That's Entertainment?

[BklynMario]

That’s Entertainment?

Judi and I went to only two contests this year. Actually, it was more like one and a half, as one of these was the closed circuit, theater DCI Quarter-Finals. I’m not certain if that counts as much as a butt bedeviling, bench seated, small city stadium in upstate New York on a nearly humidity and mosquito free Saturday August night. That was what I remember as a real contest, and not so much a performance, whether live or on-screen. (Don’t stop me now! I know about the difference of actually being there vs. viewing a broadcast. That’s not exactly where I’m going.)

Using guile and Italian guilt trip techniques, (“Someday you’ll say to yourself, ‘I should have gone with my mother and father to see that show. Now it’s too late.’”) I craftily convinced my 31 year old, Lincoln Center ticket holding, newly employed Adjunct Professor of Graphic Design at Kean University (NJ), co-author of a soon-to-be-published book in that field, and owner of more than a thousand CDs ranging from Sinatra to Shakira, and from von Beethooven to Van Halen to join us. Not that this was the first drum corps show he had ever seen, but it had been some time between. On the drive home…

“So?”

“It wasn’t very interesting.”

“‘Interesting’? Do you mean ‘boring’?”

“No, I mean interesting, as in ‘engaging’ or ‘captivating.’”

“What? None of it?”

“I didn’t say ‘none of it.’”

“Oh?”

(Historically— thirty-one years to be exact— our conversations/discussions evolve into controlled contentiousness. For about eleven years of that span, I was deluded into believing that my nurturing wisdom had guided this child. My sagacity and sometimes a strategic smack assured me of this. Somewhere in the vicinity of year twelve, sagacity became suspicion. He didn’t need help with homework. Rumpelstiltskin-like, he put together the entertainment unit that I ###### as “missing five screws.” Unlike the queen, I grew less needed and grimmer, and lost the child, in spite of the fact that I knew his benefactor’s name. Not long after that, he taught himself to play guitar by videotaping a Moody Blues concert, then slow motion emulating the fret fingering. Looking over a paper I had written for a school committee, he questioned the subject-verb agreement of a sentence…or two. I could go on, but suffice it to say that this story will not be e-mailed without his stringent scrutiny.)

“There were about three corps that I did like.”

(Hope. There was hope!) “You did? Why? Tell me why! Which ones? “

“Dad.” (Sometimes he still calls me that despite his claim that Judi and I found him in a small space ship that crash landed in a Jersey City park. He so wants his disavowal of my parentage to be explained rationally.) “Be patient. Wait’ll we get home.”

“But…don’t we turn left here? We always turn left here.”

“No. The overpass that they built five years ago will get us home faster.”

“Yeah, I knew that.” A minute or so of silence. “Put on the Mets game. I think they’re in California.” Chris is a monomaniacal Yankees fan. The Guile Master is at work!

“Phantom Regiment should have placed higher. The Flower Duet was something that a good part of the audience recognized, even though they may not have known its name. Not that you’d need to have heard it before. It’s a beautiful piece. People reacted to it. But I think what made it even better is that it’s a two-part operatic vocal. Who would have thought someone in drum corps would have had the balls to take on something like that… and make it work?”

“Right. The Flower Duet.” My response reeks of deception before discernment, and he immediately perceives it.

“British Airways used it in one of their commercials.”

Commercials! Television! Now I know what he’s referring to. Immediate epiphany. “Could be.” (Accompanied by a thoughtful nod that isn’t fooling him at all.)

“I really appreciated what they did. It was a terrific presentation.”

“Who else did you like?”

“The Bluecoats. Everything they did visually and musically made sense. It was just plain clever. The props they used were meaningful and were actually integrated into the performance as a whole. They weren’t just there to clutter the field. As for the music…”

“I knew most of it!” (Even though they weren’t commercials.)

“I would hope so. More than anything else, it was engaging. You wanted to know what would happen next. You know— how would it end? It was a good story.”

“I thought so, too” (How could I be wrong if I agreed with him?)

“I thought Carolina Crown had a fun show. There was an obvious, easily recognized theme to all of it. Kinda like the Bluecoats, they had a story to tell. Here’s the thing— it was something familiar… like a movie that you’d like to see more than once… which means it was entertaining.”

(Just for the record, Judi sat in the back of the car, acknowledging her perceptive son with well placed utterances of agreement and pride. He was entertaining her.)

Entertaining. We’d spent more than five hours and $54 for about sixty minutes of entertainment in the only theater in all of New Jersey (You remember New Jersey? Blessed Sacrament, Bridgemen, Caballeros, Cadets, and lots of marching bands) that was carrying the broadcast. I didn’t count the audience, but there were no lines at the ticket booths, and no frenzied clamoring for seats. Had every other New Jersey drum corps denizen gone to Pasadena? Not likely.

“How about the Blue Devils?” He knows that they’re my favorite corps, and that I plan my resurrection to be as a muscular 19 year-old, 6’2”, well-bronzed, blonde haired Californian with the most incredible set of soprano( O.K., trumpet)chops in Blue Devil history)

But we were home now. I wanted to hear more, but he Chris had had enough. The guilt trip ended with an, “I have some work to do.” punctuation. The Master was foiled, but it was an educational and entertaining night.

* * *

To be certain, there is a great deal more that has been and can be said about the entertainment factor. But to even attempt a truly insightful explanation is far beyond my ability. Rather, let me offer what I feel is the most definitive piece of work on the subject, and something that should be required reading for everyone involved with drum corps in any administrative or instructional capacity.

Drum Corps Planet, Inside the Arc, Issue 1, “Why You Hate the Music” by Frank Dorritie

http://www.drumcorpsplanet.com/content/view/883/53/

That's Entertainment(Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz, from Bandwagon")

The clown with his pants falling down or the dance that's a dream of romance

Or the scene where the villain is mean.

That's entertainment

The world is a stage, the stage is a world of entertainment.

Or, at least, it should be...................................mario

[TennTux]

That’s Entertainment?

Judi and I went to only two contests this year. Actually, it was more like one and a half, as one of these was the closed circuit, theater DCI Quarter-Finals. I’m not certain if that counts as much as a butt bedeviling, bench seated, small city stadium in upstate New York on a nearly humidity and mosquito free Saturday August night. That was what I remember as a real contest, and not so much a performance, whether live or on-screen. (Don’t stop me now! I know about the difference of actually being there vs. viewing a broadcast. That’s not exactly where I’m going.)

Using guile and Italian guilt trip techniques, (“Someday you’ll say to yourself, ‘I should have gone with my mother and father to see that show. Now it’s too late.’”) I craftily convinced my 31 year old, Lincoln Center ticket holding, newly employed Adjunct Professor of Graphic Design at Kean University (NJ), co-author of a soon-to-be-published book in that field, and owner of more than a thousand CDs ranging from Sinatra to Shakira, and from von Beethooven to Van Halen to join us. Not that this was the first drum corps show he had ever seen, but it had been some time between. On the drive home…

“So?”

“It wasn’t very interesting.”

“‘Interesting’? Do you mean ‘boring’?”

“No, I mean interesting, as in ‘engaging’ or ‘captivating.’”

“What? None of it?”

“I didn’t say ‘none of it.’”

“Oh?”

(Historically— thirty-one years to be exact— our conversations/discussions evolve into controlled contentiousness. For about eleven years of that span, I was deluded into believing that my nurturing wisdom had guided this child. My sagacity and sometimes a strategic smack assured me of this. Somewhere in the vicinity of year twelve, sagacity became suspicion. He didn’t need help with homework. Rumpelstiltskin-like, he put together the entertainment unit that I ###### as “missing five screws.” Unlike the queen, I grew less needed and grimmer, and lost the child, in spite of the fact that I knew his benefactor’s name. Not long after that, he taught himself to play guitar by videotaping a Moody Blues concert, then slow motion emulating the fret fingering. Looking over a paper I had written for a school committee, he questioned the subject-verb agreement of a sentence…or two. I could go on, but suffice it to say that this story will not be e-mailed without his stringent scrutiny.)

“There were about three corps that I did like.”

(Hope. There was hope!) “You did? Why? Tell me why! Which ones? “

“Dad.” (Sometimes he still calls me that despite his claim that Judi and I found him in a small space ship that crash landed in a Jersey City park. He so wants his disavowal of my parentage to be explained rationally.) “Be patient. Wait’ll we get home.”

“But…don’t we turn left here? We always turn left here.”

“No. The overpass that they built five years ago will get us home faster.”

“Yeah, I knew that.” A minute or so of silence. “Put on the Mets game. I think they’re in California.” Chris is a monomaniacal Yankees fan. The Guile Master is at work!

“Phantom Regiment should have placed higher. The Flower Duet was something that a good part of the audience recognized, even though they may not have known its name. Not that you’d need to have heard it before. It’s a beautiful piece. People reacted to it. But I think what made it even better is that it’s a two-part operatic vocal. Who would have thought someone in drum corps would have had the balls to take on something like that… and make it work?”

“Right. The Flower Duet.” My response reeks of deception before discernment, and he immediately perceives it.

“British Airways used it in one of their commercials.”

Commercials! Television! Now I know what he’s referring to. Immediate epiphany. “Could be.” (Accompanied by a thoughtful nod that isn’t fooling him at all.)

“I really appreciated what they did. It was a terrific presentation.”

“Who else did you like?”

“The Bluecoats. Everything they did visually and musically made sense. It was just plain clever. The props they used were meaningful and were actually integrated into the performance as a whole. They weren’t just there to clutter the field. As for the music…”

“I knew most of it!” (Even though they weren’t commercials.)

“I would hope so. More than anything else, it was engaging. You wanted to know what would happen next. You know— how would it end? It was a good story.”

“I thought so, too” (How could I be wrong if I agreed with him?)

“I thought Carolina Crown had a fun show. There was an obvious, easily recognized theme to all of it. Kinda like the Bluecoats, they had a story to tell. Here’s the thing— it was something familiar… like a movie that you’d like to see more than once… which means it was entertaining.”

(Just for the record, Judi sat in the back of the car, acknowledging her perceptive son with well placed utterances of agreement and pride. He was entertaining her.)

Entertaining. We’d spent more than five hours and $54 for about sixty minutes of entertainment in the only theater in all of New Jersey (You remember New Jersey? Blessed Sacrament, Bridgemen, Caballeros, Cadets, and lots of marching bands) that was carrying the broadcast. I didn’t count the audience, but there were no lines at the ticket booths, and no frenzied clamoring for seats. Had every other New Jersey drum corps denizen gone to Pasadena? Not likely.

“How about the Blue Devils?” He knows that they’re my favorite corps, and that I plan my resurrection to be as a muscular 19 year-old, 6’2”, well-bronzed, blonde haired Californian with the most incredible set of soprano( O.K., trumpet)chops in Blue Devil history)

But we were home now. I wanted to hear more, but he Chris had had enough. The guilt trip ended with an, “I have some work to do.” punctuation. The Master was foiled, but it was an educational and entertaining night.

* * *

To be certain, there is a great deal more that has been and can be said about the entertainment factor. But to even attempt a truly insightful explanation is far beyond my ability. Rather, let me offer what I feel is the most definitive piece of work on the subject, and something that should be required reading for everyone involved with drum corps in any administrative or instructional capacity.

Drum Corps Planet, Inside the Arc, Issue 1, “Why You Hate the Music” by Frank Dorritie

http://www.drumcorpsplanet.com/content/view/883/53/

That's Entertainment(Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz, from Bandwagon")

The clown with his pants falling down or the dance that's a dream of romance

Or the scene where the villain is mean.

That's entertainment

The world is a stage, the stage is a world of entertainment.

Or, at least, it should be...................................mario

Thank you once again Mario...

(At least you were able to get your 31 year old to attend. Neither our 36 nor our 27 year old were willing to come along with mom and dad)

;-)

[zarblap]

Drum corps as we knew it and made the crowds go crazy is dead and it makes no sense what so ever...who ever steered it in this direction should be sent to Texas for the ellectric chair....there's so much talent these days having to play so much BS is truely a sin!!!!!!!!!

Edited October 28, 2007 by zarblap

[Mephistopheles]

First,

Your and your friend's views on the state of the activity are way less entertaining than the any of the Junior drum and bugle corps shows of the last fifteen years.

Second,

Why is this posted in the DCA section of the forums?

[Hup234]

Your and your friend's views on the state of the activity are way less entertaining than the any of the Junior drum and bugle corps shows of the last fifteen years.

Not at all. I found those views to be witty and nonpretentious. Unlike the activity itself, of course.

[noduttingoutloud]

1. Entertainment is in the eye/ears/heart of the observer.

2. You don't write as well as you think you do

That’s Entertainment?

Judi and I went to only two contests this year. Actually, it was more like one and a half, as one of these was the closed circuit, theater DCI Quarter-Finals. I’m not certain if that counts as much as a butt bedeviling, bench seated, small city stadium in upstate New York on a nearly humidity and mosquito free Saturday August night. That was what I remember as a real contest, and not so much a performance, whether live or on-screen. (Don’t stop me now! I know about the difference of actually being there vs. viewing a broadcast. That’s not exactly where I’m going.)

Using guile and Italian guilt trip techniques, (“Someday you’ll say to yourself, ‘I should have gone with my mother and father to see that show. Now it’s too late.’”) I craftily convinced my 31 year old, Lincoln Center ticket holding, newly employed Adjunct Professor of Graphic Design at Kean University (NJ), co-author of a soon-to-be-published book in that field, and owner of more than a thousand CDs ranging from Sinatra to Shakira, and from von Beethooven to Van Halen to join us. Not that this was the first drum corps show he had ever seen, but it had been some time between. On the drive home…

“So?”

“It wasn’t very interesting.”

“‘Interesting’? Do you mean ‘boring’?”

“No, I mean interesting, as in ‘engaging’ or ‘captivating.’”

“What? None of it?”

“I didn’t say ‘none of it.’”

“Oh?”

(Historically— thirty-one years to be exact— our conversations/discussions evolve into controlled contentiousness. For about eleven years of that span, I was deluded into believing that my nurturing wisdom had guided this child. My sagacity and sometimes a strategic smack assured me of this. Somewhere in the vicinity of year twelve, sagacity became suspicion. He didn’t need help with homework. Rumpelstiltskin-like, he put together the entertainment unit that I ###### as “missing five screws.” Unlike the queen, I grew less needed and grimmer, and lost the child, in spite of the fact that I knew his benefactor’s name. Not long after that, he taught himself to play guitar by videotaping a Moody Blues concert, then slow motion emulating the fret fingering. Looking over a paper I had written for a school committee, he questioned the subject-verb agreement of a sentence…or two. I could go on, but suffice it to say that this story will not be e-mailed without his stringent scrutiny.)

“There were about three corps that I did like.”

(Hope. There was hope!) “You did? Why? Tell me why! Which ones? “

“Dad.” (Sometimes he still calls me that despite his claim that Judi and I found him in a small space ship that crash landed in a Jersey City park. He so wants his disavowal of my parentage to be explained rationally.) “Be patient. Wait’ll we get home.”

“But…don’t we turn left here? We always turn left here.”

“No. The overpass that they built five years ago will get us home faster.”

“Yeah, I knew that.” A minute or so of silence. “Put on the Mets game. I think they’re in California.” Chris is a monomaniacal Yankees fan. The Guile Master is at work!

“Phantom Regiment should have placed higher. The Flower Duet was something that a good part of the audience recognized, even though they may not have known its name. Not that you’d need to have heard it before. It’s a beautiful piece. People reacted to it. But I think what made it even better is that it’s a two-part operatic vocal. Who would have thought someone in drum corps would have had the balls to take on something like that… and make it work?”

“Right. The Flower Duet.” My response reeks of deception before discernment, and he immediately perceives it.

“British Airways used it in one of their commercials.”

Commercials! Television! Now I know what he’s referring to. Immediate epiphany. “Could be.” (Accompanied by a thoughtful nod that isn’t fooling him at all.)

“I really appreciated what they did. It was a terrific presentation.”

“Who else did you like?”

“The Bluecoats. Everything they did visually and musically made sense. It was just plain clever. The props they used were meaningful and were actually integrated into the performance as a whole. They weren’t just there to clutter the field. As for the music…”

“I knew most of it!” (Even though they weren’t commercials.)

“I would hope so. More than anything else, it was engaging. You wanted to know what would happen next. You know— how would it end? It was a good story.”

“I thought so, too” (How could I be wrong if I agreed with him?)

“I thought Carolina Crown had a fun show. There was an obvious, easily recognized theme to all of it. Kinda like the Bluecoats, they had a story to tell. Here’s the thing— it was something familiar… like a movie that you’d like to see more than once… which means it was entertaining.”

(Just for the record, Judi sat in the back of the car, acknowledging her perceptive son with well placed utterances of agreement and pride. He was entertaining her.)

Entertaining. We’d spent more than five hours and $54 for about sixty minutes of entertainment in the only theater in all of New Jersey (You remember New Jersey? Blessed Sacrament, Bridgemen, Caballeros, Cadets, and lots of marching bands) that was carrying the broadcast. I didn’t count the audience, but there were no lines at the ticket booths, and no frenzied clamoring for seats. Had every other New Jersey drum corps denizen gone to Pasadena? Not likely.

“How about the Blue Devils?” He knows that they’re my favorite corps, and that I plan my resurrection to be as a muscular 19 year-old, 6’2”, well-bronzed, blonde haired Californian with the most incredible set of soprano( O.K., trumpet)chops in Blue Devil history)

But we were home now. I wanted to hear more, but he Chris had had enough. The guilt trip ended with an, “I have some work to do.” punctuation. The Master was foiled, but it was an educational and entertaining night.

* * *

To be certain, there is a great deal more that has been and can be said about the entertainment factor. But to even attempt a truly insightful explanation is far beyond my ability. Rather, let me offer what I feel is the most definitive piece of work on the subject, and something that should be required reading for everyone involved with drum corps in any administrative or instructional capacity.

Drum Corps Planet, Inside the Arc, Issue 1, “Why You Hate the Music” by Frank Dorritie

http://www.drumcorpsplanet.com/content/view/883/53/

That's Entertainment(Howard Dietz and Arthur Schwartz, from Bandwagon")

The clown with his pants falling down or the dance that's a dream of romance

Or the scene where the villain is mean.

That's entertainment

The world is a stage, the stage is a world of entertainment.

Or, at least, it should be...................................mario

[ea1974]

1. Entertainment is in the eye/ears/heart of the observer.

2. You don't write as well as you think you do

I read your profile. 3 years experience. It would do you good to understand drumcorps history.

Just a suggestion.

Mike

[noduttingoutloud]

1. Congrats on your in-depth research.

2. Don't assume.

I read your profile. 3 years experience. It would do you good to understand drumcorps history.

Just a suggestion.

Mike

[KeithHall]

First,

Your and your friend's views on the state of the activity are way less entertaining than the any of the Junior drum and bugle corps shows of the last fifteen years.

Second,

Why is this posted in the DCA section of the forums?

And third...who cares! Mario, great, great way to tell a nice story. I believe it was his son he was chatting with.

[MikeD]

Entertaining. We’d spent more than five hours and $54 for about sixty minutes of entertainment in the only theater in all of New Jersey (You remember New Jersey? Blessed Sacrament, Bridgemen, Caballeros, Cadets, and lots of marching bands) that was carrying the broadcast. I didn’t count the audience, but there were no lines at the ticket booths, and no frenzied clamoring for seats. Had every other New Jersey drum corps denizen gone to Pasadena? Not likely.

The theater in NJ was sold out. Many people, myself included, were turned away. Being as I live down Rt1, I raced over to Neshaminy in PA...it too was sold out. So what is it you are trying to say?