Let's Talk About the Blue Devils...

[Chief Guns]

49 minutes ago, saxfreq1128 said:

These are all about as famous as art gets for stuff that isn’t outright pop culture, honestly. Like, this is all Western Canon-level, touchstone stuff.

Maybe the best way to explain it would be to liken it all back to The Rite of Spring, when BD did that. Has “everyone” heard of Stravinsky or ROS? No. Can you in any reasonable way deny that it’s an extremely canonical, famous, enduring piece of music? No, you really can’t.  

IMO everything you named is basically that level of notoriety. For example: Dreams and Nighthawks is so famous for an American painting that shows like The Simpsons could parody it in the 90s and most people would get the visual reference. I’ve seen parodies of it everywhere — cartoons, ads, movies, etc  etc. Fellini’s “La Dolce Vita” is like that; and Matisse is general art history in the same way.

None of which means you’re a bad or uninformed person for not knowing it! Again, its not that “everyone” knows this stuff, it’s that it’s all about as canonical as it gets. 

Can't remember if it was Family Guy or American Dad, but one of them did a cutaway parody of Dreams and Nighthawks, before BD did the 2018 show. 

[CAtenhut]

18 hours ago, ContraFart said:

Not so much. Or BD hate would not be a topic. 

You know why BD hate is a topic? Cuz only BD haters can't stop talking about this stuff. All of us who LOVE BD don't care if their show designs are similar year after year, so we just sit back and play in all the puddles made from all the blue tears.

 

Edited July 27, 2023 by CAtenhut

[Cappybara]

26 minutes ago, skevinp said:

I’ve seen people do that with respect to every corps.

Completely agree. I only singled out BD due to context. But yes, I see this happen for every corps. People don’t have trust in the judges despite the fact that they are quite literally at field level getting reads better than anyone in the stands or sitting at home ever could. And that’s not even mentioning the training and years of experience most of the panel had during championship week 

[saxfreq1128]

7 minutes ago, MarimbaManiac said:

Again, BD knows this and they design with cleanliness in mind over anything else. For instance, in 2009 Crown should have run away with the gold. Their show was unique, and daring, and engaging, and incredibly difficult. BD did the same thing they always do, and was marginally cleaner. That's a failure of judging and the general judging paradigm. When we're talking about the top 3 corps who are all achieving at roughly the same level, effect and innovation should win the day, hands down. 

Are we thinking of the same year? We’re talking about “1930” right — the show that, like or not, completely changed the activity’s relationship to props, body movement, etc? 

If so, you have it backwards: it was not “the same thing they always do” — it typified what they would eventually be known to do, and the entire activity with them. But BD had not performed a show like that before. Drum corps shows had not quite behaved like that before. 

I love Crown 2009. Love! I don’t disagree with you that performance wise they were close — and Crown in fact won the Ott that year, so we cannot pretend that no judge agrees with you.

But you’re not being honest about the design leap that “1930” was for BD and the activity as a whole. The top 3 were not equally innovative that year. Case in point: I do not see a single show in the top 12 this year that does not have some of “1930”’s DNA in it somewhere. That show is the earliest DCI champion that still looks and feels like the drum corps we see today. 

[mboogey73]

22 minutes ago, MarimbaManiac said:

Yes, interesting and exciting are general laymen descriptors that can be mapped to specific areas of the GE sheet. I've been of the opinion for years that most GE judges are too heavily weighting cleanliness vs. effect. Clarity of intent is only one aspect of the sheets, but tend to be leaned on heavily. It's easy to point to cleanliness when you don't fully understand how to quantify the more elusive sections of the categories. 

Again, BD knows this and they design with cleanliness in mind over anything else. For instance, in 2009 Crown should have run away with the gold. Their show was unique, and daring, and engaging, and incredibly difficult. BD did the same thing they always do, and was marginally cleaner. That's a failure of judging and the general judging paradigm. When we're talking about the top 3 corps who are all achieving at roughly the same level, effect and innovation should win the day, hands down. 

So difficulty is the most important factor?  At some point execution has to matter.  And you're not paying attention if you think some of what BD does visually is just stuff that's easy to clean. 

Using your logic BD should win drums pretty much every year because their book is consistently exponentially harder than anyone else.  This year included. 

[Ashontheinternet]

18 minutes ago, GBugler said:

Some people prefer the competitive element more than the art. I don't think it means that they don't appreciate the product but why are there judges and scores, if that wasn't also meant to be appreciated? Some people watch baseball games for the beauty of the game itself and don't care about the outcomes. Or figure skating. Or diving, basketball...whatever. This is a nuanced discussion and saying that "you have got it all wrong" is, in itself, wrong. Those folks are no more wrong than people who only want to appreciate the shows and who discount the competitive element.

 

this is fair, and i am projecting a little, but i just dont think you will ever get maximum enjoyment out of this activity if your focal point is scores and winners.

[ContraFart]

9 minutes ago, CAtenhut said:

You know why BD hate is a topic? Cuz only BD haters can't stop talking about this stuff. All of us who LOVE BD don't care if their show designs are similar year after year, so we just sit back and play in all the puddles made from all the blue tears.

 

and that attitude is another reason for BD hate

[CAtenhut]

8 minutes ago, ContraFart said:

and that attitude is another reason for BD hate

Hate me. But don't hate BD. Some of us are just tired of listening to people complain about the same stuff year after year for a decade now. 

[MarimbaManiac]

30 minutes ago, saxfreq1128 said:

Are we thinking of the same year? We’re talking about “1930” right — the show that, like or not, completely changed the activity’s relationship to props, body movement, etc? 

If so, you have it backwards: it was not “the same thing they always do” — it typified what they would eventually be known to do, and the entire activity with them. But BD had not performed a show like that before. Drum corps shows had not quite behaved like that before. 

I love Crown 2009. Love! I don’t disagree with you that performance wise they were close — and Crown in fact won the Ott that year, so we cannot pretend that no judge agrees with you.

But you’re not being honest about the design leap that “1930” was for BD and the activity as a whole. The top 3 were not equally innovative that year. Case in point: I do not see a single show in the top 12 this year that does not have some of “1930”’s DNA in it somewhere. That show is the earliest DCI champion that still looks and feels like the drum corps we see today. 

Oh I'm sorry...are you talking about those stupid banquet chairs? The ones that basically filled the exact same roll as the poles did the year before with the exception of adding 16 inches of height? They did nearly exactly the same thing as they did the year before with creating framing on the field, using them as guard equipment, and creating stage changes. Some of the moves were almost identical (create a box frame with the props, have the corps move in a block form through the created block). It was again, a modest evolution over a concept they had used before. 

Sorry, no. 

 

Edited July 27, 2023 by MarimbaManiac

[greg_orangecounty]

10 minutes ago, CAtenhut said:

Hate me. But don't hate BD. Some of us are just tired of listening to people complain about the same stuff year after year for a decade now. 

He's playing you guys.