Icer

I wasn’t talking about last year in Allentown. I don’t remember much about that show. But if you go on YouTube and search for Cadets 2017 Finals (from what I understand it’s against the rules of this forum to post links) and listen to the crowd, you will hear what I am talking about. Having been there in Indianapolis, it was heartwarming see 20,000 people on their feet cheering for so long independent of all of the hardships the corps was facing and all the negative publicity on social media (even before the sexual misconduct allegations).

Even with a show that was not as well constructed as this one, the crowd at finals last year had a huge reaction to the finale. You can find it on YouTube - probably the biggest response to a show that far out of contention that you will see, and it is because it was delivered with enormous emotion and energy by the members who believed in the show despite its shortcomings. This show is far better, and if delivered with the same intensity as the final run last year, will generate an even bigger response.

Having watched about 10 shows this season in person, it seems to me that World Class currently breaks down into fairly well-defined groups. There is the top tier of shows that make the audience say “Wow” every time. There is the second tier of corps who are giving performances that could/should be finals-worthy (or close), and then everyone else. The top group has included SCV, BD, Bloo and Crown all season, subsequently joined by BAC and Cavs. The second group goes down to 14-15, and it’s going to be a photo finish for the 12th spot with the emergence of Mandarins, the improved game of Spirit of Atlanta and Academy to offset the demise of Scouts. Last night, marching a full corps for the first time all season, and with some nice final improvements to the show, The Cadets took what were some excellent building blocks - great music and iconic drill - and pulled them together with a clean, emotional performance into that “Wow” group. If they don’t take a step down in execution, they can stay in that top group through finals regardless of placement or final score number. And to me that would be a great accomplishment for the season.

The avenue I preferred was exactly what they eventually did - go public with their accusations. Within 24 hours GH had resigned. If you believe that the door was shut because of finances (which have nothing to do with sexual assault) then it should be clear to you that going public was the ONLY way something was going to happen. And if you believe as I do that the problem was in the restrictions imposed by the law, then you come to the same conclusion. If you want to call that blaming the victim then there is no persuading you. The fact that you even raise the issue of financial management makes me think that you have an agenda that has nothing to do with the victims.

You have no idea what you are saying. Blaming the victim is when people say things like "Well what was she doing in that position", or "Look what she was wearing", or "She must have done something to cause this". Everyone has the right to control exactly when and where they choose to have a physical relationship, no means no, and there is no in between. That's what not blaming the victim means. For any incidents of assault, the victims deserve enequivocal sympathy, full stop But being a victim doesn't give carte Blanche to everything that follows, and one's actions have consequences. If one of them had walked into the offices and beaten the accused to a pulp I suppose some might cheer, but the police would certainly take a different positon. The accusers made a tactical decision and attempted to get YEA to remove the executive director on the basis of an anonymous letter through an intermediary. Had the organization done as they wished it would likely have ceased to exist, because it would have then been the subject of a wrongful termination lawsuit, which it would have lost. Don't take my word for this. Go ask any lawyer what would happen to an organization that fired an employee on the basis of an email with no names. I will grant you that perhaps the accusers believed they were doing what was best for all involved, but what they actually did was to create a whole host of collateral damage in the organization, which was caught in an impossible situation where they could neither move forward or backward. You are entitled to your opinion, but the law restricts people's actions and that seems fairly clear. So let's leave the inflammatory rhetoric aside. It is possible to have 100% sympathy for a blameless victim while still believing there was a much better sequence of actions to obtain justice.

No, I think that coming forward halfway was not a good idea.

I believe that a victim's story is his or her own, and that the time and place to come forward should be at their choosing. However, making the claims anonymously in an attempt to get done what could only be accomplished in the open surely made the situation worse because it created a limbo period in which it was impossible to achieve their desired objective, and created collateral damage which has yet to be fully tallied. The best course of action would have been to wait until they were ready to come forward and then to just do it. Teasing the information was flat-out wrong.

My comprehension skills are fine. The YEA board was presented with a set of anonymous allegations against an individual about whom there had never been any allegations of assault, and undertook an investigation. The people making the accusations did not come forward, and until they did the investigation was fishing in the dark for 10 weeks. Within 24 hours of their coming forward, the person accused of wrongdoing was out. Had the accusers come forward 10 weeks earlier, the results would have been identical without the limbo period. I realize that people want things wrapped up in the amount of time it takes to watch an episode of "Law and Order", but in the real world things don't work that fast. if the same set of circumstances had presented themselves to another corps in the same way at the time, I believe it would have played out the same.

I was there. It was obvious and significant improvement. Still a long way from what BD and SCV put on the field, but they were the next best.

The guard took a huge step forward tonight. The score didn’t improve because of some hiccups in the brass/percussion visual, but if the guard matches that performance this weekend, expect a nice bump.

Are we talking unflattering or accusations of assault prior to 2018? And were the Reddit moderators YEA staff or board? If so, please indicate specifically who, because if they suppressed critical information in 2017 and earlier then they should be outed for their actions.

You have no idea what you are talking about. I challenge you to find one instance relating to member safety that was ever brought to the attention of either DCI or the YEA board relating to The Cadets. Read the posts from the last few years. Plenty of criticism relating to results, personality, management style, but not one accusation (unless the moderators filtered it out). Certainly nothing about hazing either. The entire problem at YEA was that the one person who needed to be most concerned about the members had a dark past known only to the people directly involved. No one else - not the corps members, the staff, or the board knew what had gone on years ago. This kind of unfounded nonsense is how Sean King ended up going through hell.

Too bad. If they are going to do that it should be live.

I'm curious - how much of the Colts vocals are live vs pre-recorded?

Do they have this judge again in Atlanta or Indy?

Considering they only put it in this week, that was great. And it will only get better. Quite a few surprised looks from fans in the stands.

I can tell you with near 100% certainty that GH did this sort of thing believing he was cutting edge. He really didn’t obsess over whether they came in 1st, but he always wanted to be competitive. So when something didn’t work out he was genuinely surprised and bummed, but he believed it was a risk worth taking. I don’t have a problem with that to a point. Innovation is great. On the other hand... It’s a bit of a shame not to give the members the best chance to succeed, because they don’t have 40 bites at the apple. So if you flail with the design you are writing off a whole season.

Anyone who puts a stage in front of the performers should be forced to listen to a class of 4th graders playing “Amazing Grace” on kazoos on endless repeats. A little platform like Bluecoats have, or like Cavs did last year is fine as long as it doesn’t dominate the field. And then there was the $#@& narrator. If you are going to have vocals, SING for crying out loud. I’m hoping someday someone takes that exact same show, stages it correctly, and takes the gold medal at finals.

You hit the nail on the head right there. If the behavior described in the allegations had been some kind of open secret like Harvey Weinstein, the sense of betrayal would not have been as pronounced. It still boggles my mind that all this went on for such a long time and NO ONE KNEW, NO ONE SAID ANYTHING. It must have been a perfect storm of each person thinking they were the only one. And as such, the ongoing dismay in everyone else other than the victims will take a very long time to fully heal.

This year the state champion HS marching band in NJ built their show around Per Gynt (Hall of the Mountain King), Beethoven's 5th and Beethoven's 9th. They can plaster their show everywhere and not have to worry. Take classics and sprinkle in some original stuff (enough to be interesting, not so much to be exceedingly hard to compose) and presto! No rights issues. Maybe that will bring the cost of the rights on regular stuff down a bit.

One more thing. By the time the corps arrived in Florida last year they were also beat up from injuries and not enough rest. If the director had been smarter about how he scheduled the corps for the first 8 weeks that would not have been necessary AND he would not have had so many holes to fill.

Things didn’t stall last summer because of swimming and sun. They stalled because they kept making significant changes to the program while everyone was cleaning theirs (and not all of the changes were necessarily effective). And because it took another three weeks to iron out the GE-killing electronics issues like feedback in the vocalist mics.

Bluecoats put on quite a spectacle, and it may be enough to carry them (we’ll see what BD and SCV bring to the table in San Antonio). For my money, I think Crown has a better show that has more room to grow. Crusaders’ show seems like Crown in many ways, but just a small step behind. At the end of the day what is really nice is the contrasting styles we got to see in a show like last night. There was the whimsical Music City, the themed performance by an improved Spirit of Atlanta, the jazz from bloo, the almost frantic wildness of BC and Crown, and the beautiful, traditional (in sound rather than sight) Cadets. If you didn’t like last night, you don’t like drum corps.

I don’t think the colors and pattern should be up to the members. But the activity has changed from marching to marching+dance, and the equipment has to change with it. Without commenting on the aesthetics, there is simply no way Bluecoats could have done any of their last three shows in their traditional uniform. One MM told me that there is a huge difference in the uniform this year even vs the white one-piece in which they ended the show last year. That this one feels no different physically from their practice run-through in shorts and t-shirt. That’s a really big deal when you are performing under brutal summer conditions and this kind of physical demand. Should the activity evolve this way? That’s a different debate. But we are here and they have to adapt.

If it were discovered in 2018 that 35 years ago there was a consensual relationship between a 20-something staff member and a 21 year old corps member, it would not have been headlines. From what I have heard back in the 80’s this was unfortunately not such a rare occurrence. The revelations would have been embarrassing but it would pass as a “youthful indiscretion”. I’m not condoning this, it’s just an observation on what does and does not grab attention and how people react. What made this national news - and rightly so - was the allegations of non-consensual activity (assault) and the fact that the accusations span a 20+ year period. That’s an alleged pattern of abuse that would have been news even in a pre-Harvey Weinstein world. All this - the assault part that made it news - has so far been categorically denied. At the moment it’s he-said/they-said. The investigations will hopefully reveal more - especially if the DA decides to bring charges. But that’s where things stand right now.