Slingerland

So they'll be at Crater Lake instead?

When there are 10 qualified applicants for every freshman spot, the 'customers' are decidedly not in the drivers' seat - the sellers are. And the sellers (admissions departments) are increasingly looking beyond the GPAs and test scores in determining who to invite in to their schools.

I'd have a tendency to agree. One of mine just went through the application process with a couple top tier schools and three of the little Ivies, and because the applicants all go in knowing what the average accepted ACTs and GPAs are, the applicant pool has a tendency to be made up of kids whose numbers are all pretty much the same. That being the case, the extracurricular activities seem to be one of the areas where a kid can differentiate between themselves and the others who had 33 composites and 4.5 GPAs. I think there's more knowledge of what drum corps is and what it takes than we all believe. Not saying it's a common understanding, but that more people in the academic world know about it than we might think. That being the case, it would make sense to include it as a personal accomplishment. It certainly wouldn't hurt.

Taupe will do that to you.

"Pageantry" is what the people who run beauty pageants for little girls call their activity too. Probably won't find too many grown men who will cop to being involved in "pageantry."

They'll nail the Cavaliers snake from the 80s. BTW, it's worth noting that Yamaha will be moving all of their upper-end percussion manufacturing - including the marching gear - to a company-owned plant in China this summer (so if you want a Japanese-built Yamaha drum set, order it today - literally). I'd be surprised if the brass instruments don't follow, or haven't already started being built there. One way or another, China will be playing a part in the drum corps of the future.

1, Ding. 2....and Laserdiscs, and Betamax, and 78s, and 3.5" floppies, and...

Great. We can all look forward to a bunch of Chinese drum corps performing near exact copies of American drum corps shows. But cheaper.

While we're at it, I want fights in the parking lots after shows, inspections that can lose your corps a National title, and 13 arrangements of the same contemporary pop tune coming from 13 different corps at each contest. . Plus Malaguena. And $.28 a gallon gas.

Which, I suppose, is the takeaway from the discussion. It failed as a show that said anything interesting, but succeeded where it counted.

So a theatre piece that said it was "about minimalism", but was presented with 120 performers on stage, multiple costume changes, a 21 piece crew in the orchestra pit, lavish dance numbers, and a lighting plot that required the installation of 144 new dimmer packs in the theatre could still be considered a thematic success? Saying that you're "about" an artistic concept, while then presenting work that is the complete and total OPPOSITE of that concept, is a failure, artistically. BD won last year, properly, because they played and moved better than anyone else out there. But the program design was nothing I'd show anyone in the outside world who actually knows anything about Dadaism or early 20th century artistic movements, simply because it appropriated names in the effort to lend itself significance. From that standpoint, it was more Waiting for Guffman than Travesties (which does a much better job of inserting genuinely Dadaist ideas into a non-Dadaist piece of work).

O's? You mean the St Louis Browns?

I disagree with that assessment. The Dadaists had a huge appreciation for the ironic, and enjoyed seeing how their ideas totally mind-f__d the general public. DuChamp's "Fountain"? He knew exactly what he was doing and why it was funny. Tzara may have been a prig at times, but the rest of them were essentially a bunch of gleeful 15 year-old boys at loose in the art world.

Not really. The "point" was to offend people by upsetting their notions of what art was "supposed" to be. BD's Dadaism attempt utterly failed as a genuine Dadaist piece, because, in fact, the members did exactly what people expected a drum corps show to do. They were focused on cleanliness and uniformity, etc, etc, etc - all of which a genuine Dadaist would say should be intentionally ignored, in the name of Dadaism. There's no way to do authentically Dadaist work and win in drum corps. The needs of the two concepts are antithetical to each other.

Not really. Malick's work is introspective and quiet, and comes at it from a very particular artist's viewpoint regarding the struggle between man and nature. Its not for everyone, but there's clearly a very serious man working through some personal questions and issues . I would say Devils these days are more like Lars von Trier.

There are lots of films that are respected or even 'liked', but not necessarily loved. I respect "Fanny and Alexander" (keeping this in the Bergman vein), and am glad I've seen it - but it's nothing I'd take to the proverbial desert island, because it wasn't any fun to be with. Last year's BD show, as well as 2010 and 2009, were in that same mold. They were carefully assembled, detailed to the nth degree - but in the end, they were just kind of dull. It's certainly not a matter of anyone asking for "dumber' shows - it's just a matter of asking for shows that don't take themselves so seriously, given the lack of gravitas that an outdoor drum and bugle corps show can generate in the first place.

I'm sure BD will do very well with their program choice. The bigger issue for me with them, as well as almost everyone else on the field, is very simple. They're just not much fun to watch anymore. Going to a drum corps show is increasingly feeling like going to an evening of thesis presentations by students at a third rate university. They seem to THINK that if they present a 40 minute long paper on how Jung's work in the 1920s affected Samuel Beckett's late prose, that it makes them look brilliant, when it really just makes them look desperate to sound brilliant. Ah well. One of these days, the pendulum will swing back in another direction, and when it does, the top corps will know how to swing with it. Nothing lasts forever - and avant can only be avant for awhile until it becomes last year's fashion.

Agreed.

Yes. Everyone knows that part of running a professional, active, growing enterprise involves investing nothing at all in marketing or promotion, and that hiring marketing and promotions people with proven backgrounds in their field is a huge waste of money. I think part of the problem here is that too many people in drum corps expect perfection from the kids who march, but accept mediocrity from the adults who run the activity.

Not really. It's a matter of DCI's management (or the Board, which is a fluid situation moving forward, I think...) deciding to invest the resources there. A case of a $200-300k investment now reaping potentially many times its return on investment over the long term.

Can we take that "if...." and stick a fork in it? DCI will never again pay for someone to run their show. They found out the first time how dumb that was. Any discussion about getting television in the mix again has to begin with the assumption that DCI will figure out how to find a decent corporate sponsorship team who will be able to put together a funding package to make television viable. Paying for airtime is a commercial, and DCI simply doesn't have the means - which is why I never take that concept into account in any discussion of the topic.

Yes. And the networks don't program anything very strong because of it. Which means that if you have something that isn't a re-run or a newsmagazine show, you have a better chance of standing out among the crowd. Look at it this way. If you're going to get a 2 share on a night when there are 100 million viewers, or a 4 share on a night when there are 55 million viewers, you're still better off having the larger share on the night with the smaller viewership, since the absolute numbers (which is what really counts) are better. Less competition for eyeballs - even if there are fewer eyeballs watching the tube - is actually good for DCI.

It's drywall, it's dogfood, it's aspirin. What's the diff?

If DCI is required to underwrite anything other than the expense of hiring a promotions and marketing team that knows how to recruit major brands to become sponsors of DCI, then DCI would have no business even thinking about television. You don't schedule the painters to come in until after the framers and drywall guys are done with their work.

Whole shows are not available for free on the internet, and no one is going to accidentally walk in on a paid cinecast and say "hey, that's kind of interesting." "Live," "free," and "broadcast" (or cablecast) are very different than show segments or lot tapes on YouTube.