kcwolf9396

I'm also not a fan of the costumes. The reason is that I think it harms uniformity (forget which poster said that, but I agree). The main thing that needs to come back are the hats. The main thing that a hat (whether shako, aussie, or whatever) provides is that it tends to obscure the performer's face and head from a distance. This enhances the uniformity of whatever look the corps is going for. When you see a uniform where the corps is not wearing a hat: the uniforms can be identical from the neck down, but the fact that everyone has a unique head and face (and we can now clearly see them even from a distance) has a detrimental effect on uniformity.

I was there too (and I can't sleep anyway), so I'll add a little more: It opened with various local ensembles. Those were about what you'd expect, although El Dorado's community band has been in continuous operation for over 100 years. Impressive. Crossmen were doing a camp with local high school band members, so they featured those campers first. The color guard campers did a short number that looked good considering they first learned it earlier that day. The horn and drum campers then took the field with the Crossmen horn and drum lines and played Russian Christmas Music. The campers were kind of drowned out by the Crossmen horn and drum lines. I'm sure that was a bummer if you were the parents of one of those campers, but I got to hear Crossmen play it. Goosebumps! After that, they did a portion of their show. As the original poster said, the theme is chess and each of the 3 pieces relates to some aspect of the game. The opener is Minuano (six-eight) by Pat Metheny. Sorry, I was so geeked by that that I didn't catch the name of the other 2 (and there were no programs given out that I could refer to later). I should mention that they weren't in uniform tonight (just shorts and tshirts). However, they did break out the white aussies! The show they trotted out tonight was very bare-bones (no pun intended; he wasn't there by the way). The flags were all solid color, which I took to mean that they weren't the ones we'll see in Indy. There were no props or anything going on GE-wise other than playing, marching (well, some body movement too), and guard work. In a normal year, I'd say that it just means that we'll see them add stuff later, but this year... As a bonus, they did as an encore a stand-still performance of Birdland. That was a nice bonus for me, considering it was the last piece I ever played with them (it was the closer my age-out year). For anyone else that was there, please add on for anything I missed. KCWolfpack9396 - Former Crossmen Bari