Centerville OH Review

[Galen]

Last night I got the chance to attend the Centerville OH show while in town for a job interview (which I got!). Here's my review of the night's events, complete with pictures.

Centerville is always a popular show for fans to go to. The tall stands provide a "big-stadium" atmosphere and a high enough seat gives you a really good vantage point to watch drill and forms. C-ville also had brand new field turf for this year, which made a good show venue that much better:

Centerville's new turf

Geographically, Centerville is in a PERFECT location for drum corps, being right in between Indy, Louisville, Cincy and Columbus. The result is that fans come from all over to attend this show. While that's always a good thing, it can cause some parking problems. There were some renovations going on at the school tonight which left parking a little short. The result: a lot of latecomers, including myself, had to find parking in the nearby residential neighborhoods, and I wound up missing Revolution's performance due to the long walk and longer lines at the stadium.

This guy had the best seat in the house!

Before the show started, I got a chance to chat with some of my former mates from Capital Regiment (including one who is on staff with Troopers this season). I also bought the obligatory Troopers t-shirt before heading for my seat into the stadium on the 40, DM left, 5 rows below the pressbox.

Memphis Sound: I saw this corps a few nights earlier in Normal. I thought their high brass was a little better tonight, although they still had some difficulties projecting their sound. My suspicions from Normal about the singing they do at spots in the show turned out to be correct: from a high seat, it's very difficult to hear them do it. This could be solved by having the entire corps (guard, drums, pit, maybe even the DM) join in, but as they currently are, they're just a little undersized to create the effect.

TROOPERS: I can't say enough how happy I am to see F-Troop back on the field! The corps brought a good attitude to the field, from their always intense DM to the resounding CLANK! when their contras brought their horns up to play to the Sunburst at the end of the show that drew a good ovation from the crowd. Troop has a pretty nice show on the field right now. Their opener is a good fit for them while "Unsquare Dance" has all the look and feel of a Troopers production with the drumline setting the pace and feel while not "sticking out". The hornline may not have the most challenging book on the field this year, but they put out a pretty good sound regardless of which side of the field they play to. They spend a good part of the ballad playing to both sides of the field and they make their sound carry well backfield. I had a difficult time picking out anything that I would consider a glaring weakness at this point- all sections of the corps are looking pretty good (although based on scores, you'd have to say that the hornline is the strong point of the corps since they beat Glassmen tonight).

The only thing that could hold them back is that their show might not have enough "oomph" in it to push them past the other corps in the group they're scoring with. They're pretty clean right now, but whether or not they'll be able to stay ahead of corps like Cascades, Southwind, Madison (I can't believe I just typed that...) once those corps start getting their shows cleaner. 2 final special props: first to the color guard member that performed despite having one arm in a sling (reminds me of watching 27th from 1982), and one to their souvineer wagon for having THE best fundraiser you'll ever see. For just 75 bucks, YOU can have your very own vintage Troopers corps uniform! Amaze your friends and drum corps peers, be the life of the party, or get the perfect outfit for Crunchy Frog's next gig!

Ok, shill mode off :P

Good to have them back

Instant drum corps highlight

Cascades: Cascades have an interesting show premise and display it well throughout their show, from their opening and closing drill sets to several trio groups during the show. Watching them perform, you can tell that it's still very early early in the season for them. They're very dirty in both marching and playing. A lot of times their brass sounds very muddy, especially the mid-brass (mellos and high baris). The "Sleep" production is sadly not well-arranged; they pretty much just play it straight through when more rubato and tempo variations are called for. They do do some good dynamic shaping during the piece (but need to project better and use more air at the softer dynamics to eliminate fracked notes). The end of the show was extremely dirty and forced- a sign that the corps has more conditioning to do.

Between Troopers and Cascades, Cascades definitely have the more challenging and intricate show. If they can clean it up, they could overtake Troopers by the end of the year (as their comfortable lead in GE scores indicates). But tonight, they looked like a corps with a lot of work to do.

Glassmen: Glassmen were a little cleaner than Normal but still look rough in patches (horns had one noticeably rough section in the ballad, and had one musical impact ruined by early entrances). Sitting up high, it was possible to see a lot of the drill and guard work tonight. It was also possible to see some potential flaws in the design of the show. There are some spots where the brass playing seems to suffer from the way they are staged on the field, and others (particularly the opener) where the hornline almost feels peripheral because the guard is such a focus during that segment. G-men should still be in finals, but those design issues could hold them back from achieving more than an 11th or 12th place finish again this year.

Ready and rockin'!

Blue Devils: BD got on my bad side tonight by NOT playing F Tuning to start the show, opting for a "warm-in" instead. The show is everything we've all come to expect from BD of the last 4-5 years- lots of loud playing, intense drumming, strong guard work and role-playing ( although they had a few drops tonight ), etc. However, and I hate to say it- their shows have almost become formulaic at this point with all the 5/4 rhythms devoid of melody, hyper pit runs, loud horn stabs and space chords. I do like how they work "Pegasus" into their show, but beyond that, you couldn't tell that they were apparently playing Rite of Spring and Firebird as well. When the show started and I saw the guard with dark angel wings, I thought "This is going to be like their '95 show, but I was wrong. This left me feeling that either the guard was portrayed way too darkly for the music or vice-versa. But as the show went on, they changed to a more lighter-colored uniform and seemed to fit in better.

If anybody from BD's pit is reading, please check out the way you have your amps hooked up and positioned. From where I was sitting, I could hear a lot of contra sound "bleeding through" at several spots in the show.

Bluecoats: THE upset of the season as Bluecoats literally steal the win tonight. The drill looked spectacular tonight, although the guard had an off night with far too many drops (I counted at least 5). And yet looking at the captions, they won guard but got third in Performance and Ensemble. Go fig. My biggest take on this show right now is that it seems like it's trying to be two shows at once. Part of it is "cocky suave" and part of it is "nasty psycho". I'd like to see them decide which one they want to go with and commit fully to it if they want to see repeats of tonight's success. Otherwise, I'm afraid that this show could turn into a "what if?" And PLEASE lose those freakin' screens and DO something instead of just ducking out of sight!!!

Cavaliers: I said after Normal that Cavies' show "looks and feels frantic", and that was evident again tonight. The opener felt a little more under control, but they seemed to lose control of things in the "Pressure" section. A lot of it seems to come from when they go from regular-sized steps to smaller-sized ones (which they do a lot in the show). There were also a lot of spacing issues that I could see towards the end of the show. Speaking of the ending, it's STILL not on the field, which is one reason why they're losing to a couple of Blue Corps (another reason may be that they simply might not have as much room for development of their show as Bluecoats and Devils do, as witnessed by their low GE music score). They did play the last bit of their show when they did their encore (or perhaps "non-core" would be a better term since they only performed their show and corps song before heading back for the buses).

Something else that came through- their drumline seemed to really be overplaying in some spots of the show when they had done a good job of balancing with the rest of the corps a few nights back in Normal (must have been a Taco salad night tonight).

[Galen]

More pics from the show:

One of three similar forms in Cascades' opener

Cascades' last set

Guard featured heavily in Glassmen's show

Glassmen, preparing to start the closer

BD's guard

And a little later on

Bluecoats' opener

Take it off!!!

[NeutralNovice]

NICE REVIEW!! Thanks!

I agree with you.. pretty much on.... all!

[playloud]

They did play the last bit of their show when they did their encore (or perhaps "non-core" would be a better term since they only performed their show and corps song before heading back for the buses).

Playing the full show in standstill, as well as "Over the Rainbow" is a "non-core"? What exactly were you hoping for?

While it always nice to hear a suprise tune, I am grateful to any corps that takes time to give us fans a special treat after the official show is done.