bawker

. . .well, GH, you championed it. Gibbs and yourself wanted to "remove the shackles" from the design teams, and here we are. There's no putting any of this back into a bottle; welcome to how a lot of folks felt in 2005. People took what you guys fought for and figured out how to effectively use it faster than you did.

That's for sure; the weather is going to be glorious today here. Over a dozen corps, a great venue . . .this is gonna be good. :)

Please refrain from personal attacks on Community members. This will be the only warning given in the thread. Thanks!

Removed a few pages of back and forth; please make use of the PM feature for individual or "off-topic" messages to Community Members, also keeping in mind the Guidelines of the forum. Thanks!

Removed some back and forth in the thread . . . Thanks! :)

I really wanted a "Meow Max" shirt. Thanks a lot, Cavaliers.

. . .I am anxious to see how far they can push this "drum corps wise", though, to get it away from the WGI stigma. There's a chance to play with the dimensions; having a few of the slides and ramps the same color as the field (roughly, or in the case of Indy, you know what color to approximate) complete with "upside-down" yard markers and numbers would make for some interesting visuals. Hell, borrow from the Cavaliers tenors a few years ago . . .get some folks to sufficiently camouflage themselves to hold the soloist upside down while on said ramps. Or, make people disappear from one slide and reappear on another . . . Lots to play with here.

Agreed. . . .although Phantom needs to really look for some better, less "thin" string patches. Might as well do what Cadets did and go get someone to play an electric stringed instrument. Having an entire section of that might be interesting, depending on the show concept.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf4tPsgspLg Pardon the video quality, but it starts about halfway in.

. . .after what we got last year (which I was a big fan of), I wanted to like this show. For the most part, musically . . .I do. The first half is engaging, but, much like others, I really got lost in the middle trying to figure out where the show was going. After we "awake", there's nowhere to go, and the show suffers greatly for it. Visually, plenty of others have gone into greater detail . . .but, man, this is filthy dirty. I'm sure the music will clean up nicely by August, which is probably how I'll end up consuming this show overall, anyway.

We all wondered the same thing about the early 2000's Cavaliers: Will everyone play original music? We all asked the same questions after 2005 Cadets: Will everyone do drum speak? We all asked the same questions after 2008 BD: Will everyone move towards abstraction? Same as it ever was. The answer is: not unless upstairs rewards it. They did, so expect more of WGI to come. To be honest, I thought the slides and "half pipes" were under-utilized. If it were me, I'd be going for broke with the gimmick: go even bigger and end the show by putting a massive slide together with a company front "sliding" (downside up) down.

. . .having Boerma back definitely shows. Nicely done.

Closing . . . Already a thread open for this years 'Coats show. :) Thanks!

. . .while we encourage as open a discussion here as possible, please be mindful of the Community Guidelines and let's veer away from the larger political argument and back towards how this relates to the drum corps activity. Thanks very much for your consideration. :)

Pinned. :)

Yes. Boerma knows how to write for this corps . . .next season is gonna be great from a brass charts perspective! Great to see him back in Madison.

Perhaps you're not, but I am: the point being that using a Boerma, a Bocook or whoever else to riff on someone elses established work already set the stage years previous for the "simulated demand" argument you're making now. "I can't create the emotional impact I want from just playing this one part of Stars and Stripes Forever, so I'll need to shorthand it with an American flag and some guard members dressed up as soldiers" and so forth. That's a direct predecessor to your "I can't clean 220bpm to showcase the velocity in the music, so I'll do a fast scatter/re-form/re-stage/re-pod here to try to create the same effect" argument. DCI is nothing *but* emotional shorthand; so it figures we'd cannabilize ourselves in trying to pack more "effect" into the same number of minutes.

So, to cut this down to something to chat about: there's more of a WGI influence in DCI. Yep. It's been said many times here that WGI is where most of the innovation is now that DCI cribs from . . .so it's not really a surprise. Marry that up with how the stage/set piece/re-stage is rewarded more than the whiplash drill of old and there's the rub. Something else to consider: Well, DCI has always been a hatchet-job on Broadway/jazz/dead white guys/wind ensemble stuff; a pastiche (with some exceptions, yes) of someone else's work. And, yup, in this day and age where a meme is born every minute . . .folks are probably going to respond to an "oh, I get that" wink and nod rather than a more long-form engagement. Those types of knowing nods make the designer feel smart in his pastiche . . . and the audience member feel like they're brilliant in catching onto it: a perfect circle of smug. Anyhoo, it's all good: we'll cycle through to something else in another five or seven years. We always do.

Go Coats!

Closed.

Closed.

Nice to see it back at full blast.

That's lame. . .part of the beauty of it was the relatively seamless move from hornline to synth and back. Let me guess: some judge decided that the Bluecoats needed "dynamic contrast". Hopefully it comes back full blast by Finals.

So, for fun, I was just cruising through some of the Scouts stuff on FN: 1988, 1991-1997, 1999, 2001, 2005 and on into this decade . . .some of this is rose-colored glasses for sure, but I'm trying to put my finger on the "it" that I get from the Scouts. I guess what it is is the visceral sense of riding things straight to the edge (not just in volume) that gives that swagger . . .that this years show almost comes off as too "sanitized" and straight-laced in places. It's still a great listen and a great show, so I'm not knocking it there: I'm just trying to figure out what *I* seem to be missing as a fan from it. I'm not about to speak for anyone else. I'm not sure it makes sense to anyone but me, but there's a certain raw, overwhelming feeling you get from the performers when things click: the audience feeds it back to the kids and it creates that closed circuit of emotion that transcends notes and spins. Those kind of moments . . .the "sugar high" of drum corps. That's the elusive moment(s) I want/need. Sorry for the ramble: go Scouts!