bawker

Closed; feel free to repost if an official announcement is made. For now, this is rumor, and will be treated as such. Thanks for your cooperation.

. . .so you've identified a problem. What do you suggest, specifically, the organization DCI (or its member corps) should do to prevent this from occurring again? Rather than turn this into a laundry list of DCIs issues (which sometimes happens here), how can we institute fiscal safeguards into the activity while still giving corps the autonomy to run their organizations effectively?

. . .I've yet to see a member post anywhere on social media that feels "ripped off". That all seems to come from the parents, which is understandable in some regards . . .but it appears to me a lot of the anger should be at the bus company that seems to have put the corps in this position. There aren't many drum corps organizations that can survive those kinds of hits, World Class or otherwise. Anyway, I suppose I'm on the outside looking in, but I don't think the comparison to Penn State is an apt one.

Very sad to hear. However, if the news on the tumblr is correct in saying that the bus company Teal was dealing with didn't offer them a refund after leaving them high and dry earlier. . . well, I hope that bus company has a good lawyer. Regardless, regroup, refocus . . .and hope we'll see you in 2013.

Missing Finals? Nah. Somewhere between 7th and 10th place this year? More of a possibility.

. . .considering how much he has riding on the sheet redesign, I guess he better be happy with the results so far.

. . .that doesn't mean he's infallible, though. While the arrangements are quite good in some parts . . .especially the last half of the show . . .there are some places that the "Scouts" stuff does sound a bit forced in in the opener to me. No different in the Blue Stars trying to put their stamp on New World Symphony this year; sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. That's the chance you take with weaving this stuff together. . . .and that's what late July re-writes are for.

http://www.drumcorpsplanet.com/stats-calendar-recaps/

The thread creator always has the option of requesting to close this. . .

That's not directed at you specifically. More of a comment on how DCI (in general) lets most information stay in-house . . .a recent example is the G7 mess . . . the organization basically had their hand forced in releasing their "own" business plan for the future, some of which (at least publicly) has never been followed up on. And, to take us back full circle to the topic at hand . . .GH does make most of his motives crystal-clear, which I can appreciate, even though I don't agree with 99% of 'em.

No doubt.

Why make a insular band circuit so secretive that we have to find out about things like this twenty years after the fact . . .lol. . . .not that it's surprising.

Nope . . .just an over-reliance on a few of the tricks of the past few years so far.

1. No one hates him. 2. You've posted just about as much as the rest of us in this thread.

It's an example: a trial balloon for summer "marching band" that failed. It's as good an example as any of the fact that there wasn't enough interest and membership to keep it going. Of course, I know what the response is . . ."marching bands are the trial balloon for adding woodwinds". However, even the best BOA band ever doesn't wear and tear their woodwind instruments over the course of an entire summer . . . and adding that expense to drum corps, an activity that already operates on a shoestring, just doesn't make sense financially. Corps like the Cadets (who aren't exactly raking it in) might live to regret such a thing in the long run. Couple that with the backlash (more than just "DCP") you'd get from passing such a thing, and you're already in a lose-lose situation as far as finances go. Sometimes, the almighty dollar wins out, no matter how many music education sunshines and let's-be-inclusive rainbows we want to add. Thing is, I'm all for adding woodwinds . . .in exhibition. It's simple to do, and could probably easily be done now: Cadets or whoever else can still tour, go on first at every show they attend, and get a judged "exhibition" score. Then, we see start to get down to the heart of things: -what the audience thinks. -what the membership that year is like. -what the design choices are. -how it scores in exhibition. Easy enough to do, and if enough corps decide to do it, you could even make a stage-show out of it, and make a few dollars independent of DCI. I'd go watch it independent of DCI. . . why not? So, rage against the dinos here as needed, but, if it were me . . .I'd be asking George why he won't march 'em now if he believes in the education and value of them so much. I'd love for that question to be posed to him when he brings it up again at another Rules Congress/ instructors caucus.

. . .so, by all means, let's appropriate that 40 years of work and risk losing fans because Hop is too afraid to go the exhibition or stage show route with woodwinds. It's been tried: http://www.soundmachine.org/sbi/index.html It failed. "Woodwinds" (along with "strings", "barking dogs" or whatever else) are already available via a synth patch. Why bother with the real (hard to tune, not made for outdoors, etc.) thing?

http://www.pisval.com/

. . .and there it will stay, forever, as an activity. Why? . . .because it only knows how to borrow from others. Pastiche isn't an art form, it's an homage. The Blue Devils do nothing more than crib from WGI, as does most of DCI. They borrow liberally from wind band music and BOA/WGI. That's what the activity is now, more or less. Adding woodwinds (the point of the thread) will only add to the stagnation: Design meeting after passage . . . "Ohhhh, I got it, my band program is playing Hounds of Spring. Yeah! We can do that and Russian Christmas Music and play an all Alfred Reed show! People will love it!" "Heeeeey, our orchestra is doing Rhapsody in Blue: we can play that....with a REAL CLARINET in the pit. Oh man, and the piano patch! Wow, this is gonna be great!" "Duuuuude! Kronos Quartet did this, we should TOTALLY use it for a pre-show!" I trust drum corps design teams to be "original" or "progressive" about as far as I can throw Michael Cesario. Drum corps programming now is designed to take as little risk as possible in order to max out some check boxes for upstairs. Tell you what, Daniel, why don't we get Hop, Gibbs et al to actually take some risks with what they have now instead of tilting at windmills with woodwinds? No? I didn't think so.

I just saw this show on YouTube. Dear Jersey Surf, That was ####### awesome.

You'd definitely get your own Michael Boo article and DCP thread.

Classics: -opener-ballad-drums-closer -slow open / pit open to big hit -harder drill during drum feature / stand-still for technical passages -ballad bodyshaping / body movement Newer: -Pre-show electronic "mood" chatter -rock out sections using "walking" contra line . . .and so on. Tons more, of course. Let's be clear . . I didn't say there was anything wrong with show design these days that use the above, just that there are certain "check boxes" you can expect during a drum corps show. Hell, for the most part we look forward to some of them. Contrast that "rigidity" of the buttons you have to push for the numbers (for any corps, not just BD), and the dada stuff can only go so far. They've done well trying to make it as seemingly chaotic as they can with the background noise and the switch from piece to piece.

By now, you should know better . . . . . .the show announcements for most corps are almost always navel-gazing "intellectualism" trying to tie together why someone is playing Samuel Hazo and Lady Gaga in some vague "colors" or "dark versus light" or "Planet Earth PainSongs" dressing. This is no different; the Blue Devils show is, indeed, scatter-shot in its rep and pacing, and this is a fairly easy design "out" for them to use. It works a simple window dressing. Drum corps doesn't stray too far from the usual design check boxes, no matter who it is.

Heh. Congratulations, sir. Well deserved.

Meh. Got all of these in SD already. I'd pay 59 dollars for a collection of unreleased shows on Blu-Ray, though . . .maybe some 12-25 stuff they can get rights for.

/thread.