If you have to explain it....

[N.E. Brigand]

When Mahler was alive, he wasn't always so popular though.

(And not everyone loves him today. An acquaintance who can't stand most of Mahler's work loves a good deal of Glass's music and thinks that Part's "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten" is the best music written in his lifetime. These are his genuine tastes.)

Edited August 10, 2017 by N.E. Brigand

[MikeRapp]

50 minutes ago, N.E. Brigand said:

This. Most audience members are only going to see any given show just once. Even if they like it, they have other things to do in their lives and aren't going to watch it again (even on Youtube) or look up its meaning. For drum corps to thrive, that audience needs to "get it", at least on a superficial level, on the first (and only) viewing and appreciate most of what they get. Now it's true that everyone comes into a show with different backgrounds and experiences. What person A finds baffling may be perfectly clear to person B. For instance, I know very little and care even less about Kanye West, but lots of younger audience members doubtless recognized the various quotes in Guardians' show last night. The trick is to try to be appealing to as many audience members as possible. Know who's out there, and if you think what you're doing may stretch them too far past their comfort zone, find ways to make it more accessible.

I think today's DCI audiences know when a show designer thinks he or she is smarter than they are. That generally doesn't bode well for the show designer.

[Liahona]

To me, drum corps shows have the power to create that special moment of being stopped in your tracks by something that moved you. That brass moment that reduced you to tears or felt electrifying. That drill formation or guard move you can’t look away from. That show so absorbing you simply can’t stop feeling and being a part of it.

This is why I love drum corps.

I do not like shows that are sterile intellectual dances that bring no feeling. Those shows will be on my list for a quick hot dog.

Edited August 10, 2017 by Liahona

[StunnedMonkey]

1 minute ago, Liahona said:

To me, drum corps shows have the power to create that special moment of being stopped in your tracks by something that moved you.

Well, I think that's certainly universal, regardless of what generation you're from or what you enjoy. The moments may be different for each of us, but the result is the same.

I can tell you that my first live show was the 1978 Spirit of Atlanta. I was halfway up on the 50. That horn impact definitely moved me...back a few feet almost. 

[Just Here]

39 minutes ago, Bobby L. Collins said:

I'm with you on one regard, however.  I too don't like seeing things dumbed down to the lowest denominator.  That's what's happened to my college alma mater's band.  I hate it, and it it makes me angry.

But I think I can speak for just about all the dinosaurs when I say that no one is asking for that in drum corps.  What we're asking for is to lay off the esoteric, high-concept preachiness.  I mean, we get it.  A very small number of individuals who call the shots want drum corps to evolve into a higher art form, which absolutely no one asked for.  Sure, plenty of yes-men are rolling with it....that's what they do.  But consider this.  Isn't it possible that the only thing worse than catering to the lowest denominator is perhaps making the activity inaccessible to even the common denominator?  Sometimes...... just sometimes.......it's okay for a production to not have a deep underlying message that results in a spiritual awakening in the spectator.  Sometimes......it's okay for a corps to just play some banging tunes while they march some banging drill.  That was the draw to drum corps prior to George Hopkins and Michael Cesario rewriting the book; music in motion, not avant-garde performance art.

As far as I know, there is no rule in place (at least not yet) that stipulates a corps' production is REQUIRED to speak to the spectator's abstract feelings and cause him/her to experience a transcendental epiphany.  That kind of stuff may speak to you, but it does not speak to me, nor to anyone I know personally.  And I don't think it's fair to lump us into the "lowest denominator" because we don't support DCI's conscious choice to sabotage itself with its growing inaccessibility to the rest of the world.

I used to work at Disney Concert Hall and The Hollywood Bowl in Los Angeles.  Day after day, week after week, I listened to concert patrons and subscribers praise 21st century art music (Phillip Glass, Arvo Part, and basically any American Prize Winners) and gush about how great it is, yet day after day, week after week, those same patrons were no where to be seen when those composers' works were being performed to near-empty audiences.  Meanwhile, just about every one of Dudamel's Mahler cycle concerts was a sellout, as were any other classic work prior to the New Vienna School (which I very much hold in parallel with modern drum corps).  Those people were NOT the lowest denominator.  Those people were the ones keeping the Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra in operation.  And they didn't want to listen to cacaphonous 12-tone noise.....they wanted listen to good music.  And that's all I want in my drum corps; good music, good marching, good spinning and tossing.  

Bottom line, if I want to be preached at, I'll go to church.  But I'll be darned if I'm going to PAY to be preached at inside a football stadium, when all I really want is to be entertained. Drum corps throughout the 60s, 70s, 80s, and 90s entertain me.  A handful of shows from the 21st century entertain me.  But this move towards autotuned spandex and avant-garde inaccessibility......in my eyes, that is the opposite of entertainment.  That is punishment for a crime I did not commit.

I love this. I really do. Designers and those who come up with so many show concepts especially in the 21st century have such inflated egos and have forgotten that a MAJOR purpose of DCI is to entertain a paying audience.

[TripleForteGuy]

I was there in 1981 when Phantom Regiment passed out sheets explaining what the heck was going on in Spartacus. Heh. People were complaining before that they didn't understand the show.

[Stu]

1 hour ago, N.E. Brigand said:

Sure. That's why I've quoted Britney Spears at Sundance in response to Stu and Brasso and others from time to time.

On the other hand, lots of would-be artists, including some in drum corps, aren't nearly so intellectual as they think they are.

And that is why I have countered you with, Britney Spears and Millie Vannli, No. Tower of Power and Here Come The Mummies, Oh H*** Yes!!!!!!!!!

[MikeRapp]

1 hour ago, Just Here said:

I love this. I really do. Designers and those who come up with so many show concepts especially in the 21st century have such inflated egos and have forgotten that a MAJOR purpose of DCI is to entertain a paying audience.

One of the unfortunate realities in dci is that most of the staff do not make a living wage. As a result, they are using the experience as a short term resume. 

[Bobby L. Collins]

19 minutes ago, MikeRapp said:

One of the unfortunate realities in dci is that most of the staff do not make a living wage. As a result, they are using the experience as a short term resume. 

If only corps had the money to pay a living wage to their staff.  If only they didn't have to spend all that money on props, electronic equipment, and winter guard outfits for the entire corps.  Not to mention new horns every year....

 

Edited August 10, 2017 by Bobby L. Collins

[Just Here]

22 minutes ago, MikeRapp said:

One of the unfortunate realities in dci is that most of the staff do not make a living wage. As a result, they are using the experience as a short term resume. 

I am not sure of the accuracy of this statement. "A living wage" is a subjective notion. There are many people who work that may get by for less.