why you feel they have been so innovative (and more so than any other corps). Ecellent performers, fantastic design, and as of late, more fan-friendly - but what makes them so innovative (i.e putting things out on the field that no other corps has ever done)? I brought this same topic up in a separate thread a while back, and I learned a lot from the responses.