daniel2e

To say it in a way that is purely complimentary to the members: Cadets had the first place show, probably by quite a large margin. Their design team robbed them of a title, and for some reason stuck to their guns throughout the season - possibly out of principle, possibly because they felt the show would lose it's cohesiveness. I hope they learned from their mistake, and can put together a musical package even half as good next year.

A thousand times, yes.

Wow, the cadets' show is a rollercoaster of emotions. I lost count of how many times I went from enjoyment of the performance, only to be replaced by sheer vitriol for the narration, and then back again. In all honesty, excellent music, very well performed. The narration is fluffy nonsense, reminiscent of (though inferior to) after school specials of the mid-90s. It means nothing, it is worse than nothing. Random words would have been preferable. All it does is obscure and sabotage a show which I sense to be otherwise excellent. I've never really cared about narration, electronics, voice of any kind. It has never mattered to me one way or the other. Today I have seen the damage it can do, and it is something to be respected and feared. I predict that this show will be remembered for a very long time, and will represent a catharsis for the community. What that will mean specifically, I'm not sure. But it shall be significant and enduring. Thoughts?

If you play Cadets 2006 show simultaneously with Pauly Shore's Biodome, the events in both the film and the show synchronize eerily (a la Dark Side of the Moon/Wizard of Oz).

Parity, as well as the average quality of every corps, is excellent this year. But something is missing from recent years, and thats the blow-you-away entertaining show. There was phantom in 03, scv in 04 (I also really liked cavies in 01 and 02, but it seems debatable among fans whther or not they are that entertaining), noone this year. Probably 8 corps with great shows, where there might normally only be 4 or 5, but none of the shows are truly spectacular. Not sure which scenario I prefer.

Good point, I'll get it. According to NSF Grant No. 1137-98b (Smith, Benning, et al 2002), amplification has increased the effectiveness of drum corps expressivity (as a function in 5 dimensional space of money, time, feet-per-second, pandas, and crayons) by an estimated 3.67% with a margin of error of plus or minus .1%. Pants, on the other hand, are responsible for only 3.52%. These numbers are roughly equivalant, but even with a generous margin of error (accurate to 3 standard deviations from the mean), it is reasonably simple to conclude that amplification is more important to the activity than pants. It should be pointed out that when G says something he thinks is smart, it's probably more fruitful to just ignore him, but I couldn't help myself.

It was meant as a compliment, even standing still in a gym I did not expect them to sound that good. I'm sure they aren't bad, but I'd be interested to see how much of that transfers to the field. All in all, I was really impressed anyway by a really entertaining brass book.

Standstill in the gym, don't really understand why it wasn't a standstill outside, since I didn't see it rain at any point during the performances, and only a little bit from 3PM till the show started. I'll preface this by saying that every corps sounded pretty much perfect, almost all dirt and possible release problems were masked by the acoustical nightmare that is KMHS gym and the fact that the corps weren't moving. There is no way anyone could get an idea of which corps were actually the best. That said, here is my opinion of the brass books, from favoristest to least favoristest, although any subtleties in the arrangements were pretty much covered up (this is almost worthless in judging which corps actually has the best show, but whatev): Crown: excellent arranging, entertaining from beginning to end. I hear tell that crown can play the book while moving. If thats true, ####. The singing is very well done, but didn't get a single clap. If you do it that well and the crowd still hates it, maybe you should cut it? I guess people hated Star `93 too, so maybe leave it in, but the only hope for acceptance I foresee is in posterity. Obnoxiously high-pitched and loud feedback made an appearance as well. Magic: Very entertaining and doesn't let up, though it also doesn't have anything to really make it special other than just being loud and exciting. For some reason I don't see it translating well to the field, but it sounded great indoors. I'm sure Boston has the better show but, like I said, all I can really judge is the music itself. Boston: Very entertaining and much more innovative than magic, I want to see the show. The brass and percussion books are very cohesive and add to each other a great deal. Couldn't understand much of the miced voice, but what I did hear made me cringe. Hopefully because I heard it out of context, but I'm not hopeful. Spirit: Cavies little brother, seems to me. Got bored during the first half. But the last 5 minutes or so is consistently good, and very unique at that. What separated sprit last year was that they were so much louder than everyone else (and with pretty good tone), this may again be the case, but who's to tell in a gym where everybody is too #### loud? Crossmen: It's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but it's a definite step down from their last arranger. I don't think I get it, but I 'm very bitter about the staff changes as crossmen have produced two truely memorable tunes in "Count Bubba" and "In the Heat of the day" the last two years. That time is over. Court of Honor: This is what convinced me that the gym was hiding too much. They can't possibly be that good. I really enjoyed the show a lot. In a gym it didn't sound all that different from the Div 1's. Corpsvets seemed to play really well, but I was in the acoustically worst possible place to hear their performance. I hope the kennesaw show in july doesn't rain out...

Sue Samuels was brass caption head at Carolina Crown for at least two years (1999 and 2000 for sure).

My roommate's most favoristest of drum corps shows is that of the Hawthorne Muchachos in 1975. Apparently they got 1st in semis, then the Troopers ratted them out to DCI that they were marching age-outs in order to sneak in to finals at 12th place. The Muchachos were disqualified and the fallout from it eventually killed the corps. I've heard the show, and I have to agree it is one of the greatest of all time. But where can you get a video of it? As far as I can tell, DCI disavows all knowledge of the Muchachos existence, even leaving them off the DVD for 1976 when they made 4th. Does anyone have any idea how you could acquire the semis vid from 1975? It'd be a shame to think that one night erased from all DCI history this gem of a show. BTW, if you haven't heard the show, see if you can find it, it's really phenomenal.