Bluecoats 2015

[tigger2]

I agree that if Cadets had played show segements, the comparison to Bluecoats would be different. Cadets were nearly as impressive as BC playing encore tunes. I'd say that is worth a nod or two.

[drummergirl]

As I mentioned on the other thread, the corps had to warmup on their bus. Just think about that for a minute.

[jwillis35]

Did anyone else think that BLOO's hornline AND drumline blew away Cadets and Crown tonight in Muncie? Wow, incredible job guys.

No. All three lines were great, but that kind of setting is tough to judge. Who took it seriously and who just had fun? Which corps played with outdoor dynamics and field balances vs. which played with arc balances? Too many variables to judge. Warm-ups were on the bus for many. I believe Crown and Cadets got rained on. Cadets didn't even play their show selections.

Crown to me is still a slightly better line than the other two, even with the few ticks in the opening from last night. They get high marks from me for musicality and phrasing of some difficult passages that require major sustaining and endurance. The Cadets sounded fantastic and played nothing from their show. They tend to work up a lot of rep over the spring and summer. I applaud them for that. Tiger of San Pedro just peeled paint and reminded me of the Bridgemen or even BD. The Bluecoats were FANTASTIC! Nice to see them in uniform and brass and drums do sound wonderful and mature. The overall music ensemble will be strong with them in August. Coats also let 'em rip during The Boxer snippet at the end. Balances went out the window, but that was the case with Cadets and all the other corps that played some extra material.

Cadets and Bluecoats definitely looked like the class of percussion, but Crown did a NICE job. I love their book. I loved Madison's percussion grooves. Really nice! Madison's brass is really close to hitting a different level I think. They have some very high orchestrations in their book...very demanding. Can't wait to see that show gel.

All in all, a great night, but I wouldn't try to judge anything from those performances.

[brichtimp]

In terms of battery performance last night, I thought Coats and Cadets were both powerful and choptastic!. However, there are a couple of drum lines out there in CA that will be in the mix; especially, SCV. We are in a golden era for percussion and brass achievement, where show design, staging and the musical book go a long way to determine the Sanford and Ott awards in August.

Edited June 27, 2015 by brichtimp

[Fred Windish]

I've said over and over, it's an entirely different animal out on the field than what we experienced last night. Much of this belief is beyond obvious, certainly. Some of the overwhelming virtuosity on open display last night can be missed if it happens while the section was moving sixty yards away. All this multi-cam, audio translation, and controlled environment stuff reveals an absolute BEAST that can present less ominous depending how we encounter it. That's what stunned me most last night. The covers were all pulled back.

Good Golly, Miss Molly !

[Tobias]

Right now I think the Cadets are the corp to beat, I don't think their show will be a show that will win in august, maybe meltdown was a poor choice of words to use in this case. Just my opinion, only time will tell. Tobias, I watched them win in 83, Rocky Point was absolutely the best thing to hit drum corps back then, even in 82 I knew they were going to be great.

Cadets have in the last 10 years not made wise design choices some of those years as the season progressed so I understand what you were thinking BUT this is a new season and I'm not seeing that happening THIS season with THIS show..

[jonwoody]

Trust me, I'm not knocking the 80's/90's "Best of Cadets" playlist. And then some Tiger of San Pedro thrown in for good measure. Definitely much love. But it was glaringly obvious some of the performers were stretched with these pieces (wrong notes, lead trumpets not quite hacking it, etc.). The Bluecoats certainly had the dude that hungover, and of course Crown with the OOPS on a botched trumpet attack. But an A for effort and following through. :)

If you take all 3 together, Bluecoats outshined the rest. We have Crown and Cadets flipped, but yeah, that's opinion. Crown was pretty beastly. I love the anger in the writing and the ballsy performance.

P.S. How did you gather Cadets drums being better tonight when all they played were warmups? LOL.

Are we all really such homers to have a debate of who was better at a indoor standstill?? lmao !! Weather was terrible, people warmed up in buses..who cares !!! What difference does it make!! They all deserve credit for performing at their best in what was really terrible conditions so let's all take a deep breath and call it a draw. Why waste the energy. Too much real competition ahead where we can debate till dawn who was the best . :not me:

[Channel3]

BLUECOATS KINETIC NOISE - DESIGN REVIEW

Techno music always induces a state of imagination when you listen to it-- a kind of music limbo where your mind is free to wander. Bluecoats' Kinetic Noise is a pure and fearless visual interpretation of techno music, a brave departure into the realm of electronic and brass fusion. The show has almost no narrative encumbrance, no historical context to weigh it down, very little outward expressed emotion by the guard, only a single character, and no forced dramatic conflict. Kinetic Noise is a state of natural grace, without explanation, apology or guilt-driven objectivity-- just music and movement and we don't know what the atom balls mean and we don't care. Do we?

LOW STAKES

Let's face it, these low stakes present a problem. We can't tell what's going to happen next, and rely solely on the structure of the music to lead us to the next movement and emotion. We're not desperate to know what happens next, we have no specific point of focus. Naturally, the viewer disengages. We're not holding our breath or anxiously awaiting a resolution of some kind, musically or otherwise, because there's no tension built up over the twelve minutes here. There's no conflict or understructure or game that resolves by the end of the piece. There's no point of focus. The bubbles don't change or morph in any way from their first appearance in the beginning.

THE CHORALE - AND…?

The centerpiece at the 9:30 mark is a percussion-free brass chorale Up in the Woods by Bon Iver that is stirring and robust. It has only the meaning that you apply to it, and as a result, the emotion is fleeting. Exciting to listen to first, like the way cotton candy feels in your mouth, and then the sensation dissipates when you realize it's just sugar with no flavoring other than a slight hint of chemical coloring. The music throughout the production has a manufactured structure, with fabricated hit points and almost canned chord progressions which stirs a Pavlovian response by drum corps audiences who clap at the loud parts. But we need more under-structure to attach our emotions to. If the music isn't a strong enough game, then we need some other hint of real-world relatability.

GIRL AT THE END - A STORY ELEMENT REVEAL

At the end, we see a girl, presumably a character who is reacting to the music, or possibly whose hallucination we've just been witnessing as she tries to shake it off. Who is she? Is she a raver? Is she one of us? Did she intentionally create this hallucination for our enjoyment? Is her vision an accident? Does she represent a techno concert goer? A drum corps audience member? A girl who just tasted spicy hot Cheetos for the first time?

MORE EXPOSITION?

I hate to force a narrative element into this piece, but I think it's pretty clear that we need to see this ending girl once earlier, perhaps stuck in one of the bubbles. Feature her trying to get out, or trying to get in, or unable to move, or finally escaping from, or drawn into, or chased by someone inside, or chased by all the other balls, or perfectly content while in. You chose the game. This simple 10 second addition to the middle of the show featuring this girl physically dealing with the bubble in some way would give a subtle understructure to the entire piece and give depth and breadth to the ending where she shakes off the hallucination at the end, outside the bubble. Without this added understructure, without this element, the show will fizzle as it reaches August because the meaning is too thin, the intent is too vague, and the show is too reliant on the music as its understructure, and the music is just not high stakes enough or patterned enough to maintain dramatic intensity. Without some added subtle narrative element, without some hint of meaning, the show floats away like a soap bubble without leaving a real-world impact.

Again, if the show refused to cowtow to any narrative element, it would be a brilliant, but double edged sword. The purity of a hallucination without any expository element would then be reliant on the music to provide the range of emotion, reliant on set pieces to maintain visual interest. But Bluecoats added the girl at the end, and now they must develop her further so it makes some logical sense and hell, it could provide some desperately needed narrative understructure for the piece.

Edited June 27, 2015 by Channel3

[DrumManTx]

Lol. Nice try. I need absolutely nothing of what you just mentioned to enjoy this show as much as I do now. Whatever floats your boat I guess............this show needs NOTHING of the narrative nature.

[Cappybara]

I'm so confused why every corps has to have an underlying story.