"Tour of Champions" 2013

[Slingerland]

Because it recurs among people who share most of the G7 point of view, like yourself, Slingerland, and whoever wrote the G7 proposal and put Pioneer in class AA with a question mark, while other better WC corps were relegated to class AAA.

I don't remember having said anything other than it makes sense to look at a system that organizes corps into leagues/divisions where their competitive capacity is a major, if not the major, consideration. You've said "just say that" several times, and I have. The question now is why anyone would object to that, given that capability and resources are almost always the major considerations when other sports leagues look at adding members to their ranks, or divvying up their teams into various levels.

Going back to my original post here, that discussion seems to be driven by 'passion' rather than reason. Those who are feeling that telling any corps whose season-ending scores are in the 70s that they should be competing against each other in their own league/division is told that they are being dismissive of those corps, when in fact, all they're doing is being realistic about those corps' competitive range. It's not a diss on those corps to simply try and get them into a better organized competitive situation.

I would imagine that you'd find a fair amount of crossover between corps that have younger memberships and their competitive placement, but if someone can put together a corps who can score 85 or 89 with an average age of 15, great, put them in the top division.

Again, it's about the business model of DCI. Were DCI to bring in an outside consultant group to help them clean up their messaging and model, I'd imagine the majority of consultants would tell them the same thing; they're trying to be everything to everybody, which is putting them in a very messy messaging position. If they want to promote the activity, their best shot will be to showcase the most professional units, not the units that aren't necessarily more proficient than the better competitive high school bands. Again, using that as a metric isn't to say that the lower ranking corps "suck", it's simply to call things as they are.

Get the passion out of it, take the personal affronts out of the picture, and look at it as a business question. The DCI model isn't working nearly as well as it could; what can they do to increase visibility of the activity and increase their overall revenue streams, so that all the corps are able to get back a lot more money from DCI than they are now?

Edited March 1, 2013 by Slingerland

[BRASSO]

.

If they want to promote the activity, their best shot will be to showcase the most professional units,

" promote it " to whom ?

If the " promote it " means" to the public at large ", then frankly, although some here may not want tp acknowledge it, the Jersey Surf of 2012 has more " showcase " appeal with the public at large than does the 2012 DCI champion, even though a compelling case can be made that the BD organization is more " professionally " run. If " promote it " means to its current primary customer base, the "

schools, students and parents willing to foot the bill for instruction ", then BD and a few others might very well be the units " to showcase " to them. But even here, I am not totally convinced that the BD has the most " showcase " appeal to them, even though they have quite clearly demonstrated on field competitive placement excellence under the current judging system . But as DCI's current standard bearer have we already convinced ourselves that BD is the best " showcase " unit ( as " the best " ) to "showcase" to both the public at large as well as to the schools ? Its certainly is an open question at the very least it would seem to me. I believe we need to differentiate between Corps with DCI on field competitive placement excellence and Corps with " showcase appeal " with the public at large. They are not neccessarily the same thing at all, imo.

Edited March 1, 2013 by BRASSO

[BRASSO]

Maybe it's a "bait and switch" tactic that gets people to stop talking about the freak show that corp administrators like BD's have become. G7 honks don't like to hear bad things about Gibbs et al.

And it's even worse. Critics of the G7 are criticizing the corp directors. Dan'l has stooped to actually criticizing the kids - what's the avg age of the drummers, for example. Pretty sad IMO.

My sense of all this now after reading the shots taken at Corps like Pioneer is that the G7 has fueled a disresrepect for Corps that was not quite as virulent as before the G7 hatched their secret scheme and in their presentation went out of their way to show rudeness and disrespect for these Corps. Some DCP's have taken up the cause of attempting to promote this disrespect for these lower placing Corps. Shame on them. And shame on the G7 for initiating this level of disrespect for these lower placing Corps and having it now filter out into the public square at this level like this now.

Its all the MORE reason to find the G7's actions and words deplorable, imo.

Edited March 1, 2013 by BRASSO

[Stu]

The only people who would think that 80s style androgyny would be cutting edge today would be truly geekish.

Jason Sutter marched with Sky Ryders; he is now the drummer for Marilyn Manson (in 2013); I suppose that he, as well as multi-millions of Manson fans, never got your memo!

[perc2100]

Slingerland, on 25 February 2013 - 06:04 PM, said:

The only people who would think that 80s style androgyny would be cutting edge today would be truly geekish.

Jason Sutter marched with Sky Ryders; he is now the drummer for Marilyn Manson (in 2013); I suppose that he, as well as multi-millions of Manson fans, never got your memo!

So your assertion is that the multi-millions of Manson fans are familiar with Sky Ryders?! :huh:/>

Or are you asserting that Marilyn Manson and/or his multi-million fans think 80s style drum corps (specifically Sky Ryders) are cutting edge today.

Not sure what your point is, other than Jason Sutter is a really good drummer who landed a high profile pro gig and also marched drum corps a while back.

** EDIT **

Also, Sutter marched Sky Ryders in the 90's, so I guess I have no idea why you would reference him at all in response to a post that referenced 80's drum corps.

(of course, NONE of this is really on topic anyway though, so...)

Edited March 1, 2013 by perc2100

[Slingerland]

Jason Sutter marched with Sky Ryders; he is now the drummer for Marilyn Manson (in 2013); I suppose that he, as well as multi-millions of Manson fans, never got your memo!

Good for him. And for Glenn Kotche, Al Chez, and any number of other people who did drum corps and are now making a living with their skills.

None of that supports your overall position - that androgyny is somehow a big attraction for mainstream audiences. It's not (and if you look at Marilyn Manson's sales figures, the last release sold about 5% of what they did 15 years ago - not generally a sign of a growing constituency).

If you're into androgyny as a concept, cool, whatever floats your boat, but it's kind of goofy to think that your personal tastes are mainstream when the information out there indicates otherwise.

Edited March 1, 2013 by Slingerland

[Slingerland]

" promote it " to whom ?

If the " promote it " means" to the public at large ", then frankly, although some here may not want tp acknowledge it, the Jersey Surf of 2012 has more " showcase " appeal with the public at large than does the 2012 DCI champion, even though a compelling case can be made that the BD organization is more " professionally " run. If " promote it " means to its current primary customer base, the "schools, students and parents willing to foot the bill for instruction ", then BD and a few others might very well be the units " to showcase " to them.

But even here, I am not totally convinced that the BD has the most " showcase " appeal to them, even though they have quite clearly demonstrated on field competitive placement excellence under the current judging system . But as DCI's current standard bearer have we already convinced ourselves that BD is the best " showcase " unit ( as " the best " ) to "showcase" to both the public at large as well as to the schools ? Its certainly is an open question at the very least it would seem to me. I believe we need to differentiate between Corps with DCI on field competitive placement excellence and Corps with " showcase appeal " with the public at large. They are not neccessarily the same thing at all, imo.

I'd actually agree with much of this. But it doesn't change the fact that there are levels of proficiency differences among drum corps that are noticeable even to lay people (otherwise known as potential fans). Jersey Surf was very entertaining last year; not yet at genuine Bridgemen or VK level from a proficiency standpoint, but more entertaining than a lot of what else was in their range.

No one has brought it up, but part of the re-alignment should include genuine changes to the judging standards that would de-emphasize design and re-emphasize performance and actual effect vis a vis audience response. I'd mentioned before that any change made to DCI's business model should be about improving their bottom line (so they can afford to pay out more to the corps) and improving competitiveness in the field. The question is how many of the corps out there are really ready to take a certain ball and run with it, so that each one strives for a unique identity that is marketable to potential sponsors and audiences and appealing to the members. The answer, right now, is "not too many", but if there were mechanisms in place designed to give each corps no choice but to have a strongly defined, sellable persona, it would be a big help in helping to find new audiences.

I don't believe that DCI has reached anything close to saturation point with their audience base. I only believe that there's really not enough direction to put the energy on THAT as the primary objective for the organization.

[danielray]

Dan'l has stooped to actually criticizing the kids - what's the avg age of the drummers, for example. Pretty sad IMO.

How is it criticizing kids to point out, logically, that 15-16 year old kids probably shouldn't be competing with groups composed of primarily university students, many of them music majors?

Edited March 1, 2013 by danielray

[cixelsyd]

I don't remember having said anything other than it makes sense to look at a system that organizes corps into leagues/divisions where their competitive capacity is a major, if not the major, consideration.

Let me refresh your memory, then. You also said this:

My support for the idea of aligning drum corps whose managements don't have the inclination or ability to raise a million dollars a year to run a national touring operation with OTHER drum corps whose don't have the interest in doing a national tour is driven by simple fact-based rationality. If you have a drum corps league out there that is geared toward limited touring and lower-budgets, than it makes sense to have those drum corps whose managements want to run those kinds of corps go compete with their peers in that league. I realize that strikes some people (it sounds like it strikes you) as "elitism", or whatever you want to call it, but it's really just looking at a situation dispassionately, and pointing out an obvious opportunity.

You yourself say that Pioneer isn't competing with Blue Devils. Well why would a business that's supposed to be a league of equals/competitors want a situation in which some teams aren't really competitive with the rest of the league? More importantly, why would a corps director who really valued the experience he or she offered their kids want their kids to be competing in a league where they were all but sure to be clobbered every night? Why wouldn't they embrace an opportunity to put their kids in a situation where the best work they can do, at their level, gives them at least a fair shot of success against others who are at the same level?

The brightest, shiniest objects in the tool box are going to be the most marketable to a wider audience (and yes, that includes the band parents, who are going to be more impressed by PR or Cavaliers than they are with some of the smaller corps who are performing simpler, smaller shows). There's absolutely nothing wrong with community-based drum corps; I think you'd find that everyone who's ever marched would be in favor of finding ways to increase overall participation, but part of that process will be finding ways for give fledgling corps and younger members something realistic to shoot for within their budgets and programming capacities. Take the adult egos out of the equation, and recognize that some drum corps are there primarily to teach the members how to do drum corps and how to handle themselves on their own, and others are there to give the most competitive college-aged musicians the chance to compete on a bigger stage. They're both valuable, but they're not "the same."

In that post alone, you identified at least six factors in the context of how corps should be separated. One (the Pioneer reference) identified competitive standing as a factor. If that is what you want, there is no need to even mention anything else in that context. But it would appear from your earlier post here that you also want to separate:

a. corps interested in touring less

b. smaller corps

c. community-based corps

d. corps with less experienced members

e. corps with younger members

Rather than have me speculate, I will let you clarify.

Going back to the latest post:

The question now is why anyone would object to that, given that capability and resources are almost always the major considerations when other sports leagues look at adding members to their ranks, or divvying up their teams into various levels.

Well, you have objected to the idea of dividing classes based on both competitive placement and financial resources. You said DCI cannot have a clear marketing focus unless they are selling the top 16-18 corps in a distinct division. Adding any other factor into the equation leads to situations where a top corps might be left out on that account.

Going back to my original post here, that discussion seems to be driven by 'passion' rather than reason. Those who are feeling that telling any corps whose season-ending scores are in the 70s that they should be competing against each other in their own league/division is told that they are being dismissive of those corps, when in fact, all they're doing is being realistic about those corps' competitive range. It's not a diss on those corps to simply try and get them into a better organized competitive situation.

Who said that?

My point is that making other remarks about size, age, touring and other characteristics, and basing an entire vision for DCI divisions and membership cutoff on these characteristics without even fact-checking them demonstrates a dismissive mindset toward those corps.

I would imagine that you'd find a fair amount of crossover between corps that have younger memberships and their competitive placement, but if someone can put together a corps who can score 85 or 89 with an average age of 15, great, put them in the top division.

Oh, there is hope for you after all. If you can steer clear of the stereotypes, you can make a better case for yourself.

Again, it's about the business model of DCI. Were DCI to bring in an outside consultant group to help them clean up their messaging and model, I'd imagine the majority of consultants would tell them the same thing; they're trying to be everything to everybody, which is putting them in a very messy messaging position. If they want to promote the activity, their best shot will be to showcase the most professional units, not the units that aren't necessarily more proficient than the better competitive high school bands.

And then you step right back into it.

Again, using that as a metric isn't to say that the lower ranking corps "suck", it's simply to call things as they are.

How can that be? Drum corps do not compete against high school marching bands, so there is no such "metric". Therefore, trying to claim this as a "metric" only puts you in a "very messy messaging position", as you say. Now, no one knows precisely which corps you are referring to in the first place, as there is an ongoing debate over which corps are more proficient than which bands. So that debate flares up again.

Meanwhile, remarks just like this are used as derisive stereotypes all the time. Someone who wants to take a cheap shot at Pioneer can come along and say they are no better than a HS band, so why would anyone want to march there, blah blah blah. Evidently, you are aware of this, as you already felt that qualifying your statement was warranted (this time). Why make that statement in the first place?

Get the passion out of it, take the personal affronts out of the picture, and look at it as a business question. The DCI model isn't working nearly as well as it could; what can they do to increase visibility of the activity and increase their overall revenue streams, so that all the corps are able to get back a lot more money from DCI than they are now?

All the corps? I am all ears.

[Stu]

So your assertion is that the multi-millions of Manson fans are familiar with Sky Ryders?! :huh:/>/>

Or are you asserting that Marilyn Manson and/or his multi-million fans think 80s style drum corps (specifically Sky Ryders) are cutting edge today.

Not sure what your point is, other than Jason Sutter is a really good drummer who landed a high profile pro gig and also marched drum corps a while back.

** EDIT **

Also, Sutter marched Sky Ryders in the 90's, so I guess I have no idea why you would reference him at all in response to a post that referenced 80's drum corps.

(of course, NONE of this is really on topic anyway though, so...)

Look back at the postings by Sligerland!!! My assertion about Jason joining Marylin Manson was in direct reference to Slingerland's contention that for corps performers to reach out to the main-stream audience they must get rid of the androgynous look within their programing. What I am continuing to point out to Slingerland is that with Jason's decision to join Manson he is now engaging with multi-millions of fans in the main-stream, way more fans than drum corps could ever hope for (even today not the '80s).