Dr Beat

Wow. Sounds like the good old days! Missed you this year, friend. Off DCP all year, come back and... there YOU are.

Yep. Love me or hate me. I'm always right!

You are on the right track with a DCA show, if enough corps can come. I know one DCI show that cost over $20K to put on last year, and this year is a DCA show for a small fraction of that. I know of an Ohio DCI show that will probably cost $34,000 to put on this year, and has NEVER made a profit.

Nothing, organizationally, has changed at Cap Reg except one of the three board members left and a local band director/long-time supporter filled that spot. The way I am TOLD, the director (salaried) is also one of those three board members which Ohio law, very strangely, seems to allow. To add more board seats (with useful people like educators, business owners or parents) would dilute the power the Director is holding. I don't think he will make a change unless DCI says so. If anyone can correct me on this, please do so.

That is my understanding. And why Blue Stars are operating under Blue Star Cadets 501©(3). Can someone confirm? Simple. Abandon your debts and glom onto another 501©(3) and reinvent yourself. Holy Name Cadets -- was connected to Holy Name Parish. And at some point the parish did not want to be associated/sponsor anymore. There was (for one year) a uniform change to shorts, a la Scout House, having to do with that dissconnect with Holy Name Parish. Something about them talking too much in church. Sheesh. This system insists on taking my ( C ) and turning into copyright symbol. But you get the idea.

And this is what is wrong with drum corps today. It's no longer a drum corps family or life-long friendships. It's all about "me and my credentials." I'm sorry for any young people that share that view. But not surprised. The people I circulate with, for the most part, marched 4-5 years with their corps -- good times and bad -- and NEVER would have thought of jumping ship to "build a resume." If they changed corps, it was because they outgrew (graduated?) their little local/regional cadet or D3 corps and went on to someone like Phantom or Scouts.

Many people that know me also know that I have been a long-time proponent of Nekkid-Class drum corps.

Ah, yes, the Yamaha Bb-G Bagpipe Conversion Kit (Part #YDETUNE3CENTS4U) It was the prototype for the Yamaha BBb-G Contra conversion, drifted ashore from the island of Doctor Moreau...

bump

My friend who was affiliated with Capitol Regiment tried to convince Rick Bays to bring back Cap Reg as a DCA corps. But he wouldn't even go to a DCA show to see what it's about. That would have been a killer idea! Can you imagine that?

You have to reach that magic point, organizationally, where, after a few seasons, your members have no idea what they would do without those summer weekends with their best friends (fellow members), forget what golfing is, realize that yard-work can wait until Mondays, and go into "withdrawl" September-December until first winter camp. And Fridays at work are hell because all you can think about is, "Ewwww... did I empty the ham sandwiches out of the cooler after last weekend?" That is a big hump to get over. To go from members that think "Hmmm... nice day... I think I'd rather..." -- to a mentality of -- "What else would I do?" I agree with William -- Check out Kilties.

And there was a GREAT DCA show in Salem, Ohio, with midwest, er, central corps and eastern corps together.

I think women in drum corps is a good idea.

Bump.

...you go to the bathroom at work, hear the hum of the vent fan, and start humming Blue Devils' F-Tuning to it. "Yo, Hank, what's that thing we always hear you humming in the bathroom?" (Insert really bad joke here)

non-finalist corps may want to know how they compared - by caption.

Eager to compare Mascero's (sp) scores.

Checking from the road... Recaps????

Why still no prelim recaps? Avoiding controversy?

You are correct. And that is at the core of what's wrong with all this.

Or are they changing their name, again, under another incorporation, again, for a financial fresh start, again?

So true. I have a VHS tape of the PBS broadcast from 1980, and it is MUCH better than the Legacy Collection DVD with the terrible compression artifacting. About two years ago, I took that old VHS and captured it, did some minor noise filtering, went out to DVD and -- my DVD is still better than DCI's. That shouldn't be. Way too much compression.

Shooting in 1440 HD, editing on Final Cut on a 3-week-old MacBook Pro, with WD 1-TB extrnal RAID over Firewire 800. Runs far better than I would have expected for a laptop! Also have WindowsXP running Premier and AfterEffects CS3 on the "other half" of the MacBook. Runs very nice. So a Dual-Quad Mac Pro would be sweeeet! Gotta start saving up.

This post quoted, but message below had the message. Odd. Sorry.

Funny, these discussions took place, without the internet, back when we wanted DCI to start offering CDs in addition to LP and Cassette. And I remember the cries for DCI to offer DVDs. And they moved, in both cases, pretty quick. Money is a great motivator. I heard there was a Panasonic AG-HMC70P (3 chip, HD, tapeless) in a press box this season. The 16GB cards hold 160 minutes at "best-quality" it it's AVCHD format. And (I heard) it had an Azden SMX-10 mic. The 1440x1080 and sound (just 2 channel) (I heard) is stunning. (I heard) it makes DVD look like steaming piles of dooo dooo. Razor sharp yard lines, crisp grass texture, great color/brightness dynamic range. If I was DCI I'd skip the Blu-ray distribution and just put individual shows out for download with subscription. Download is what MIGHT keep Blu-ray from ever really replacing DVD anyway. This is happending (HD download) in the "grown-up video" industry. So it's proven and works. No distribution costs other than hosting/bandwidth. I have to think they are at least shooting this year in HD. No reason not to, and most production outfits have made the move to that equipment. A friend of mine is doing events with several low cost pro-sumer HD cams connected to a PC with three dedicated Firewire cards, captured with Adobe OnLocation CS3, plus mics/mixer in via pro sound card. Then all he has to do is go home and fire-up Premier and do the switching/edits/CG. $10,000 in equipment. Stunning results. I would not be suprised if DCI comes back down the road and offers a previous season like this in higher res than DVD. While your DVD is only at up to 500-lines, the SD source they have been shooting in for years is probably at broadcast 720-line. You'd see a difference in quality if they did a re-issue of past seasons on Blue-ray -- or download from the source recordings.