Jared_mello

for me, none can compare to the first of the two huge ones in boston 1999. the crowd reaction must be incredibly confusing to those who havent actually seen the show.

i wonder if that guy who was forced out in 2007 will come back now. forgot his name.....he had been around for a long time (don't think he had actually marched scv, but fully understood the traditions and whatnot) and was really opinionated and all; i think i'd recognize the name if i saw it. he seemed really charismatic and popular with the members.

i just watched the 02 finals retreat.....america(/o' canada!) was actually really good, and very enjoyable for that reason. the corps also played god bless america (yes, TWO PIECES) and it also sounded really good. seeing that, its really weird to picture what the most recent retreats were like, comparatively. then again, i think drum corps as an activity was drastically different in a lot of ways than it is now. oh well.

i actually hadn't clicked any of the links when i posted before. good to see the brad neely/super deluxe video on here, the george washington one. the professor brothers online cartoon is basically the best thing ever invented......sorry, drum corps.

i have a feeling the cadets will have an earthy, slower-paced, world music-based piece somewhere towards the middle of their show, featuring a flugelhorn soloist and perhaps some log drums. coincidentally, glassmen 02 is currently on my tv, and the flugelhorn piece is about to start.....hm....how about that.

hahahahahaa oh man......i have no idea what your post is about but that is a FANTASTIC signature. shomer ####### shabbos.

i just watched a bunch of 2002 shows, including the fantastic xmen show from that summer. i miss jazz in dci. i think crossmen '02 is one of my 10ish favorite shows, maybe top 15 or 20. "back" is a stretch and an overstatement but i'm also glad they're making progress and going in the right direction. hopefully they'll be "back" where they used to be (and i'm not talking about just slipping into finals by a tenth or two) within the next few years.

i guess it is interesting that they put BD in 5th, but phantom's drumline was certainly good enough to justify the results. i heard BD was off on finals night though.

hahah you don't think that 'honor' would go to blue knights 2008? i think that show more so reflected the emotional reaction that un chien andalou elicited from me upon my first viewing. CONFUSION.....interest, but still, thorough confusion. i guess the cadets show does make sense considering the imagery involved in the show, and all of the random props/scenarios/characters. maybe the bk show is just an example of non-narrative surrealism.

i love the early 90's bluecoats unis with the dark pants lehigh valley knights 02! (i think 03 as well.) they looked like robots from 60's/70's sci-fi B-movies. the aluminum foil uniforms were awful.

well......yeah, i guess so, considering it's not illegal or anything. its not like i agree with it; i dont think the kid should have broken the cadets rank either. i took things like that relatively seriously while i was marching, perhaps because i started in 2003 and experienced 'real' retreats. i just posted a paragraph referencing something that happened. this isn't 1974, you're not allowed to hit people in the face with metal horns because they crossed over a white line signifying metaphorical territory. i get what you're going for, but that's not culturally acceptable anymore in drum corps. really though, if someone is going to dick around during retreat block, i'd hope they'd at least keep it within their own 10 yards. no, i mean the kid 'fake fainted' into the cadets horn block. i wasn't there but a cadet who was part of that block told me about it. it doesn't make sense to interrogate other people to find out WHICH corps it was playing wrong notes during the finale. it was MOST of the corps there. like.....more than 6. probably around 8. even if/when you find out which corps it is, you're still not going to find out WHO it was, which is a lot more important. even then, it's basically still meaningless information at that point. conduct whatever investigations into the matter you'd like, but it's not going to change what happened, which will probably continue happening until the entire system eventually gets overhauled.

confused about posting intent.....comments temporarily withdrawn.

nope.

no. BD does pay for their members rings though. not the case with all corps.

someone in the cavaliers, doing the 'fake fainting' thing, passed out into the cadets horn block....essentially at the feet of a mellophone player. this is modern drum corps, so no one was really freaking out about breaking ranks. george hopkins himself apparently picked the kid up by part of his uniform and essentially (i'm watering it down a bit) told him to get out of the cadets block. bit of an interesting story.

sucks to read that, but just one thing i wanted to mention......there were a few (three, i think? maybe two) cadets drummers who had marched bluecoats a few years ago. one of the tenors (one of the ex-bluecoats) had a brother who was in bluecoats trumpet line for 5 years. in addition to that, a bunch of them march together in indoor lines. that doesn't make it right, but might explain some of what you viewed as antagonism. i feel like if there were several drummers throwing up on the field after retreat, someone would have mentioned it before right now. seriously. were you the only person in the stadium who saw it? plus, i've seen someone throw up on the field during retreat before (pre-05), and they weren't drunk. just saying. i've also seen two people pass out during retreat; i know at least one had been locking their knees. i have heard some things about their finals retreat etiquette this year from a reliable source that i was very disappointed to learn about. i know it was a young hornline but that doesn't make some of the stuff i heard (specifically along the lines of reacting to scores, something i've always felt strongly about for whatever reason) acceptable. when i was in the corps, i never noticed it being a visible or widespread problem. ehh. i wasn't there so my sentiments on the matter are pretty reserved. bluecoats is one word by the way.

glassmen 98 and 99. mellophones. i agree with madison 83 by the way, that show was awesome. the opener was called colas breugnon overture. i think i spelled it right, but i dont speak french so i'm not too sure. strawberry soup/the soprano soloists were awesome that year too. i think i'm going to watch bd '93 next time i log in to the fan network.

he probably made the mistake of assuming dcp was a place for people to post their opinions about drum corps, and get other opinions, opposing or in agreement, from other people who care about the activity. thanks for being the super cool guy who made sure that he learned the error of his ways, and won't do anything like "state his viewpoint" again. glad we have an internet enforcer on here making sure the bandwidth doesn't get polluted by people's thoughts or anything. i know he expressed his thoughts in terms of absolutes and assumed that crowd reaction has anything to do with scoring, but it was his first post.....at least he was open to people's dissenting opinions. many people don't want to read posts that include opposing responses. i'd recommend he try using a different username though. i think there's an "r" in 'drummin.'

best response of the thread so far. i was rooting for the colts because i really like them as an organization, but understood why they didn't make finals this year. im sure their experience this summer wasn't hampered by not making the top 12....that's not what being a colt is about, and it's evident in any conversation with any of their members. just a general question, i was curious; clearly the colts show this year was very old school in many different ways. what specific year do you think their show fits in/is most derivative of? i could actually see it being performed in 1993ish, actually. reminded me a bit of freelancers 1992, and the red uniforms only added to that sentiment.

the first show i watched on it was actually crown 01.

which also poses a good question.....do the judges use pencils, or pens?

i mean, of course i've heard that argument before, thats what most people on dcp keep saying. if you really think about it though, all the argument really insinuates is that it CAN'T be done, that judges CAN'T put themselves in that situation.....my personal involvement in the situation in 2007 aside, i don't think that's right. regardless, the semis and finals judges both saw us at LEAST 5 times during the summer, maybe more like 10. it seemed like we saw albert lo around once a week. considering he had us in 1st or 2nd at regionals, wouldn't it make sense that he knew that he could throw a high score out there, and assume that most of the other corps would be below it unless they drastically exceed his expectations? there was no way that scv or the cavaliers were going to outperform us on their best night that year, and crown could probably fit into that group too. personally i haven't figured out what bd's brassline was doing that year that we weren't, but that's just an opinion and doesn't really factor in to this discussion of the 'certainties' of that night. i dont think any of the other three even came close to beating us during that season, so that's at least a 19.6 or a 19.7 that could be "safely" put down without fear of repercussions. as a sidenote, phantom's drill was a lot harder than ours, so i took what they achieved brass-wise and kept that in mind. they were a bit ragged sounding overall and that long and loud mello F in firebird suite was really inconsistent and out of tune, but were a very good brassline and i could see why we'd be competitive in that caption. even though some people bring up the 'stickouts' and 'blend problems' in cadets '07, i think i'd probably give them the jim ott trophy. extremely high level of achievement with highly impressive demand both visually and musically. ok, it probably isn't right that i'm involved in this considering i was part of one of the drum corps in question, so i'm going to let you guys debate and analyze and all that good stuff.

my favorite example of these exceptions is bd '91. 5th overall, 1st in horns (absolutely deserved it....i think they tied with star though?), and 8th or 9th in drums.

ok ok, i'll provide an example, even though i tried to avoid specifically doing so in my earlier post. the bluecoats 2007 hornline. 1st place almost all season, and a 19.8 in brass on quarterfinals night (when we performed in the 4th.....maybe 5th but i think 4th place slot) by andy poor, the chief dci brass judge. i think we came in 3rd in brass at one show during the season, but we were essentially in 2nd place at worst all year....1st at most of the regionals. after prelims, we wound up performing in the 7th place lot for the last two nights. both nights we came in 4th in horns. the hornline was filled with vets, most of whom were around when the corps 'turned it up' during the previous years finals weeks when we jumped other corps with days left in the season, so there would be no reason to make immature mistakes at the big shows. hypotheticals aside, the last two shows were the best two, as far as i know/was told. the only variable was the watering down of some of the brass (most notably the mellophone) parts late in the year, but those things certainly didn't happen on friday or saturday. i guess the other one would be the other corps getting DRASTICALLY better those last two nights, but honestly, what's the likeliness of them getting that much cleaner that late? my point is not to complain about those results, not by any means, but i think it's a pretty reasonable example in regards to what's being discussed. if you feel that our performance level dropped those last two shows, let me know, because that's not the impression i've had in the past year. i have albert lo's judge tape from finals last year, and he spent pretty much the whole tape gushing about various things, giggling when appropriate, and mentioning how the contra line was the best in dci. you used the drumline as an example from this past year (6th place overall, 3rd in drums), but last year we were 7th overall and got 2nd in drums. maybe that's a better example as well.

yeah, youre right, the fact that these things have been exactly the same over the last 15 years (even though the activity itself is so drastically different) is pretty ridiculous. i didn't agree with the big spread below 5th place this year, and i also don't agree with the 12 place corps ALWAYS being around an 85. as the top 12 as a whole gets better, all of the scores should be tighter, not just the top 3 or so. i'm inclined to agree with what you said about the 5th place or lower corps not being 'able' to contend for a caption victory. people accept it as being necessary, as being a reasonable side effect of dci's order of performance on finals night, but it ISN'T RIGHT that scores are so heavily affected (or completely controlled, for that matter) by performance time.