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bayareafan

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Posts posted by bayareafan

  1. A bit late posting here, but congrats Cadets on a great season.  I really liked your show this year.  Very creative and a very high level of performance by the members.  You are a classy organization all around.  Lot of changes over the past few years, but you've weathered them and are performing at a very high level.  Nice work!!!

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  2. Watching on Flo Mandarins really impressed.  Can’t wait to see them live. Those guys keep getting a little better every year. That’s going to be one of my favorites this year. 
     

    BD as always was strong. Their horn line  is smokin this year.  They have the most distinctive sound of any corps. Love the sound of BD brass. 
     

    I miss SCV, but Mandarins and BD are still representing the west coast well. 

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  3. Up until tonight BD was looking like a real mess to me.  I think I was a bit too low to fully appreciate their show in Sac, and what I had seen before on FLO looked so messy to me.  Tonights show couldn't have been more different.  Watching high cam here on FLO BD finally looked the way I expect BD to look.  So much cleaner both visually and musically.  The show really sold to me tonight.  By far the best tonight and yeah I can finally see how people can see this show might go undefeated.  Looks really good now and from what I can see it's the hardest show any corps has on the field this year.  Anyone that says BD doesn't move enough is blind.  There's a ton of demand out there this year.  And this is the best BD horn line in years.  Crown may be getting a run for their money this year.  BD, you sold me now.

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  4. I've only seen them on FLO so far.  Looking forward to live this weekend.  I have only a few observations.

    1. Gold is impressing me a lot.  Nice work guys.  Great to see the progress.

    2. Mandarins seem to have survived the COVID break well.  Nice to see them continuing to grow.

    3. SCV is clearly talented, but to me there is nothing in their show that it making me go "wow".  It's a bit concerning that the ending still isn't there.  And design wise, well, so far it isn't selling.  I'm a bit SCV fan so I hope this is just an artifact of FLO missing important things.

    4. BD has not skipped a beat and looks super impressive.  I had them further ahead of SCV.  For the first time in a few years their horn section is really impressing me.  This is one of those years when I go "wow, that's s smokin horn line".  Very impressive this year and the entire show seems modern and refreshing.

    Will be fun to see live.

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  5. Drum corps has been ahead of the curve on accepting all kinds of people, but that itself might be a good reason for the OP to pursue this project.  There are actually still many places where young people who not straight might face discrimination.  For example, how many out gay men do you see on high school or college football teams?  I think because of that showcasing the drum corps approach to diversity might be a good thing.  This is a tough, demanding activity in every way imaginable.  And it's an ideal example of an activity that is merit-based.  If you aren't good enough, you don't make the corps.  And no corps cares the slightest bit about your orientation these days.  If there's one thing drum corps proves is that LGBTQ people are just as strong, talented, etc. as their straight counterparts.  I wish the rest of the word would be as evolved as drum corps.  If so, we'd be way better off.

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  6. From what I can see in most respects drum corps has been ahead of the curve in terms of diversity.  In terms of membership we see lots of both men and women.  People of all colors are widely represented.  People from many countries come to the US to march in corps.  There are rich kids and some pretty poor kids.  And all of these corps now have a good number of out LGBT members - most likely more than we have in the general population.  So certainly among the members it seems to me like drum corps is very diverse and I think that is really very important.

    The staffs are less diverse.  They skew male, and they skew caucasian though there are certainly still a lot of female staff members in key roles and a lot of non-caucasian staff members as well.  But clearly it is dominated by white males.  My instincts are that this is mostly just the natural way that thing have settled out.  Sometimes there are biases involved, and other times for whatever reason men will prefer some activities, women others, etc.  I expect these staffs will slowly get more diverse.  I don't think we should get too uptight about it or try to set quotas or anything because I think that with diverse membership we will - over time - have more diverse staffs.  From what I can see - at least among the top tier corps - there seems to be a pretty enlightened group of people in leadership.  I truly can't imagine the BlueDevils, or Bluecoats, or most any of the other top corps discriminating on the basis of gender or race for their staffs.  I think they just look for whoever they can get that is the best in a particular area.  So we're gonna get naturally more diverse staff over time and we will get that more diverse staff because those staff members will be the best in the respective fields.  That's a very good thing.

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  7. Great job BD. One of the all time great show IMO.   Bloooo also had one of the all time great shows I think, so winning this one is quite an accomplishment.  Also glad to see that drum score. I’m a big SCV fan as well, but I’ve felt all along that BD really had the best line this year. Glad that finally was recognized the last show of the season.  

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  8. Well said. These are two of my favorite shows ever.  Both incredible corps.   Both high class organizations.    Both really take care of their members and their fans. I’ll be happy however it turns out and I’ll listen to both these shows over and over once we get official recordings. I guess we could say “Go Blue” and that would kind of cover both. 

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  9. 3 hours ago, Cappybara said:

    And swept music against Bloo, that hasn't happened yet this season. I hope those Music analysis scores hold up!

    I was critical of their horn section early in the season.  But now I'm getting it. They are not as aggressive as the other horn lines, but they are actually cleaner and I'm starting to really appreciate that now.

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  10. All I would like to say is “thank you” Vanguard for such an awesome show. This is the 3rd year in a row that you’ve pushed the boundaries of show design and it is fantastic. Don’t get worried about placement. You’re doing what a corps called “Vanguard” should do.  You have tremendous talent and each section could win their caption any given night.  I love the attitude, the aggression, the staging, all of it. I like the uniforms too. Yes they seem odd at first, till you understand what’s happening and then they make perfect sense. I also like how every corps member has come up with their own style of counterculture hair, piercings, etc. That’s an entire corps - 154 members - that have totally committed to this show. Very impressive. I’m from California. I love all our corps.  But this year I’m particularly proud of Vanguard. 

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  11. 11 minutes ago, dureau said:

    Ladies and Gentlemen you just  saw the judges do what they always do and spread them out into positions based on what they think the spread should be at this point in the season. It always makes me lose faith in the judging.

    Perhaps that’s some of what’s happening, but it’s kind of expected at this point. It’s a subjective judging system and this is the first time all of the top corps have met the same panel. This is exactly where you’d expect each judge to go through and finally decide who they think is really best in their caption. And they should space them out a bit unless they really think two corps are virtually even. This result looks to me like what I would expect.

    Congrats Bluecoats. Love your show.  But I also kinda want one of our Bay Area corps to give you at least a good run for your money now 🙂

  12. All I want to say is thanks for doing this. Very interesting analysis. I think the overall trend in DCI has been to much greater variety in programming. I love watching great shows from the past but also really dig the new variety of stuff being done by Bluecoats, SCV, etc. Realistically today’s shows truly are harder than the shows of 20 years ago. As you pointed out the music really is harder across the board. They actually do still do a lot of drill - yes even BD. But these performers are also doing dance, all kinds of body work they never did before, and they are almost actors at times. Add to that electronics being used for all sorts of effects, props to run and climb on, vocalists to be integrated, BD is even using a violin this year, etc, etc.  Put it all together and this is a lot of complexity for the performers and the design staff. Let’s give the corps of today their due. They’ve taken the work of great past corps and built on it to make something that is fresh and relevant for today’s members.  Now let’s all get out to Indy and cheer these awesome young people on. 

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  13. Let's all not be too quick to react to this and pass blame.  There's a lot that seems suspicious to me here.

    1. Given everything that has happened in the past I can't imagine that there's any way that The Cadets management didn't take this very seriously.  I expect that they did take serious action to handle the matter.  If they didn't, they would be wholly incompetent and you'd have a hard time convincing me that they don't have competent management at this point. 

    2. If I understand this correctly the mother of the alleged victim did a mass emailing of a bunch of documents about this case to other people involved with the cadets.  I gotta tell you that's a parent that is NOT acting in their child's best interests.  If this is still a matter under investigation it would seem to me that this sort of action would undermine the investigation.  On the surface, I would view it as a parent trying stir up trouble - possibly with the intent of getting some sort of financial settlement from The Cadets.  This really is not what you do if you truly care about your child and about doing what is right.

    3. From what The Cadets have said - and with no evidence to the contrary - they did not know that the alleged attacker re-entered the room where the alleged victim was staying until just recently.  It seems like that would be important information.  If that was withheld till just now I would again question why the accuser did not provide this information sooner.

    I'm sorry to say this, but it is simply the fact that there are people that try to take advantage of situations.  In this case The Cadets are particularly vulnerable given what was alleged to have happened with Hop.  When I look at how this has been reported I can't really make any judgement about the assault that has been alleged.  But it sure looks to me that at least the parents of the alleged victim are not handling this in the way that a parent truly interested in the truth would handle things.

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  14. If there weren't a slew of other co-ed corps out there, then I'd view this as a positive development.  However, every corps out there is co-ed except for two, so it's not like there aren't a ton of choices for women that want to participate in this activity.  And as others have noted sometimes Phantom and others have elected to have all female guards and that hasn't really been controversial.  So I don't think there's a diversity issue in DCI.  I note that in other performing organizations there is often segregation based on gender.  There are all-male and all-female choirs for instance.  So I don't see diversity and inclusion as a problem for the activity as a whole.

    I do think this creates a new problem for Madison and that is a matter of identity.  Madison has been since it's inception viewed as a masculine corps.  That's a key part of it's identity.  That will now be lost and Madison will need to create a new identity.  That's isn't the end of the world.  Corps have done so.  BD in my view is the most notable case of this.  For years BD was the Jazz Corps.  Every show featured hard-driving jazz music or jazz-oriented latin music.  That was their thing.  You never looked to BD for great GE or anything like that.  They just played challenging jazz music and marched really well (though yes I agree they marched "less" than some others.)  Back say 12 years ago or so they simply changed.  No fanfare about it, they just changed.  Today they are by no means a Jazz Corps.  I'd say that today their identity is probably as the most artistic corps in the activity.  Their entire approach to shows is now choreographed, props are used extensively, and their design team is led by a person that comes from a background in guard.  They haven't played a truly jazz focused show in years.  So a big change for them, but they clearly did it well.  But they were also a very successful corps before they ever started this change.

    The challenge Madison will face is they've struggled a bit these past several years.  They now have to build a new identity while also improving their performance levels, show designs, etc. That's doable but it's another thing to worry about and to be blunt Madison's biggest problem - what lead them to their current challenging state - has been an inability to produce well designed productions.  The problem at Madison, from what I can see, has not been it's members, but rather it's leadership.  I'm sure they are all capable leaders, but the reality is that their leadership has not been able to orchestrate a breakout moment from Madison.  I don' think this change to co-ed is necessarily going to help with that.  I'm from the business world and you give a management team a few years to sort things out, but you don't give them forever.  The people that support Madison are right to be questioning the composition of the current management team.

    Whatever happens, I certainly hope that the "New Madison" that emerges next year will be successful and will produce entertaining shows for the audience and for its members.  Over the years Madison has been one of my favorite corps to watch.  I would like to see it flourish with this new direction.

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  15. As simply a fan it’s been frustrating to watch Madison decline.  

    From watching what’s happened with staff and the reaction of alumni that financially support the corps I’d say there is a big problem with staffing. In particular I think Madison became too insular. They have insisted on hiring staff that in most cases are former scouts. They seem to do this because they look back at years like ‘95 and say that they need to do that again. That’s one of my favorite shows ever, but you know times change. At this point honestly they have to stop living in the past and hire staff with experience teaching other successful corps. Hire some of the younger hungry staff members at BD, Crown, Bluecoats, etc. Get entirely new staff that has experienced the way successful modern corps run their organizations, create their shows, etc.  They need to learn from others how to be relevant and successful in today’s version of the activity. 

  16. Until all the corps perform in front of the same panel you can’t really draw any conclusions. About all you can say right now is that the panels on the east coast and west coast have both started to identify their top tier corps and those corps are the usual suspects.  

  17. 2 hours ago, flammaster said:

    BD is NOT going to lie down.  the GE in this show is very high.  Drumline was very clean last night.  I think they can take down the playing it safe Vanguard.

    I don’t see SCV as playing safe. I think they’re pretty #### impressive. But their approach to programming is very different than BD.  Each is hard in its own way.  I too think that BD was actually better in drums last night though - and last year at finals for that matter.  

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