Tenoris4Jazz

It would be nice to see the electric vibe of a first time Finalist again. The juice for Academy's Corpse Bride show was off the hook!

Amen to that!!!

You mean like 2015? Crown's show was better than BD, but BD nailed their performance on Saturday night and Crown... didn't.

I guess it depends on the organization. Success to some is just being able to make it to Finals week. To some it's top 20, top 15... realistically, only about 15 organizations can say they have a shot at making Top 12. At least 8 of those 12 spots is pretty much a given, so the other 7 units are fighting for 4 spots. That sounds a lot like the MLB playoffs, or the NBA. Speaking artistically, a successful season means something else... but this IS a competition circuit, so where you finish DOES matter.

I remember that show. The school board or the stadium staff had a hissy. I read about the turf change yesterday on the news. The weather in Nashville prevents them from being able to keep good turf grass healthy the entire NFL season. They also found out their field caused more lower body injuries than any other stadium... artificial turn included. That's why they're switching over to monofilament field turf.

It's not that other corps couldn't attract those folks... they never tried. Bill Cook disturbed the "good ole' boys" network that DCI had going and they didn't want money with strings attached. Those people might expect them to give up overpaid positions and QFTK.

This concept did come up recently, and I wonder if the customer of drum corps really is the MM, or is it the person in the stands? I can come up with support for both, but I can't figure out if DCI could, or would, march without some kind of audience.

I imagine that post COVID crowds are affected by two things: people who went indoors and haven't come back out due to health concerns or the fact that they found things to do inside they like better, and the aging of the demographic that enjoys bingo over other forms of "games of chance." I believe COVID took a big bite out of the crowd that was willing to go out and enjoy the bingo games and the crowd is only going to get smaller every year.

The NCAA profited for decades off the NIL of the players, but up until the last 20 years it was millions of dollars spread across 300+ member institutions. Now the top 50 FBS programs make billions of dollars, the coaches make millions per year, and the players are still getting less than $500k in total compensation, much of which they can't use because they'll never graduate. The players used to get paid illegally under the table. Now they're just getting paid legally across the table. It's the way it should have been all along. DCI IS different. How many individual names could anyone ever recall during the MM's marching career? There aren't names on the backs of their uniforms... in fact, the idea was they were a unit, and the people changed every year. There are literally thousands of kids aged 14-22 who can and are able to march with virtually any drum corps. The best wind up with the top organizations. There are less than 300 football and basketball players who can make an impact on a school's performance and marketing identity each year. Georgia, Texas, Ohio State... they spend more on recruiting than the combined budgets of all of World Class.

I mused about this years ago. How much of Bill Gates' or Jeff Bezos' billions would it take to fully fund DCI? A drop in the bucket. When Steve Balmer bought the Clippers, I thought that was an excellent opportunity to get ten or fifty million dollars from him. It's just not an investment that gets a financial return, which is what those kind of folks expect.

I've worked in groups that counsel to addicts for almost four years. The two things I've learned that are almost 100% applicable in these cases: 1) something happened to them early in life that formed their critical thinking to accept addictive and/or destructive behavior as acceptable, even necessary; 2) they have become conditioned to believe it's normal and happens to most people. When addicts first learn that the choices they continue to make were set on their course as children or teens, they're initially shocked, but when you start unravelling relationships with parents, teachers, or other influential adults, they see that these were not choices they suddenly started making out of the blue one day. For instance, 80% of men addicted to pornography had a serious issue in their relationship with their father. A 15 year old girl replied to an anonymous school survey that she had been molested/raped by her friend's father while she was having a sleepover with the friend. She went to sleep in the girl's bedroom and woke up in another bedroom. Her comment was devastating... "at least she HAS a dad." That was her takeaway from the experience. The comedian Christopher Titus long ago mentioned that over 50% of families in the US are now considered "dysfunctional." It's closer to 90% now. Shake the family tree even a little and most of us will have some kind of issue fall out.

Has anyone tried to play New World Symphony since '89? That would be really risky. But, on the other hand, SCV did Les Mis after Cadets did it in '89, but they waited a loooong time as well.

This is the same philosophy on why the IRS ignores tax fraud below the $250,000 annual household income level. I knew a guy who fudged his tax returns for decades because he knew the IRS would never bother to investigate. The further below $250k you go, the number of individual returns to inspect grows exponentially. That said, because NP's are already subject to tax review because of their status, there's likely more of a spotlight on conformance to the contractor rules.

Known on the east coast as "The Uber Bill." All kidding aside, staff being considered employees instead of contractors is what killed VK. They got in deep with the IRS and were gone in a heartbeat.

This was 40 years ago, but concert band was what you did after marching season to stay out of other classes The marching band performing at halftime of the football game was the reason there was a band program We practiced 2 hours a day M-H, played at the game Friday, and went to ONE competition in the fall on a Saturday We had a spring trip to compete somewhere near a beach, doing parade, concert, field (sometimes) Parkview HS in Gwinnett county 15 years ago was the first time I had ever heard of a school having two marching bands: one to play for football games and one just to compete. Kids could be on both, but a lot weren't. Summer band was for the upper classmen who couldn't stay away from the band room and the incoming freshmen to get acclimated to marching band. It lasted a week and was close to band camp, which was the first week in August. Most kids had summer jobs or their families spent half the summer on vacation. My point is: I just don't see getting high schools involved as being a serious way to augment DCI's status. Most corps only have a handful of HS kids marching anyway. Maybe that's the real problem... DCI has become all about the college music majors and the instructors who used to be them. They've redesigned the shows to where normal high school band members, even the great ones, have little chance of succeeding.

A few years ago I took my daughter (who was interested in playing the flute) to the local HS football game, just to see their national championship band. (The whole staff were also on staff with Cavies) What I witnessed closed the door on HS band to me forever. Only half the band was required to attend the game, half of the band was colorguard, and their show featured a 2 minute flute solo and lots of teens trying to dance who had no clue what they were doing. I looked out at the field and asked some parents near me, "What the hell is this?" They just shrugged and said this is the kind of stuff they did. Bad dancing and flute solos... yeah, THAT's the future of DCI.

I wish I could say for certainty Jeff, but it could have been both.

Like in baseball... pitching coaches are either former pitchers or catchers. Hitting coaches were position players. There is zero crossover.

When I last checked, SCV had over 100 staff members. That was for the '22 season. No bingo personnel included, just instructors/techs and admin for the corps.

Such as... a certain person always judging CG on Saturday night... and BD always winning CG that night?

Blue Devils had other issues (liability-to-assets ratio was 59.92%, 60% gets you a zero; their overhead is 38.75% where only 30% or less gets you full credit) but they got a full 20 of 20 points on independent audit or financial review. Here's the list for points out of a possible 20 on independent audit: Academy 0 Blue Knights 0 Blue Devils 0 Blue Stars 20 Bluecoats 20 (and a perfect 100 overall) Crown 0 (they got a 50 score overall... lots of issues) Boston 0 Phantom 20 (a perfect 100 overall) Cavaliers 20 (their liabilities-to-assets ratio is 206%!!!!!!) Troopers 0 Vanguard 0 Mandarins 0 (liab-to-assets ratio is 83.6% I don't have the others bookmarked on the site. I'd have to dig them up, but this is a pretty good indicator that only half of the top corps are truly fulfilling their independent audit. Also, for those of you who don't know what the "liabilities-to-assets ratio" means... a ratio of 50% means you have $2 of assets for every $1 of liabilities (debts or payables). In the Cavies case, they have $2.06 of debt for every $1 of assets, which is unfathomable.

Which might be the reason CN gave them zero points. What good is an independent audit if no one sees it besides the people paid to do it and the people covering up the problems?

It's a total score of 100. They hit 80 out of 80 until they got to the independent audit. They got 0 out of 20 there.

I use Charity Navigator to check up on non-profits. According to their records, VMAPA has never had an audit done. They scored 80/80 pts on accountability and finance, but the missing 20 points was no record of an audit. If you have total revenue over $1 million, you are expected to conduct annual audits. Quite a few drum corps NP's don't conduct audits as it turns out... which may change based on what happens in Santa Clara.

Just remember... you can win the Ott and still lay an egg on Finals night. BD finished 3rd in brass at Finals last year after being 1st on Thursday/Friday. I don't care about your average over the three shows, give me your best performance on Saturday night. 1983 and 2008 ring a bell?