TESB

I remember hearing or reading somewhere that the school systems in California go up to mid June so BD is essentially as low as 40 percent attendance during their spring training. It's actually a wonder to me, considering that fact, how BD ever wins anything.

People really need to do the math here instead of scapegoating to percussion every time we talk about what's wrong with Crown. As recently as 2009 they were in 2nd and even if they got perfect twenties last August, they would have still been down a few tenths from first. Captions and their spreads can affect placements in either direction, 08 is a prime example of that, but when a corps ends up down more than a point, there is no point in pointing fingers at any section in particular, there's plenty of responsibility to go around in those cases.

But even if they got a perfect 20 in percussion, they still would have had about a half point deficit for finals night. Crown has kind of had issues in everything but brass. This year was kind of the exception because all their other captions showed 2nd or 3rd place, but seriously people, 09 and 12 went to the corps that deserved it. We forget that Crown went down to 4th in the two years between (not bad spots, but it's not like their 'due' or something just because they've gotten 2nd before) and even then they barely spared themselves 5th place in 11 via brass. In 2009, Crown wasn't in 2nd until the week of Allentown and was still fell to Cadets the next day in East Rutherford. I think it's more accurate to say that they achieved 2nd place from below rather than settled for 2nd in lieu of 1st. As for '12, they had way too many problems for the top spot and I think should count themselves lucky they weren't placed 3rd or their usual 4th due to percussion and visual design and performance. You could even make a sober argument that their brass wasn't so divinely invincible and BD could have taken at least one night at finals. How many kids show up to camp or how many rookies or vets you have is a terrible predictor of the season. I think that's an old corps director's tale to get the kids motivated to show up and work hard at camps, hopefully Cadets can prove that this year once and for all should they do well or at least not topple and crumble. The amount of work done between move ins and the first show trumps whatever trivial progress is amounted when you come to a camp for 48 hours once a month. I'm no expert, but I'd guess that this practice is sort of a relic from the times when corps were predominantly or exclusively composed of local kids where getting together on the weekends was much more practical. In addition to that, BD had from what I heard a huge majority of rookies in 12, like 65% and an even bigger portion of the vets were of the 2nd year variety. 2009 cadets was supposed to be their diamond championship and they had a ton of vets that they were building up for a few years. This is a weird rant but there it is. Before I write down my list, I read something in that same post about BD being in 5th because the show is more accessible or something? Well, idk if you've listened to source material for their show, but it strikes me as the same pretty out there modern jazz as they've been doing in their less popular shows, so sorry to disappoint. Also, it strikes me as weird to assert that in order to have liked cabaret voltaire one must be a shill for bd and like anything bd puts out anyway, especially right after spending a large paragraph predicting crown's first place based on the mental gymnastics of bending every case, anecdote, and circumstance somehow in Crown's favor. I'll always say that there's some weird standard that people hold BD up to that they don't reserve for any other corps when they complain about things like accessibility, melody, drill, difficulty, etc. 1/2 Cadets or BD 3 Phantom 4 Crown 5 SCV 6 Boston 7 Cavs 8 coats 9 madison 10 spirit 11 blue stars 12 xmen

I totally lol'd at this. I do remember someone earlier in the thread saying that everyone's in costumes, not uniforms, and that's apparently a problem. I'm no marching band, music, or military historian, but I imagine we band geeks owe a lot to the military as far as precedent on style, music, look, instrumentation, etc. That Cadet's uniform looks a lot like formal military attire for (I'm assuming) West Point or the US army in general which certainly has it's roots in European formal and military attire. BAC too. oh and Madison. but no one strays too too far from a stylized variation of some sort of military garb. Crown's uniform, especially the last two seasons, has been very bland. Part of that could be that their uniform inserts were basically their cream base color. Crown to me just looks like they could be any high school marching band from anywhere, everything about them (shows, drill, unis) to me just screams BOA. But I do like the chameleon thing they try from year to year. For the Cavaliers, I think the unfortunate truth is that design is a broad umbrella. If you design a show poorly, you're going to get knocked in every caption because a huge part of design is highlighting talents and doing your best to hide your blemishes and flaws. Plus I hear they lost some age outs and vets and that is never good coupled with changes in staff (especially changes in heavily established staff, Gaines!) and now I hear they're brass philosophy is going through changes. But even with that, they still looked like the Cavaliers, the drill was clean, it was just bad. But maybe to understand why that show was so....questionable is to compare it to BD's show (perhaps rather compare it to what BD's show could have been). They both were art shows, BD more directly so, but Cavies show was also about dealing with fame (whatever) but it's still doable. BD's show could have been a super hammy piece of poop where the corps forms a big D A D A or something and had old timey mid-Atlantic accented radio broadcast about who knows what and "and now this part of the show is the WWI part of the show" pew pew pew, boom boom coming from the speakers, made a couple of duchamp ready made shapes in the drill, various dada art on the sideline on the large panels guard changes behind, like this show could have been terrible. And I think that was just what happened with the Green Machine. they took a kinda narrow theme and took a painfully literal interpretation.

Craziness, just goes to show how much the tenths and spreads matter. 1's and 2's all across the board for bd except in percussion (5) and music ensemble (4), which are probably related since perc can make or break the timing integrity of the ensemble. A single tenth of a point higher in either of the percussion judges' sheets and they would have tied, a tenth in both would have put them .025 above Phantom. A tenth added to BD or subtracted from phantom anywhere else would have made the difference because the perc 1 and 2 were the least weighted columns for which a single judge could have been responsible. It was entertaining no matter who should have won, and that was even a decade after BD was anywhere close to a threepeat, let alone a repeat. But certainly what isn't making DCI more entertaining in general is a single winner. Although, in my opinion, BD certainly deserved every gold medal they've gotten since 07, there probably aren't many kids in corps today who marched in or before 07 or 08. What does that mean? Well it probably means that for most of these kids' conscious drum corps lives, all they know is BD winning, winning the entire summer, and winning by a very very healthy margin. Even in 08 they only "lost" twice, and in 11 they were in 1st for like, two of the last three weeks. Idk if there's much to be done about it, you can't force numbers one way or another for reasons as flimsy as 'they win too much'. but it's interesting to think that pretty much all these kids now know is BD is BD and wins because they're BD and it's probably not doing much in the way of entertainment. Just looking at their rosters, it looks like they still have a few holes, so either they're super selective or they just aren't getting kids, because....they don't want to? or they don't think they can? It's not like I'm in the room or anything, but just speculating numbers and whatnot is entertaining for me.

Although in my perfect world, DCI nats would be on pbs every year, I always thought that was a better fit than ESPN2 because DCI doesn't exactly fit with the timing of normal programming with commercials and such, plus (and I'm probably the only one) I thought the presentation was a bit....melodramatic. But also with pbs, along with the lack of donations and whatnot coming through for pbs, people would probably find it easier these days to rip finals in full from the broadcast and never support dci with dvd sales in the winter months. Lose-lose? And I guess my thoughts on that idea of art and stuff, I'd rather show someone those recent BD et al shows, which are deemed inaccessible by many in the activity than say, Rach Star. I think someone outside the activity (even someone in music outside of the activity) would probably take the activity more seriously with those denser shows than the hammy band shows people go crazy for.

Unless the last set of the show or movement is a company front, then all company fronts are really just transitions. I'd say exactly one half of cadets' company fronts (if not more) are transitions to something else, usually their end of show craziness into another company front (hence one half). The technical opening set/drill move of the 09 Crown show was a transition into the stormy we're not in kansas anymore opener.Come to think of it, Crown and BD in 09 had very very similar show beginnings. Just taking the 2012 example, it's a company front without playing, which is the exception for a cf, even for BD, that started a movement (so of course it had to go into something else). Now that I think about it even more, company fronts, if not at the very very very very end of a show, are almost always some sort of mid way checkpoint for effect that goes into something else (yes, sometimes another company front). And that 07 video showed one of like, four, fairly traditional company fronts bd had that year. In fact, I'd say that the company front swirling and consuming itself was something of a visual theme that year.

Yeah it's definitely not one of their "things" and maybe I myself am bending over backwards to say BD has company fronts, but in 2012 after the drum break, 2010 (sorta) just before the end of their show, it basically served the roll of being a company front to end the show, it was just a large arc, 2009 started the show with a company front with rotating files and blocks dissolving it right to left, 2008 had a company front that dissolved into the stick man (I think), 2007 had actually quite a few and more if you count the double arc wings. But for sure, the contexts of their CFs usually aren't the same as with other corps'.

BD has company fronts, major chords, melody and music which last longer than 16 counts. Even given a charitable interpretation to the belief that their musical phrases are short, it's really not a stretch at all to say they play music, they play good music, there is melody, extended musical phrases, all that. No, they don't play music like everyone else (as if 'everyone else' is a definitive thing anyway), but if boops beeps and bops are enough to set people off, Crown's Moren opener and other parts of that show had a lot of that. Just taking 2012, the ONLY part where it really is random beeboobop quotes, which we all apparently dread, is the mingus stuff to the fanfare thing. Before and after that: apollo 13 theme is played pretty straight down and occupies a good half of the opener, the bird and bela stuff is very similar to their closer in '91 and is played with melody, impact, and effect, the satie variations is again taken almost exactly as BS&T did, the jazzy jazz movement is pretty much Peppy and George sprinkled with some Dr. Bones and just in case you didn't notice, some of the movements ended with a variation on the John Adams thing, this one included, and the closer with it's odd intervalic jumps are taken right from Thomas Ades' Tevot. Yeah it's not as popular or recognizable as Fanfare for the Common Man or, idk, Jingle Bells or Nessun Dorma, but it's still gets playtime in my head over and over just like the others. One is really bending over backwards to assert that BD plays, even mostly, snippets and beepadaboopees.

Well I suppose I've always been in the school of thought that good design = good entertainment. I never been more entertained than when watching the blue devils, except yowza and pleeease be theeeerrereeaa. When people say 'It was designed very well, but I wasn't entertained' for me that just makes no sense. One reason why I thought the standings from the last few years were justified was the design came off much more thoughtful the higher you went in placement. I will concede that one aspect of blue devils design is that breaks between movements are somewhat rare and only happen once or twice so they all sort of blend together and they generally don't leave room for clapping. Even in California the brass stabs between the end of Laura and the trumpet solo were met with silence in 2010, but that doesn't mean the Laura balled sucked or made no sense or wasn't entertaining, it just wasn't a "resolving chooooord, band horns down, woooooo!" moment where everyone knew and felt that here is when you clap. That usually doesn't happen in BD shows like it would in, say, Crown or Cadets shows. To me, that doesn't mean they're not entertaining. And I would say one would be backing themselves into a very narrow corner to define entertainment (objectively) by resolving chords and opportunities to go nuts, or crowd reaction for that matter (subjectively there's so much more). How a crowd reacts in any part of the country doesn't really dictate how entertaining a show can be because there are sooooo many other variables. the whole point of that one post wasn't to take a jab at people who don't find bd entertaining (anymore. gee, weren't we all just the biggest BD fans at one point?), rather to point out that premises which are based on crowd reaction can be invalid because both golf clap and cray cray audiences exist for the Blue devils. Also, someone said "but bd used to do jazz shows all the way through, hey wha happen?" or something like that. just the last decade: 2003, 2004, 2005, 2009, 2010. Those were pretty much jazz shows all the way through, maybe one movement isn't exclusively jazz. 2011 was super square poppy jazz, but it's probably more just pop. 2006, 2007, 2008, 2012 had all kinds of jazz! though not 100%.

What's not anecdotal and is fairly empirical are videos of Denver, Riverside, Stockton, Walnut, etc from 2010 and 2012 where there is a more than healthy crowd response than later season shows. When I watched these for the first time, it was really bizarre because usually what I listen to or watch are those later season recordings, most often finals. The major difference is the presence of the crowd and when a crowd can get past a self imposed, manufactured stigma of the design of these shows (there's plenty of reason to love and enjoy these shows, I'm telling you, it's all in your heads that the design is somehow deficient), you get the sort of energy in those videos from the people in the stands that the, actually very well designed, effective moments are supposed to elicit from crowds.

Yeah, so does the 'BD isn't engaging anymore' song

Has anyone ever considered that in California, BD gets pretty decent crowd response? Sure it's their home state, but they get good crowds in Utah, Denver show, and Arizona too when they go. Sure, people don't like their shows, but there's also a strong wind in the crowds east of Colorado that wants a new champ when one presents itself as a possibility, and BD kinda poo'd on that occurrence, plus they're a beloved bad guy. Put that on top of the regional bias and recent lame crowd responses to championship shows which some here are so eager to point out sort of make sense. And it's not silence, or booing usually.

This last finals at LOS had the highest finals attendance since DCI moved there and the Big loud live had the most people in theaters since they started that. And merch sales are up.

Someone said earlier that the Apollo 13 melody was covered up and ruined by vocals and I was about to say, really? Then I went back and listened to it and yeah it was there, but I never noticed it, not even during the summer. The only time I did notice vocals was during that shrinking box part where the music being played was minimalist anyway and not covered up at all. Another time was in the beginning of the ballad when no one but the pit was playing and the sample ended before the trumpet solo. If I can't hear the music with the samples, then it's covered up. I can hear all the music in all the parts of Cabaret Voltaire. Therefore, at no point did vocals cover up the music and drone on and on and on and on. Since the vocals were largely in French and German, I'm not so sure it was intended that we listen to them to take meaning out of it anyway, but it seems it was there to emphasize the idea that you're watching a show at Cabaret Voltaire through the lens of a dci show and give a little context in that sense. I think this is just a classic case of "hey! there are vocals and music at the same time at these like, two or three snippets of the show, ipso facto BD had vocals everywhere and covered up enough of their music to make me angry at and about BD." This sort of logic was applied to through a glass darkly all the time in 2010. Maybe I'm just not the type of person who ever stands up, yells, and goes crazy for performances whether I enjoyed it or not. Even for Madison or one of those corps where the show is about 30-60 seconds from even being over and everyone around me is already going nuts and I have to stand up just to see what's going on on the field. When I saw BD in 2010 at finals, yeah I didn't really react, I sat motionless just mesmerized for the longest time and thought it was the greatest thing on the field that night. I have no idea how many people are out there who react to shows like me, but I still think that how nuts a crowd goes is no good way to measure whether a show was good or deserved a championship. And I've sat at Allentown and chuckled myself when all the old conservative fans there were making fun of BD's dresses, but putting on a uniform on the field in a given amount of counts is probably pretty stressful and demanding especially given if you didn't do it right, you looked like an idiot for the rest of the show. and pushing around horses or heavy mirrors is also pretty demanding I imagine, especially when you're fatigued in the middle of a show with a ton of jackets and shakos on them or in thick grass, Jarvis wheels like the ones they used definitely don't just glide easily across even AstroTurf . And I'd venture to guess that if crown had done a dada show, people would have suddenly cared about some Euro snobs' art movement however many years ago.

right, drum corps won't die or diminish because someone doesn't like what the Blue Devils do

I think this is sort of the crux of the "bd designs/plays to the judges" discussion. My guess is that since the staff at BD has not only been around for a while, but around together at that particular corps, they probably would get tired of putting out the same old same old and start writing and putting out shows that entertain themselves first and sort of assume that an audience might share in that entertainment. Judges have similarly sort of seen it all and would certainly be eager to positively judge something that's done well and done thoughtfully or in a very new way and BD has offered exactly that in the last half decade or so and they get 4 rings in 6 years for it and blew it only finals week in the 2 years they didn't everything. It absolutely doesn't hurt that they consistently get great technique scores in music and visual and that's probably a testament to the talent that goes there. But that 'same old same old' isn't to crap on other corps, but for me personally, most shows from most other corps in the last 5 years really could blend together or be interchanged without much difference, I mean cadets from 2007 might as well have been cadets 2012 or 2010, it's just their brand that they deviate from very little (ignore the "theme" and write up on the story for shows and you might know what I mean). That goes for other corps like coats or phantom who put out fairly similar looking and sounding shows year to year. For things like that, I think it goes beyond adhering to a particular corps' style or identity and shows year to year and up being just the same old same old. Crown does a pretty good job at making every year super unique and not just because of their chameleon unis, but I will say 08, 09, some of 10 and 12 have very very similar drill and overall show arc. So maybe it's not that BD plays to the sheets or to the judges, but that judges and the design staff at BD might share not quite a boredom with the activity, rather a desire to see something new, clever, thoughtful and see it done really well.

To assert that BD lacks melodic development in their shows is to be just wrong. The Laura theme in 2010 developed just fine from the beginning of their ballad to the closer. The jazz movement was one long extended musical phrase, as was their closer. 2009 had wayyyy more than just quotes, the whole opener was a good minute and a half of a straight down arrangement, rialto ripples? there was a whole movement with a melody based on a two measure ostinato pattern. there was a jazz movement in that show to which had melodic development from beginning to end and it all kinda came together in the closer. 2007 had Pegasus written all over and into it! I think some of this begs the question "other than fanfare for the common man and the EEDCD motif, what was the melody in For the Common Good?" really? think about that opener and whistle the melody, I can't, I just end up whistling snippets Klesch's interpretation of Dreams, and there is nothing wrong with that. Just like the source material, it really is deep bizzle zim zam chop bops to chord you guys love to complain about but it's not bad. Even the maniacal part was just a technique section and the subsequent melody last no more than 30 seconds and there's nothing wrong with that and Crown was great! Remember that part in crown's show where they just did scatter and played dissonant chords in short bops (not a joke)? and so what BD doesn't play their source material straight down like a pep band tune (not that there's anything wrong with that), they take a source and tend to arrange in and around it and if not practically verbatim and they get something quite original and engaging. The point is that perhaps all this "where's the beef melody?" talk and standard isn't exactly evenly distributed among all our most beloved and hated corps "I'm old and I don't need a-tellin-to what a melody is" is not an excuse for dismissing the musical expression and qualities in recent BD shows. I really don't even have to go so far as to say chillax roll a fatty and then watch a bd show and you'll get it (though it can't hurt), because it's really right in front of your eyes and ears. And only in DCP land can you go on an arguably positive BD thread, say "no wait, bd does do melody here, here, here, here, here, and here" and get a net negative thumb rate thingy.

Nope. BD has had melodies and "real music" all along, they never haven't. It is seriously a matter of people who are inclined to dislike BD (newsflash: people have been hating blue devils since their first championship show and through the 80s, 90s, 00s, to now, yet people are now suddenly so eager to pine for those shows as if they loved BD all along) choosing not to hear it so that they can say 'they never play melodies'. 2012 had the satie melody and the apollo 13 melody throughout as well as the jazz piece from The Artist, 2011 was a freakin burt bacharach show, 2010 had Laura, incident in jazz, and La suerte melodies throughout AND it was a Kenton show so poo poo on those who claim shows like this lack a comprehensible concept or central theme. 2009 was full of melodies, I've got rhythm, rhapsody in blue just to name some of the Gershwin in that show, don't forget the happy days are here again and get happy tunes. 2008 had the sweeny todd them, the gordon goodwin take on the Bach invention, I will wait for you (!). Sure there are beeps and bops in places but that's certainly not what BD shows are exclusively, it's just something they do (and not even that often, people just hang on to those moments and allow it to drive their 'bd never does good things i like' narrative) and a lot of people happen to like it. This isn't hard people, none of the past five years shows' melodies were subdued, subtle, sparse, clouded, random, or confusing and that paragraph there is by no means exhaustive. 2013 probably won't be any different.

Wow, if any corps has had rinse and repeat execution, it's certainly hasn't been the Blue Devils.

No one said they're flukes or ill deserved, but they're not divine. And you and I and everyone else on DCP know that such programming is very far from regularly scheduled. Plus, I think you just dismissed the seldom BD praise of awards and wins right after pointing out Crown's own awards and accomplishments of placement.

Ahhhh that's not a joke, that's just stating what BD does with a little stank on it. People forget that the BD was awfully close to Crown in brass the whole summer and even topped them at various points. And one could make the argument that BD could have taken Ott at retreat, if not won brass at least one of the last three nights. "Jokes" like these perpetuate the myth that Crown somehow has brass immunity and the blue devils are on some free ride with the judges.

I don't see the joke. I think it was some swipe at BD for the music that they put out in 2010.

oh fa sho that's definitely the case with brass, but I was referring to vis vis. I was thinking, those gold horns sounded so pretty how on earth could they have been fourth or fifth (I can't recall what they were in brass by finals) and it went through my mind at the time that it could possibly be their on field physical intervalic relationships. I actually find it much harder to keep up with things like foot timing and other visualness when the spread is so wide, but I thought 10 was one of Crown's better visual years, but they got low vis scores so what do I know. and Crown definitely does not use the whole field the entire show, this is empirically false. not even given a charitable interpretation of "the entire show", it's like one movement. especially relative to other corps, Crown is no outlier in field coverage.

I'm pretty sure if a corps is spread out, individuals tend not stick out because the kids aren't close enough together where it's easy to pinpoint individuals' mistakes from the group as a whole. This is, after all, opposed to catching individual stick outs when they're crammed "into very tight forms" which should be relatively extremely easy. I guess I can only speak for myself, but even if a corps is spread across the whole field I don't really have a hard time reading what's going on no matter where I sit. And if it's Crown we're talking about here, the only time I recall them being so spread out in '12 was for the ballad, and even then (probably due to the spread) the visual body work phased and was wonky but they did deservedly get credit for the music there. Otherwise I think crown was pretty much on par with everyone else as far as field coverage. Don't forget BD performed the first half of their Satie ballad endzone to endzone (in the key of E no less!) trading oompahs across 100 yards in the low brass. And even their closer basically went from one side of the field to the other, covering all 100 yards, front sideline to back sideline. The cluster group at the end of the bird and bela movement snakes out by section to the four corners of the field in a matter of like, 40 counts at some 200 bpm. It's not as if no one else is doing this. Cavaliers have recently taken advantage of big visual spreads in addition to their 2 step interval grid drill schtick. Cadets have always been all over the field. Bottom line is that crown does box rotations, pinwheels, straight lines, curvy lines, and follow the leader at 2, 3, 4, and sometimes 6 step intervals just like every other corps. One should be very careful when complaining crown doesn't get credit for difficulty or something, because they do. And so does everyone else when they do it well. It does no one any good when we speak like Crown is getting shafted despite their gloriously artistic broad brushstrokes which spare neither any corner of the gridiron nor sliver of chance to be called easy. They get credit when they go big and do well and when they don't (sec2nd chance) when they have stick outs.