Cappybara

Yeah I definitely like the Blue Stars version more

Missed BK and Blue Stars due to DC traffic 🫠 but we back in business!

Oh? I’ve never heard this before, what corps played Pop goes the weasel?

No I finished my residency a month ago and have since moved back to the DC area. Hoping to take a trip to finals next season though 🙂

This isn’t a prediction but more of a wish: Phantom jumping up to 5th with the performance of their lives tonight. I introduced my girlfriend to drum corps for the first time last night. She absolutely LOVED phantom (with Bloo being 2nd favorite and BD 3rd, though she thought BD was the best overall performance). She was practically speechless after Phantom’s ballad Wherever they place, this Phantom show will go down as one of my favorites by them in the Bb horn era

I will be absolutely flabbergasted if Crown doesn’t take back 2nd tonight given the judging panel for Finals. It’s almost a slam dunk

Eh, who cares? If I was a BD member, I’d wear it as a badge of honor that a certain portion of the old crowd at Lucas Oil is grumbling about their show while all the younger crowds throughout the rest of the season gave them a ton of love. Heck, even in 2012 and 2013 when they were getting crickets from nearly everyone, the boos and silence they received were just an admission by the audience that they did not understand the excellence on the field. I doubt the BD members care at all

I can’t stop laughing at that first part 😂 so true

I quite agree with both of these posts. BD’s show concepts are vastly different from each other but all mostly fall under the genre of the literary or physical art. In a way they are the most “traditional” corps with their show concepts and it is clear they are very focused as a corps on giving their members a very strong artistic education by doing these deep dives into various artistic movements, styles, and artists. It has been over a decade since BD last did a show that was more about a general concept than an artistic medium. Where BD can come across as “same-y” to some people is with their visual and musical “tropes” as already mentioned before. At this point, most of the top corps all have a consistent design team that have their own distinct recognizable arranging and visual styles. That isn’t unique to BD. Bloo has been doing a ton of rhythmic moving sections in every show going all the way back to 2013. It isn’t a Bloo show without ostinatos being played for a full section of the show. The arrangements all have the same “sound” and chord structures to them that give Bloo their distinct voice. Carolina Crown has their own symphonic voice that they utilize with familiar horn licks and arban exercises every year, and they often reprise their opener in the closer. Even the Cadets, after having a completely new design staff, sounds like the Cadets of old in their horn and drum arrangements to the point that im convinced they could have played 2023’s show in 2016 and not missed a beat from their sound and style in 2015. So yeah, I vehemently disagree that BD is any more cyclical than the other top corps, I happen to like the familiarity they all provide year after year. And as MikeRapp said, it is up to the audience to decide whether they like the musical tropes or not

It’s quite simple math, actually.

Never count out Phantom Regiment on finals night

The speech is by Charles de Gaulle during what I believe was WWII. Here is a direct translation as provided by @Rylan in the BD thread. Apparently this speech affected Matisse deeply as morale was quite low in France during Nazi encroachment. "The French defeat was caused by the enemy's mechanical, air, and ground force. The lightning action of this mechanical force brought about the collapse of the morale of the command and the government. Faced with this collapse, two paths open up. That of abandonment and despair, leading to capitulation, is the one chosen by the Pétain government. The other is that of honor and hope, it is the one that we have taken, my companions and I. We believe that the honor of the French consists in continuing the war alongside their allies, and we are determined to do so. We hope that one day, a superior mechanical force will allow us to have victory and deliver the motherland." And here is a slightly more in depth explanation provided by @resipsaloquitur “During the drum break, which I like to call the Charles De Galle movement, you see the guards imitate the human pose of the famous cut-out called The Fall of Icarus (see below). The flags they bear contain yellow suns, or stars if you want to be mythological. At the same time, the drumline hammer out hard, fast beats that resemble artillery fire. Icarus both responded to and reflected on the extraordinary, horrific circumstances Matisse endured of war, illness, and separation from his family. According to Hilary Spurling, the artist's biographer, Matisse admitted that the splashes of yellow surrounding Icarus depict exploding artillery shells he'd witnessed in 1943. It is said that Matisse created Icarus while German troops were stationed in the very building that he lived in. The cut-out can be seen as an act of defiance, an artist's statement on the domination of the Third Reich. How life affirming - ironically - is this depiction of the dying fall of Icarus.”

Congrats to Troopers for scoring higher than Cavaliers AND Mandarins in brass tonight!

Oh, and welcome back to Concord, Zingali

Spread at the top seems quite accurate to me

🙂 🙂 🙂

This happens with every judge. People will claim BD bias loudly and proudly until a result proving otherwise finally shuts the stupidity up. When you’re consistently cream of the crop year after year, it’s easy to accuse every DCI judge of bias towards BD

The Cadets had the most toxic "head of the snake" in DCI history and won multiple championships under him. I am talking about the design team here, not CK. When I am saying head coach, I am referring to the design team, not CK. I have and will continue to stay out of any conversation talking about him. I am talking about Madison as a whole from a competitive standpoint.

They screwed themselves with electronics issues

Last night, they were only 1.3 points behind a corps that only about a week ago was fiercely in the fight for the 12th place spot. Spirit has a VERY well designed show that flows probably better than any show other than Phantom’s this season. Rebuilds take time, I agree with what a previous poster said (was it C Holland?) which is to give this design staff some time to gel and come together. You don’t fire your head coach after the first 1-2 seasons, you’ve got to give them a chance to establish their culture, systems, and philosophies That isn’t to say some changes shouldn’t be made in certain captions, but the foundation is there

I do think the Mandarins have an overall better vehicle this season, but I certainly enjoy this Phantom show and the Cadets’ show significantly more than the Mandarins. This Phantom production shows that the right people are in place. Everything will not happen all at once, it takes some time for synergy to form between design and instructional staff. The visual design especially is miles above anything we’ve seen from Phantom in arguably a decade and the show flows in a way that many of the top 12 productions do not. Judging the 5-7 group this year is simply splitting hairs, I do not see potentially placing 7th as a disappointment at all. Competitive inertia is a real concept in DCI and phantom is building up plenty of it this season

As a BD honk, I agree with you that the door is open, especially based on the Finals panel. But I can also tell you that BD’s staff isn’t talking about other corps at all. BD competes against themselves, not other corps.

The Cadets in some of their more controversial years, yes

This show has the wheels to win it at all. That much has been clear all season. From a BD honk, good luck to Crown the next two nights, if there is a show that has to topple BD this season, I hope it’s this one

Correct.