One Band, One Sound

[BozzlyB]

Its funny that many Drum Corps people knock and look down on Drumline and show bands but how many drum corps get the national exposure that these bands do. These show bands draw thousands to each game. I'm sure you advertised a show with the top 5 corps and the top 5 show bands the show bands would draw more people.

And the funny thing is Drum Corps is one high step away from becoming show bands.

Fail. On every level.

[MikeN]

I'm with Jeff on this one, but I'll go one step further - it just shows that resonating with the audience (aka 'the entertainment value') will get you more fans than technical merit anyday.

Mike

[Jeff Ream]

good call Mike, and since I'm done eating i can add to it.

last year I saw every corps DCI week and DCA weekend.

drum solo with the best crowd reaction?


Cabs Alumni. no it wasn't Phantom clean, tho by no means "dirty".

but it had some drum to drum, some singles, and viola...with pacing of design building to the end and performance, it got a standing O. And usually, with alumni corps, the crowd in general is all about screaming sopranos.

saw them twice last year, and at least 2/3 times a year...always a huge reaction.

and yes the movie had some great lessons that can apply to anything in life, not just drum corps. while the ovie had issues in stroy telling, it had plusses too.

[Abbevillekid26]

Your sig says "Making lurking an artform since 2002!" yet you have 4,470 posts on DCP alone.

Yet more proof that, like troll, DCP has no clue the real definitions of interweb terms.

Don't start with me /b/ro I've been interwebbing for years.

I think all of the accusations of trolling is because the OP's sig makes him look like a completely arrogant jackass so not many took the thread serious.

Now on topic I guess drumline is cool in that it gets the simple folk to think hey that's kinda cool. It's not really accurate for most bands or any drum corps but that's alright.

It is NOT good in that it makes it seem like you just jam out and do whatever you want without any repercussions or discipline or skill necessary.

So I guess it has its moments.

[N.E. Brigand]

Most think I'm kind of a jerk.

Well, contrarian and provocative, but surely not that.

[SFZFAN]

most think i'm kind of a jerk

I just thought you hated waffles.

[Kamarag]

Fail. On every level.

There's a bucket of fail in this thread, but it ain't Blackstar's comments. He's right on the money.

[Jeff Ream]

I have to agree

[ChwyNiblet]

Whenever people ask me what I do over the summer I just have them watch Drumline...its about the level my drum corps is at anyway...

[N.E. Brigand]

... it just shows that resonating with the audience (aka "the entertainment value") will get you more fans than technical merit anyday.

Interesting. I can offer the testimony of someone who doesn't know drum corps: I haven't seen Drumline, but this summer, when someone here posted a link to a video of the Blue Knights brass line warming up (and pushing to "eleven") I copied the link to the off-topic forum of another site that caters to a completely different fandom.

In response one person, unfamiliar with drum corps, asked me, "But can they play 'Flight of the Bumblebee'?" This confused me, so my respondent elaborated:

It's used as a symbol of bad band programming. In the context of the film, the domineering Dr. Lee confuses musicianship with showmanship. His band's proficiency at the technically difficult "Bumblebee" impresses the middle-class audience not at all; they much prefer the modified hip-hop and jazz rhythms of the opposing band. Luckily our bad-boy hero drummer excels at such stuff, and in the end Dr. Lee has to admit defeat and let him play lead in the drumline in order to win the competition.

It's a fun movie ... but it's completely trite and ridiculous as a script, retelling a popular story in well-known terms. Many reviews by in-the-know viewers also mock its field routines and music performances as sloppy and unworthy of real-life drum corps, although I found them mesmerizing ... Its biggest value to me is its almost all-black cast in a film with almost no racial text or subtext. It's about the drums, and the boy who learns to become a man through the drums, etc., etc.

(Emphasis added.)

I wonder if the difference between drum corps and Drumline might also be compared to the difference between literary and genre fiction, as discussed in a recent Salon article (Why we love bad writing) with citation of this remark from "An Experiment in Criticism" by C.S. Lewis. For the non-literary reader, a trite phrase such as:

'My blood ran cold' is a hieroglyph of fear. Any attempt, such as a great writer might make, to render this fear concrete in its full particularity, is doubly a chokepear to the unliterary reader. For it offers him what he doesn't want, and offers it only on the condition of his giving to the words a kind and degree of attention which he does not intend to give. It is like trying to sell him something he has no use for at a price he does not wish to pay.

Could we says that some drum corps fans want the marching-music equivalent of Kazuo Ishiguro, while others want the marching-music equivalent of Dan Brown?