TESB

Idk why this is getting negative votes, this is probably the most realistic scenario. If anything kills the activity as we know it (a bunch of kids and staff and millions worth of equipment going on a near two month multi million dollar cross country tour on buses and trucks) it will be largely due to the financial limitations of transportation. Posts with rallying cries for fans not attending shows and threatening DCI with financial ruin because BD wins too much get plenty of up votes but don't make any sense. Pointless blue red, makers takers politicking aside, usable oil won't be around forever (or even sooner, cheap enough gas won't be around such that corps can feasibly travel like they do without extravagant tour fees) and we'll never be able to replicate the capacity to which we depend on fossil fuels for transportation with alternative fuels, none of that is controversial. I'm not saying corps will die, corps will probably always be around for kids, but the activity as we've become accustomed to it probably has a shelf life. If anything, the long term effect could be the localization of corps that do minimal travelling and we could see numbers of corps like we did in the 60s and 70s. Thinking aloud, but the only way I could imagine corps getting around like they do now when gas becomes unrealistically expensive is by rail, which is how entertaining groups got around before automobiles got the monopoly on primary transportation. That depends on a lot of things like getting to a point where the rail infrastructure could support such ventures. But above all, I think it's undeniable the activity has a shelf life like anything and DCI won't die because you don't like the Blue Devils. Cherish it while it's still here because you never know when we'll get to the point where people coming into the activity now won't be able to put their kids through the same system as they went through.

I don't know if I'm right or not, I'm pretty sure Crown has had that same drill writer for quite a few years, but something like 3 or 4 different vis caption heads and staffs that I'm aware of. Yet no one has quite been able to get the hang of the "look at all the stuff I can do on pyware!" style he has, to me anyway. Like I said, people have observed how well Crown can score in visual for how messy than can look, 09 circa Allentown comes to mind so maybe my idea of what should be a good feet score is different than the actual definition that's on the sheets. But May does have a style, there is definitely consistent syntax and vocabulary he speaks with and I especially enjoyed the 80s Cadets and 93 Star quotes and allusions I thought I perceived in the drill writing in 2012. But I think hands down the best drill writer of the last few years has been whoever the person or team is at BD. Nobody balances and stages the field quite like them. Does anyone remember the 45 degree funhouse mirror reflection effect between high and low brass at the hit in the Laura ballad in 2010? Just genius. People (erroneously) pointed out how easy and lacking of marching in drill sets 09 was but I thought that show had the best drill ever written at the time. I could talk about Cabaret Voltaire for a long, long time, that show is beyond genius. Just a clinic on how to write thoughtful, unique drill. they deserved those 20s on the sheets and then some.

If you can't see the widespread visual dirt in For the Common Good, then I can understand why you might think Crown deserved the gold or got robbed or something. I mean from cubes>hula hoops is kinda what I'm inferring there. If there's one thing I learned in DCI, it's not to bash other kids' shows because I know I put my heart and soul and gallons of sweat into mine, but come on, FTCG just had near constant foot timing issues, interval issues, form control issues, kids breaking down technique to make dots, that means bouncing all over the place, catching air on just 6-5s. Some of the halts were really good, actually, but there were just as many that just looked bad, like what were supposed to be straight diagonals looked like stair steps. even consider that body in the fanfare ballad, almost no two or more than a few kids looked the same even at checkpoints and the spread of kids probably contributed to all that visual phasing. Aside from the rotating cube (which you could tell they just repped endlessly) they got away with murder in their closer considering they won feet, just those same interval problems, foot timing, kids falling behind, sinking down on direction changes, not completing visual phrases. Press pause at any of the crazy drill parts and it's hard to tell what's going on, who's in what pinwheel or what kids are even doing, where they're going, who they're with. Um Himmels Willen, the last set of the show, the Crown set was ugly! I'm sorry, it was, check out Cadets Crown set for comparison! Look at the way the feet line up in the front row and the not occasional, but routine interval errors and leanings, it's supposed to be 1-3-3-1 two step intervals and some kids toes are very close to or on yardlines. I really don't enjoy bashing kids and their shows on a public medium, but as a Crown fan, I know it's tough to swallow shortcomings and its frustrating to see reasoning like this. We collectively love to make excuses about percussion and the like, but even if Crown got a 20, they'd still have been about half a point short of BD. Maybe I'll get a ton of down votes for this, but you don't have to be looking for these things to notice them, you don't have to Madden the hell out of it.

I recall over the summer Hopkins addressing this issue in judge critiques. He posted on facebook I think sometime during the Texas tour week something about an account of a conversation he had with judges. He pointed out that formula of playing in half time or standing still and making the big moves during the fancy music or no music at all. He must have been talking about BD and Crown. Boy were cadets hauling this year. Even Crown was visually never seriously taxed for more than a few drill moves at a time. Seriously, really watch the shows and count how many times kids' feet hit the ground between yard lines, pay attention to whether toes are up or down, and you'll be surprised not only at how often Crown's drill was pretty reasonable and how rarely they actually needed to go toes down, but also how many 6-5s and 5-5s and 4-5s you missed in Cabaret Voltaire or Turandot or 12.25 because you wanted to believe their shows were too easy and Crown has the hardest most difficult show ever in DCI history ever(!), and that doesn't even begin to address how clean anyone's drill was. But Cadets just never stopped and played all the while, the pacing was killer compared to Crown or BD or PR's show, they just almost never got a break. Hop had a point. Maybe this is the wrong topic to talk about this but oh well lol.

Come on. There is so much wrong with the assertion that because BD wins or one can predict an outcome to a show, people will stop coming to shows. First of all, there is plenty of shake up in every placement every year. People get fixated on BD winning finals 3 of the last 5 years and feel they speak for a big enough chunk of DCI's fan base and declare some sort of boycott that will kill DCI. Cadets went from 3rd to 5th to 1st to 4th. Phantom went from 9th to 6th to 5th to 3rd. Troopers, colts, madison, crossmen, blue stars, glassmen, and spirit among others have been in and out of finals (some more than once) in the last few years. Cavaliers were looking like BD in 2011 what with their consistent 1st placement by a large margin until Texas and fell in placement this year. Crown has been a rising star since they fell out of finals in 2002 and even they had blue devils beaten at a regional in 2011. Boston has been all over the map, scv has spent time on discs 1 and 2 recently. Bloo was in top three in 2010 and 7th the next year. I guess that also kinda answers the question of DCI standings stagnation. Second of all, I'm pretty sure this year's finals had the highest attendance in the stadium since DCI moved to lucas oil and the most people in theaters for the fathom event. So heaven forbid there are some corps that are consistently better than others. Of all the things that will kill DCI as we know it, grudges against placements from a vocal minority or fans won't be among them.

There's definitely room for criticism about the way they did Common Man. I like Fanfare, but I did kinda find it annoying that when they did get to playing the (verbatim?) fanfare ballad, it was like, the fifth time it showed up in the show. And I noticed that the long note ending fanfare had a ton of glaring holes in it, people dropping out to breath and coming in out of the texture the whole time. Am I the only one with a broken blu ray disc with a bad recording or something? I think there are more than a few people who find it hard to believe they deserved feet, though. Especially considering they were 2nd or below by healthy margins in every other visual category pretty much the whole season, the fact that they eeked out 2 tenths ahead of BD in feet the last two nights of the season was just strange to say the least. I mean, people have always been saying that Crown manages to get some pretty high feet scores considering how dirty they tend to be, not only in 2012. For some reason I just can't buy that their show was so much harder visually than anyone else's that it was enough to win feet for how dirty they were compared to BD or Cadets or PR (none of whom had easy shows) They do sound good on the move, but the general case in 2012 was they played their loud stuff in half time or at the big halts and their mezzo rhythmic stuff at their big running moves. The exceptions would be a few moments in the opener and the closer. People always accuse BD of pulling that crap but Crown does it just the same.

Idk, now they have two really thick white stripes along their right legs and at least on the fannetwork it nearly looks like they have one white leg and one black leg, like it realllly shows up. That can be arguably even more revealing of foot timing and leg shape because it visually isolates every other beat and a single leg. But I think above all, judges aren't daft and probably aren't fooled by the color of the uniform or the particulars of style. I find that in even our favorite Green Machine shows it's hard to come by two Cavaliers who really look the same like two straight leg marchers would look the same. The bent leg style just has way too many variables, which is the nature of that choice in technique and judges have probably been forgiving (rightfully so) for that fact in the past. My personal taste is straight leg just looks cleaner, but it's also a departure from what drum corps used to be, so it has that stigma attached to it.

BD won with a white stripe at least in 07, 09, 10, and 12. I think they had white stripes in the 80s too for some of their wins

Not finals night (or many nights), no, but I think at Allentown they topped them in perc and maybe one of the TOC shows too. But the TOC scores were always jacked up

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the judge who evaluates things like leg shape and foot timing on the field anyway? and those two, thick white stripes on BD expose leg shape AND foot timing on the right leg, so it swings out for us to see on the not down beats.

ahhhh, this is the Truth. BD's shows are not really any easier than any other corps' show any given year. The exception might be the ridiculousness that Crown pulled off this past summer and they were rewarded, but they certainly did look like they were one direction change from a disaster (earlier in this thread someone noted that Cadets didn't look as straight as Crown this year and idk what that person is smoking). I know it's been said before and sounds unbelievable, but there's just something about the way BD moves that you never notice the difficulty not only in stamina, but in odd counts, odd assignments, and pulling off moves that don't look like you could just slap it on pyware, print it, and forget it.

I think it's important to juxtapose BD and Crown from 2012, to answer the question. If you'll recall all of the threads that were started and opinions that were posted about BD and Crown. I think it wasn't until Allentown when people on dcp were finally coming to terms with and rationalizing the fact that Crown sadly might not pull an 08. Generally it's safe to assume that BD fans are vastly outnumbered on this website considering the lack of BD 2012 threads and updates and the zillion pages of fan support and daily schedules and rehearsal site info coming from the Crown 2012 thread. Most of these answers are about brass or it all being a matter of personal taste and that's all. well there wouldn't be much point or fun in these DCP threads if the answer to everything was "to each his own" or "well just check out the scores and see who was better or worse". At least in 2012, I can say that the show was pretty well put together and clearly would have won any other year the BD didn't also happen to sweep the whole summer. Although FTCG had it's flaws like when we actually hear Fanfare, it's only the 4th time or so that we've heard it, or when anyone takes a 6-5 or more most technique breaks down, as far as GE goes (real GE, not how much one likes the show) you never sat there asking yourself "and why am I listening to this now? how did we get here?" and it was rewarded for that. BD was rewarded for the same thing, even though they got a lot of beef from fans about not being able to "get" or "understand" the show, whatever that means. Even the description of Cabaret Voltaire on the dvd says something like "just keep watching, you'll get it eventually." Rant: getting and understanding shows I think is the weakest critique people have on a show and it's usually directed towards BD shows. If you didn't have the paragraph or two to explain a show in the yearbook or press release, I'm sure most people would be fine with accepting the fact that shows boil down to music that fits well together and good visuals to go with it (I don't know jack about perc and colorguard). Maybe a subtle or obvious common theme (musically and/or visually) that ties certain things together is present, but nothing that anyone could easily identify as "this show is about second chances" or "this show is about the perils of a rock star's lifestyle" or "in order to get this show, understand that it's all about a common struggle for a goal" or something. Show accessibility and comprehension is just a way of getting around saying "I don't like the show therefore it shouldn't win" in place of "it's simply not my taste in music for some arbitrary reason that probably has more to do with them not being my corps of choice" If you consider Cabaret Voltaire and remember that a lot of people had a problem with having to wikipedia an art movement to get a show, you'd realize that the conversation was going somewhere quite double standard-y. All you needed to know (you really didn't even need to know, but it kinda helped) that dada was about taking A, doing something to it, taking B, doing something to it, putting A and B together to get C or something different. That's really it. And it's really not all that different from what shows do anyway, but whoever does their drill really played with that theme very thoughtfully and cleverly. Like I've said before, people like to bend over backwards in their reasoning to the point that a BD show is so terribly inaccessible and everyone loves Crown's show so much that we need to claim that the judging sheets and good shows are two different things. summer rant over. Forgetting the chance one take shake up of numbers on the last night, BD and Crown exchanged 1st in both vis and music GE, visual performance, percussion, even color guard I think. BD even won brass one time, throughout the season. Crown did do really really difficult drill, there is no contesting that. And the judges probably looked favorably on the difficulty and excusing the way they looked by assuming they probably couldn't look all that much better given the drill (one should take note of the easier to perform sections of Crown's show and you'll see that they look pretty darn good). But I think above all what gives Crown fan's a reason to love Crown is they have a solid identity. We (I) can bs all day long about show design and technique and what works, but I really think that there's so much more to it than the meat and potatoes of drum corps. There's something to be said about manufactured tradition and people like that, they grasp it well. I've already seen way more than once on prediction threads or similar ones that it's a given that Crown is the brass corps and that they'll win Jim Ott and (I've heard this) "bring it home" just because they're Crown year after year. It seems Crown fans already collectively forgotten that we didn't win Ott in 10, 08 and never before that. We've forgotten with only one year that we're perfectly capable of putting out a "what, why?" show and suddenly expect Crown BD showdowns to happen in the coming years. That's all a pretty healthy thing maybe and it's what makes people like crown a lot. But be honest, if you were to show to a "normal" person a dci show who's never heard or seen drum corps, would you choose Crown or BD? I think I'm right in assuming that the average person isn't going to have the same preferences regarding accessibility as a dci fan who was desperately pulling for a crown or madison because they wouldn't have an image in their head of what big loud traditional drum corps is, so I would choose BD. Maybe anyone's personal answer to that question is important to answer where you stand on the OP's proposition?

Oh yeah! those are always really cool. But even that speaks to the point that difficulty in a show like For the Common Good isn't even unprecedented and all the more interesting when you consider that Cadets look better (even in 2012) when they do that at the END of their shows. BTW, was I the only one who thought that Cadets moving crown set this year looked better than Crown's crown set?

Oh yeah, for sure, I'm sure the particulars of how the crowd reacts is probably one of the last things those kids are thinking about down there on the field in the moment. But retrospectively, going on FN and comparing the relatively warm reception Allentown gave BD to any other corps, not just Crown, and knowing that (at least according to DCP) many of the BD score announcements were met with a healthy booing might have been a little disappointing to say the least. Maybe life just goes on for the kids, but I know that I just wouldn't feel okay that the crowd if generally not in favor of me such that they react negatively to my achievements, not just positively to whomever they're rooting for. But is there really anything anyone can do about how a crowd feels and what the consensus among the spectators is? But there is, I think, a certain lens people look through when they want a corps to win so much that they are immune to seeing the shortcomings of (in this case) a really, really awkward looking visual package. I think I read somewhere on this thread that they were lucky to get 6th in percussion, I think they were pretty darn lucky to have been in 2nd place by .4 or .5 most of the season in the feet scores. I mean I don't think it's a stretch to say that there were many many shows, even on Disc 2, that were cleaner in feet than Crown considering the various perceived difficulties of everyone's show. I get that it was super hard, but even the opening moments of their show (presumably when their legs are fresh) still had issues visually, so that might be evidence that there were some issues with a brand new vis staff getting used to the corps. Maybe it was the challenging and really well done choreography in their ballad that impressed the judges and made it at least close at times, or even the fact that it was so hard was enough for their feet scores to be as high as they were, but Crown was a mere tenth of a point from solely winning feet at the end of the season! If one thinks back to other shows that have placed 1st to 3rd from the last decade or so, there definitely isn't a plethora of 6-5 and 5-5 like there is in Crown's show. But at the same time when there actually is a larger step size, you hardly even notice it because it's done well or thoughtfully. BD's 2012 show had plenty of 8-5, 6-5 and jazz running and, yes, playing on top of that but you never really notice it not only because you choose to ignore it because you're not rooting for them and one of your gripes is their show is easy, but also because they do it well enough that it's not "look at me these are super hard giant steps ahhh!!!!" or it could even be the way the uniform stands out against a green field. And any rate, all this visual talk out of my butt doesn't even consider the context (design) of all these degrees of difficulty or cleanliness which is actually closer to the topic presented by the OP being what people like about shows from Crown or even from another corps.

This. I wonder how those kids might feel when they go on the fan network or youtube and note the deafening silence in most of their performances from audiences. I mean, people went nuts for anything and everything in Crown's show and then when BD had a huge hit, there was almost always silence or quiet, polite, and sparse applause. I wonder how those kids feel when they go on any social media, including dcp, and read left and right that crown got robbed. Like jeez. Or think about how they felt when they said "we have a correction" at retreat and at that moment knew they were pretty much the only ones in the room who were happy with them winning anything. I think that's all sort of a symptom of Crown fans through their grief making excuses for what's missing in their favorite corps' production and a common theme is their percussion. Sure they got 6th finals night, but even if they got a perfect 20 (or more realistically were a few tenths below or right at BD's score) they would still be looking at 2nd place by a healthy margin. Remember in 2009 when crown got 2nd in percussion and BD still topped them by a point and a half? Personally, I attribute a lot of the grief Crown fans have about 2012 to their denial about what might plague Crown on the sheets. I don't really want or mean to bash the drill writer(s?) at Crown, but how many visual staffs have they gone through and they still can't quite seem to master the "look ma! see what I can do on Pyware" style drill without frankly looking really bad. Believe it or not, there are limits to what a 19 year old kid can do while playing crazy licks on a trumpet or holding a contra without breaking down upper and/or lower body technique. I really did find myself wondering "why are you making the kids do that?!" or "was that really necessary" for much of the 2012 show. Don't get me wrong, Crown's drill is unique enough that it gives Crown an identity visually, there's sometimes a four man deep block on side one with some lunge at a hit, the curvy company front, among other things, OH and the CROWN!!! for heaven's sake. But man, you just don't win when you're catching air on 6-5 forwards and backwards toes up and toes down or your idea of hitting a dot is a 45 degree body angle just before you head in the opposite direction and you shrink 2 feet just to get the muster to go in that opposite direction. To me, those don't really sound like the kids' problem, but a shortcoming of the drill not giving the kids a chance to look tall. Contrary to what a lot of crown honks might say about how For the Common Good was the most difficult show they've ever seen, that's just not a good enough reason to think they deserve a higher score than an undeniably less difficult show. Also, don't forget that it was paced pretty well (considering the performer's stamina pacing) for how sprinty and 5-5y that show was. But to get back on topic, I think just about everyone's response to the OP has been something along the lines of "their hornline. period" or "I like the music". Well gosh, that's what, three or four things on the sheets? Brass perf and analysis, the music GEs (which has everything to do with how well your show is put together, what music/visual matches, etc and nothing to do with how bananas the crowd goes) and that's it? Like I said before, I think there is an amplified bias when it comes to Crown fans because they're so supportive and hungry to see them win the gold (not a bad thing) but it's also important to recognize that such an attitude often blinds people to the point that they don't realize that BD just had a more thoughtful show which, sorry, might be more important to certain people in green shirts who have seen it all before. When your favorite corps gets 2nd place finals night by more than a point and you still think they got robbed, there's probably a little more to it than just personal taste.

Which in this context, the proposition by the OP, is far less likely.

4 words. Tyranny of the majority.