Devils Crusade(rs) and Sin Along The Rockies 23

[Vuitton]

Just now, Chief Guns said:

It reminds of the ACC in college football outside of Clemson. The other teams in the conference are so evenly matched, they actually cannabilize each other and knock each other out of playoffs and major bowl games. PAC-12 does the same too. 

Exactly. It's really quite interesting and at the same time sucks. I am not a BD fan. I really do hate that they win all the time. I used to just get so enraged by it and say it was political and unfair, but I guess I've grown. They just really have it figured out and are so dominant. It's crazy.

[WarriorWay]

Ok here are my thoughts post show seeing it live.

BD - it’s great and polished. Ballad is the highlight. But the 4th movement… it’s clean, but it feels very odd and almost out of place and not sure how it’s helping the concept. Especially the transition to the Grand Canyon fanfare - that needs to be fixed. Otherwise it’s another hit from them! 

 

Boston - it’s a solid show, but IMO just not as effective a design as paradise lost. They are moving a bit more than last year imo. The first 5/6 min of the show feels very very segmented with lots of starts and stops and different genres of music sort of being thrown into the mix (it’s a bit much of a lot of different music, very Lipman from CTJ which I don’t think it a good thing.) also the guard uniforms kind of get lost and the members uniforms really stick out so I find myself sort of not following the amazing guard…

[WarriorWay]

Mandarins- it’s fine! I know nothing about sinnerman so I can’t really comment on design but the visual really seemed to clean up last night and I enjoy their refined sound. Uniform transition is very Ayala 2018. Good show they’ll have a great season.

Troopers: This is probably the best they are hitting the performance captions in a decade. They really are performing like a finalist corps out there. The show really does nothing for me personally but to each their own!

PC: wow! So clean! They definitely have a chance to fight for that last spot. The concept is interesting and the music is catchy and pulls you in. The members seemed really committed!!

BK vs. Academy: I think visually academy is better than BK. I enjoyed BK brass- it’s loud and impactful. BK does a good job at the first few min of that opening then it just sort of falls apart unfortunately. BK guard and feet are all over the place. 

[DFA1970]

13 minutes ago, WarriorWay said:

Ok here are my thoughts post show seeing it live.

BD - it’s great and polished. Ballad is the highlight. But the 4th movement… it’s clean, but it feels very odd and almost out of place and not sure how it’s helping the concept. Especially the transition to the Grand Canyon fanfare - that needs to be fixed. Otherwise it’s another hit from them! 

 

Boston - it’s a solid show, but IMO just not as effective a design as paradise lost. They are moving a bit more than last year imo. The first 5/6 min of the show feels very very segmented with lots of starts and stops and different genres of music sort of being thrown into the mix (it’s a bit much of a lot of different music, very Lipman from CTJ which I don’t think it a good thing.) also the guard uniforms kind of get lost and the members uniforms really stick out so I find myself sort of not following the amazing guard…

Thanks for the review. I agree the ending part of BD show is the part that need a more polished finale, I’m sure it’s in the works but I noticed that too. 

[flugelswerebugels]

11 hours ago, greg_orangecounty said:

Blue Devil's Finals score next month: 103.25

A finals Brass GE tape from a late '70's BD championship show is recently circulating. On it the judge says at the end "I would give you 15 out of 10 if I could". So, that score may not be as implausible as you think.

[Cappybara]

10 hours ago, jmc5682 said:

I do not quite understand why you were surprised.  BD's guard is great this year.  I think BD and Boston have the two best guards in drum corps this year.  I will not be surprised if BD wins the Zingali this year.  I also would not be confused if Boston wins guard either.  It will go to whichever guard is the most consistent come Finals week, I personally think all the caption awards should go to the the corps who wins the caption on the night of Finals.  I hated when they started averaging quarters, semis and Finals. Finals it what matters, right?

I disagree on this. Judges do have preferences sometimes and averaging over the course of the 3 nights eliminates the small biases that may be present 

[Vuitton]

10 minutes ago, Cappybara said:

I disagree on this. Judges do have preferences sometimes and averaging over the course of the 3 nights eliminates the small biases that may be present 

But that's a problem. We all have bias. It's human. But, if judges are biased then why isn't the champion decided over three nights. If we're worried bias is going to give Blue Devils the Ott over Crown, why aren't we worried bias is going to give the overall title to Blue Devils over Crown?

To me, it should be the corps that performs best in a given caption on finals night wins that caption, or it stays as it is and overall placement is decided based on an average of three nights as well.

[scheherazadesghost]

Indeed, some of us point to bias in the whole system. And have since we marched. Even if there was a way for AI to call all the shots, the programmers' bias would feed into the programming and still render bias in the results.

And so some of us do our best to ignore the competition aspect altogether and just enjoy the members' and organizations' hard work. The bias and ranking kills the art... for some. Because it's impossible to eliminate.

If bias is impossible to eliminate, then winners shouldn't be any more sore about it than anyone else when it's pointed out. 

[KVG_DC]

Just now, scheherazadesghost said:

Indeed, some of us point to bias in the whole system. And have since we marched. Even if there was a way for AI to call all the shots, the programmers' bias would feed into the programming and still render bias in the results.

And so some of us do our best to ignore the competition aspect altogether and just enjoy the members' and organizations' hard work. The bias and ranking kills the art... for some. Because it's impossible to eliminate.

If bias is impossible to eliminate, then winners shouldn't be any more sore about it than anyone else when it's pointed out. 

There's an interesting 30 for 30 ESPN short on the history how college football determined their national champion and the journey to a playoff system.   For a period that most of us can remember, there was a HEAVY weight put onto the computerized polls and the algorithms therein.  People HATED it.  The hindsight analysis from those interviewed (coaches, players, and broadcasters from the era) was largely that it was 'too perfect' in a sense and removed the human element of personal evaluation.  It seemed that people don't want ridiculously biased methods but having a system that would remove all bias then removes our armchair connection.

In a more niche college sport I follow, hockey, there's a system called the Pairwise that determines who makes the playoffs and reduces the selection to a "simple math" (as the meme jokes go) and so all the armchair analysis goes to "well they needed to win more of the out of conference games" or "the teams in conference we beat didn't beat their out of conference opponents so we end up boned in the pairwise."  Once they're in the playoffs though, wild stuff happens often cause it's a single game knockout format.  

So I think there's a human element to this activity too that I think a total removal of bias and a purely objective adduction system to apply would destroy.  

I mean...what the hell would we even post about all season? 😉

[scheherazadesghost]

17 minutes ago, KVG_DC said:

There's an interesting 30 for 30 ESPN short on the history how college football determined their national champion and the journey to a playoff system.   For a period that most of us can remember, there was a HEAVY weight put onto the computerized polls and the algorithms therein.  People HATED it.  The hindsight analysis from those interviewed (coaches, players, and broadcasters from the era) was largely that it was 'too perfect' in a sense and removed the human element of personal evaluation.  It seemed that people don't want ridiculously biased methods but having a system that would remove all bias then removes our armchair connection.

In a more niche college sport I follow, hockey, there's a system called the Pairwise that determines who makes the playoffs and reduces the selection to a "simple math" (as the meme jokes go) and so all the armchair analysis goes to "well they needed to win more of the out of conference games" or "the teams in conference we beat didn't beat their out of conference opponents so we end up boned in the pairwise."  Once they're in the playoffs though, wild stuff happens often cause it's a single game knockout format.  

So I think there's a human element to this activity too that I think a total removal of bias and a purely objective adduction system to apply would destroy.  

I mean...what the hell would we even post about all season? 😉

I wasn't arguing for removal of bias, because I agree it's impossible to do. I'd also agree that the human reaction to corps, whether by judges, laymen, alum, professionals, or members is part of the experience.

I was not so low key arguing for removal of competition, as I always do. Because the bias is impossible to remove and competition has plenty of downsides that go unacknowledged. Those downsides are made worse by fallible biased opinions, which are impossible to un-bias.

Edited July 16, 2023 by scheherazadesghost