Wigan, Lancashire, UNITED KINGDOM

[JoeBloggs]

My review for what its worth...

A CLASS:

CHESHIRE CADETS…. 3rd Place (41.1)

This is a very entertaining, albeit VERY young corps who has a very bright future in DCUK if they can hang onto their younger members (are you listening Senators? These guys WILL be knocking on YOUR door someday!!). How this corps did not beat Concord and beat them soundly is beyond comprehension in my humble opinion. Were they in need of work? Absolutely. Were they entertaining? YOU BET!! The opener was gorgeous and had the crowd on their feet within the first minute. The drum feature needs a bit of work visually although from a musical perspective it was fine. The third number (Don’t Rain on My Parade) was fun and exciting. Unfortunately their seemed to be some drill issues here as well. Perhaps it was just an off day. They close with Earth Wind and Fire’s “In the Stone”. The corps sounded perhaps a tad tired at the end but they held through for a fine performance.

CONCORD…. 2nd Place (41.3)

This year Concord has taken on the challenge of bringing us the music of Ol Blue Eyes, Frank Sinatra. The corps is rather small and young but put on a good performance nonetheless. Guard needs a lot of work and were definitely last in my opinion. I am not really sure what to say about this corps as technically they are OK (drum line is definitely their strength). The overall show just seems to be lacking that panache that personified Frank Sinatra and really needed to come out in this show. They were far from bad, but just weren’t doing it for me. The big difference between them and Cheshire for me is that Cheshire was exciting and coming at you all the time while Concord was probably more technically sound, just kind of boring.

STAFFORD LANCERS…. 1st Place (52.1)

Staff won all captions today (although they should have been MUCH closer to Cheshire in brass then they were…an 81 to CCs 58??!! Get real!). This year Staff is doing Les Miserables. I think that they may have been gifted a few points based on their size alone (they were far and away the biggest corps in A Class) because they were sounding really tired and fatigued about a third of the way through the performance. The brass needs to seriously work on stamina if they are to have ANY chance against Southern Aurora. The drums had serious issues with feet today. Perhaps they were having sound issues with the stadium (more on that in a bit). The saving grace for Staff however is their FANTASTIC guard. They sold Les Mis about as good as the 89 Garfield Cadets of Bergen County Sponsored by YEA!

OPEN CLASS

Poynton Commodores…. 3rd Place (53.4)

The Extremes of Red was a very nicely put together production for a corps that should be able to leapfrog a couple of other Open Class corps come Mansfield to retain their Open Class status. This corps is small but does some things very nicely. The opener is a former Cavies number that they did very nicely, but the highlight for me was John Williams’ “If We Were In Love”. Great sound in the horns. Only suggestion would be to move the dancers that are behind the hornline up to the front. They are not a very big corps and need all the visual they can get. Overall, good show.

KIDSGROVE SCOUTS…. 1st Place (68.6)

Kidsgrove was SMOKIN today. They seemed as if they had something to prove. I did not recognise this as the same corps I saw (that quite frankly bored me) in Leicester! They seem to have done some rewrites and fine tuning on this show and it is most definitely working! Kidsgrove swept all captions and well deserved to. There were some individual brass issues (tone quality and sticking out of the ensemble) but you could overlook that with their drumline. My goodness, these boys and girls came to PLAY!! A 78 to 71 over Forgemen in percussion was probably not a big enough gap.

FORGEMEN…. 2nd Place (64.1)

The Journey is what the Forgemen are calling their 2005 production and what a ride it is. Very powerful (albeit small) hornline and a tight drumline made this a most enjoyable show. Again, I noticed the corps seemed very tired and fatigued for about the last 2 minutes of the program (why don’t corps do physical conditioning here in the UK?). My only gripe about these guys is their guard uniform. It looks tacky and also gets lost on the pitch as it is the same basic colour as that of the corps. Perhaps that could help sort out some of the GE Visual issues. Not really much I can say other than that. Good show overall.

IN SUMMARY

Overall the DCUK “North Regional” as some are calling it was a nice day out. Good corps from top to bottom. In my opinion Cheshire Cadets got jobbed in A class and should have beat Concord by at least a couple of points. Also, I am sorry but this stadium was really bollocks. American DCI corps would have had a hard time projecting sound across 25 yards of running track. Also, why was the pitch offset in the stadium? Was there a reason they could not have centred it? Just made it awkward. Finally, all the corps seemed to have timing issues at some point during their performances. Again, playing into a semi roofed stadium 25 yards away is going to throw back an awfully weird echo.

Other than the stadium issues and the one judges mistake, it was a nice day out.

[vferrera]

CONCORD…. 2nd Place (41.3)

LAUNCELOT: Brave, brave Concorde, you shall not have died in vain!

CONCORDE: Uh, I'm-- I'm not quite dead, sir.

[MCS65]

You're right we are not dead yet !

We didn't have a good show yeaterday but just watch us fly next time out !

[Murph]

Garfield Cadets of Bergen County Sponsored by YEA!

Try to work in "Holy Name" next time. :P

Thanks for the review. It's really cool to read about corps that we don't hear much about on this side of the pond. It would be cool if we could get some clips of these corps.

Edited July 4, 2005 by Murph

[Jimisback]

Really cool!!!!!!!!!!!! Thanks so much.