Bobby L. Collins

That used to be true. It's not so true anymore though. Certainly great for dance education. Music, not so much.

Did you ever have such a discrepancy between scores that someone had to erase their marks and change them to be closer to whatever others had marked? Because I know for 100% fact that crap happens at the high school clinic level.

Still has two words in it that are bald face lies. Three, if Les Stentors folds.

In a lot of cases, yes. They were required to be. They didn't have the luxury of electronics to cover up their issues. They also didn't have the luxury of personal tuners clamped on their bells during rehearsals or a staff of 30 brass techs (something I touched on in one of the threads the trolls whinelocked). They also didn't spend 75% of the shows NOT playing, like hornlines do today. I'm not saying they were any more talented than youth today, nor am I saying they worked any harder. But unlike today, hornlines of yesteryear were there to play their horns and march, not to roll around with their horns on the ground like 4 year-olds pretending to be insects, sashaying from one form to the next and occasionally playing when the guard instructors finally say it's ok to do so. What I'm saying is that a lot of the talent on the field today is being utterly wasted on extraneous BS that has absolutely nothing to do with drum corps, and that we never even get to see or hear the majority of the talent required to win a spot on those hornlines.

Easy if a synthesizer is playing your part loud enough to wake the dead. See EVERY tuba line today.

But for how much longer? Too many changes for the sake of simply changing. None warranted, and none cost-efficient.

Sure he will. Speakers are not omni-directional. And even if he's standing right in front of a company block, he's still going to hear the monitors.

Speaking as a judge then, do you or do you not agree that G.E. has become too heavily weighted today? In other words, should a hypothetical corps really be able to sweep captions and still place 3rd or 4th overall?

Whomever manages to cover up the most deficiencies and issues with synthesizers, samples, and singing will take the Ott. I encourage everyone to watch gopro headcams on YouTube to hear what these hornlines actually sound like. Don't listen so much to the ones upon which the cameras are mounted, but rather those around them. If the power went out during a performance, most of these corps would be severely crippled.

And THAT right there is why we have singers and synthesizers drowning out the brass and percussion today. There is no such thing as futile resistance. It's time to stop "rolling" and start marching again.

And that's where your logic fails. The era in which someone marched has little to no bearing on what they prefer to see and hear on the field. At least not among vets with a shred of brains. That said, I realize where I'm posting, so I'm not incredibly insistent upon understanding. I enjoy 1972 every bit as much as I enjoy 1999, and every year in between. There are even some post-bugle productions I find terrific...right up to 2005. At that point, after drum corps decided to "naturally evolve" overnight at the behest of one man's ego, I can count on one hand the number of productions I can even stomach to watch all the way through after an initial viewing. Certainly some isolated good tunes performed well, and a few good drill maneuvers, but the total package has been sacrificed for pandering to WGI and BOA. That crap isn't growing on me, and I'm not about to lower my standards and expectations like many of you have done in order to "appreciate" it. I stand behind my convictions, and I sleep better at night for not having become a sellout. This forum is not exclusively host to "positive" posts. You're going to have to come to terms with the fact that there are thousands of vets and fans who abhor what the activity has become, along with what so-called supporters have ALLOWED it to become, and that not all of us have given up on expressing our displeasure to the ones who could do something about it just as quickly as George Hopkins torpedoed it. And they're here reading. So by God they'll read both sides of the story.......not just the one you want them to read.

It's aimed at dinosaurs who expect, if not demand DCI to either go back on course or change its callsign and stop pretending to be something it hasn't been in a long time. In their mind, they have no reason to change that callsign because it's still warm bodies wriggling around on a football field and, perhaps more importantly, George Hopkins hasn't asked them to change it yet. When it becomes his master-stroke of an idea, then it'll happen faster than than a BD scatterdrill. There's no reason in the world a corps couldn't field a line of bugles today. They'd have to re-allocate resources in order to be able to afford to purchase and maintain bugles......perhaps, say, forgoing amplification and electronics, or brand new uniforms, or the giant scaffolding that sits in the middle of the field.....but you know what? That would be just fine with a lot of people. Might even bring some former fans back to the activity. But we're supposed to no longer think of it that way, according to these guys, because that kind of thinking doesn't suit their agenda, nor their narrative. EDIT: And you know what that tells me? This truly isn't all for nothing. If movers and shakers in the activity are going on record to try to refute concerns of where it's headed, that means those concerns ARE being heard, despite the tangible and organized effort to prevent that. That doesn't make me want to give in and accept that it's too late. No, that simply makes me want to voice my concerns even more. I know there are like-minded individuals reading this, whether you post here or not, and I strongly urge you to do the same, because this podcast is tangible evidence that it DOES make a difference.

We're comparing polished cow patties here. :P

Yeah.....you don't want me as a judge........ "And in First Place, with a score of 23.875........"

A couple friends of mine (who own an entire two-valve/piston rotor hornline between them) predicted a while back that SoundSport would become the new branding of the activity. Even I have to concede that 'SoundSport' describes.....whatever is happening on the field today......much better than calling it 'drum corps'. I think a lot of opposition towards such an initiative stems from concerns that the loss of the DCI branding would be damaging to the activity. Far as I'm concerned, that couldn't possibly damage the activity any more than the activity has already damaged itself from within. And...it would get a lot of dinosaurs off their backs.

There was a lot of head-scratching in the finals thread about how Cavies leapfrogged with a show that couldn't have even started had the electricity gone out, and how BD didn't win any music captions but still won overall music in semis (not sure how it played out in finals, I just don't care enough about scores anymore to be bothered). There was some tinfoilhatting going on there, but most of that was actually buried underneath someone ragequitting because Cavies don't allow females (which I think was probably more salt over Bluecoats dropping a spot than actual misogyny). I don't really know if there was any conspiracy talk going on over in r/drumcorps, because the CJ is even stronger there than it is here, and I try to avoid it. That said, I've been lurking here a long time and I can't recall any threads about judging conspiracies. Plenty of threads about deaf and blind judges, however. :P

That's what I try to get across (and apparently fail miserably at) here...the only reason DCI ever caught on was that it was an alternative to bog-standard marching band, with different equipment, a different ruleset, and a different mentality. Without those things, it is what it is today; summertime marching band for rich kids.

You should probably steel yourself against being told time and time again on here that no one thinks amplification is too loud, even though you do, and you can plainly read numerous other examples of those who do. They really try to pretend like it's not a problem here.

No better example of why narration needs to be banned from the activity.

It all comes down to jazz hands today.

He's kind of known for that. He and his cohorts are also known for flaming and baiting just to get threads locked when the discourse doesn't go their way.

I don't think judging is so much rigged as.....pointless. In today's DCI, whomever shows up with the most over-the-top suite of electronics, choreography, props and extraneous instruments and soloists is going to win G.E. And G.E. > everything else. A corps could sweep captions and still come in 2nd or 3rd if they don't do enough scatter drill and dancing. And that's precisely the way the corps directors want it to be, regardless of whether it serves to delegitimize the entire point of competition or not.

Honestly, you don't need to understand. And your happiness is not why I'm here. I too share a passion for the activity, but not for where it is headed. And I will continue to speak out against it, whether you like it or not. I would, however, like to remind you that this message board, along with any other message board, is a place to share opinions and ideas. Nowhere in the site's terms of service does it say that those opinions and ideas must conform with yours, nor do they say that I'm required to withhold said opinions and ideas because you don't wish to discuss them. The OP asked for our thoughts. I gave mine. And I will continue to do so.

Yeah, don't act like I'm the only one out there who feels the way I do. I'm just the only one here at this moment willing to put up with the trolls in this community who don't want to talk about it. There have been many before me, and there will be many after me.

I agree, it is extremely unfortunate. But that's where we are.