Carolina Crown

[chris ncsu]

Nah, I don't buy into the 'pick a style and stick to it'. 'Style' is something pretty loosely defined anyway, but I know I don't want to hear a particular corps do straight jazz every year, or Americana, or Latin, or Broadway...

[SkyRyder_FMM]

If I wanted another CADETS style show I would like the cadets to do it.

pick a style and stick to it. better in the long run.

Hmm, why does a corps need to stick to a particular style? Star of Indiana never really had a style, and they were awesome. Suncoast and Freelancers from the 80s? Colts from the 90s? Crown since inception even (their style has varied quite a bit over the years). All of these corps varied their style from year to year and produced some very entertaining shows. Personally, I don't see why any particular style needs to be adhered to per se. Come out with a good show that's challenging for the members and entertaining for the audience - whatever it may be.

[jayboe172]

sounds like a good show to me...any vocals????

[capregrookie05]

...

Edited June 2, 2006 by capregrookie05

[dcifan2002]

Hmm, why does a corps need to stick to a particular style? Star of Indiana never really had a style, and they were awesome. Suncoast and Freelancers from the 80s? Colts from the 90s? Crown since inception even (their style has varied quite a bit over the years). All of these corps varied their style from year to year and produced some very entertaining shows. Personally, I don't see why any particular style needs to be adhered to per se. Come out with a good show that's challenging for the members and entertaining for the audience - whatever it may be.

true. works for some .

others ?

[hughesmr]

I like the sophisticated, abstract, arcane show announcements. Why??? Because it requires the reader to THINK! Imagine that - a drum corps audience... that actually... THINKS! Why is sophistication thought by some to be a bad thing? It gives you MORE to listen for, MORE to watch for, and MORE subtleties to pick up everytime you see the show!

Corps that just tell me "this is what we're playing" offer me little to look forward to. I'd be just as happy hearing them announce what they're playing right before they perform the show.

I respectfully disagree: in my eyes, such a corps is TELLING you what to think!

Did Star 93 make you think? Was that a sophisticated show? Was it accompanied by a bunch of flowery verbal poo-poo?

If a show can't stand on it's own without some pompous treatise on what it's about, then IMO the show is a design failure. Period. Too many mediocre show designs from corps over the years that want to "play the game" rely on this crap and I personally think it dilutes the effectiveness of the relatively few well-executed show concepts out there. That's the point of my earlier comment that, for many corps, the "concept" is NOT well portrayed through the design because different shows sporting supposedly different "concepts" end up seeming so similar in many design respects...the same generic drill features (e.g. rotating blocks, etc)....same big "drum corps moments" (e.g. numerous phrases that end with a loud penultimate dissonant chord, followed by ..TA-DAAAA ...a big consonant chord!!) ... largely the same type of contribution from the CG...etc. Looking at what the corps actually did on the field, and then stacking it up against the corps' official "treatise" on the show concept, just makes the whole thing seem silly.

It's sort of like the standard "Hollywood ending"...for the most part, you always know what to expect. That's to be expected in a competitive activity, where everyone wants to emulate what the most "successsful" corps do to achieve that success .... but that stifles originality, and just adding different words to try to say that you are portraying something different isn't very convincing to this 25-year DC fan. DO something different, for crying out loud! And be original enough to do it without changing all the rules. THAT'S a creative challenge for designers.

Star 93 was so cool because they took the restrictions of the idiom, stayed WITHIN them, and designed a VERY original product. All without being "preachy". PR these days has the right idea IMO: "here's our show concept (as a title, not much more), and here are the pieces we are playing to convey that concept." Cavies are pretty good, too .... there's a write-up, but it's actually an informative one where the author obviously isn't full of himself.

That said, I don't think there's anything wrong (either) with a corps coming out sans "concept" and just playing and marching their ##### off. Simply entertaining me with your craft and skill is nice, too. You don't have to convince me that you are taking me to the slopes of Everest or waxing poetic about the inner conflicts and triumphs of the earth and sea over man (substitute any equivalent drivel here).

For the record, I like Crown and wish them every success. This post (and my others) are not a knock on that or any particular corps.

Mike in OH

Edited June 2, 2006 by hughesmr

[Orpheus]

I just don't think Crown's show announcement is so bad. It's enough to give you an idea of what they're trying to say, but not like the super-detailed announcements we see sometimes that attempt to explain every darn little moment in the show. (Unless there's more to it that was written in the first post of this thread ... I didn't see anything on their website.)

[crownie05]

so, skimming over some of the posts here, did anyone stop to think that without a concept, the show would be meaningless?

take frameworks for instance, everyone loves that show right? if someone didn't say, the show is called frameworks and here's why, it would just be some meaningless music and drill on a field. and yes, it's clean, but it's not as entertaining without that little "frameworks" idea running through your head while you're watching it.

so yeah, in.trance.it makes you think a little about the concept. and okay, they could have used some smaller words in the description to help those that are vocabularily challenged, but then it would lose its effect. the whole point is to get your mind going so that when you watch it, IT MAKES SENSE.

and i think someone said that the corps members probably don't even know what it means? well, they're not the cadets, if you ask them what their character is supposed to mean they will know. that was probably the first thing the staff did with us for Angelus last year, was we all sat down and talked about angels, and what angels mean to us, and what the show is supposed to mean. you perform it better if you feel what it's supposed to mean.

SO, the "concept" is not the evil here.

[hughesmr]

so, skimming over some of the posts here, did anyone stop to think that without a concept, the show would be meaningless?

take frameworks for instance, everyone loves that show right? if someone didn't say, the show is called frameworks and here's why, it would just be some meaningless music and drill on a field. and yes, it's clean, but it's not as entertaining without that little "frameworks" idea running through your head while you're watching it.

so yeah, in.trance.it makes you think a little about the concept. and okay, they could have used some smaller words in the description to help those that are vocabularily challenged, but then it would lose its effect. the whole point is to get your mind going so that when you watch it, IT MAKES SENSE.

and i think someone said that the corps members probably don't even know what it means? well, they're not the cadets, if you ask them what their character is supposed to mean they will know. that was probably the first thing the staff did with us for Angelus last year, was we all sat down and talked about angels, and what angels mean to us, and what the show is supposed to mean. you perform it better if you feel what it's supposed to mean.

SO, the "concept" is not the evil here.

I never said the concept was "evil" or even a problem. I just personally think corps frequently look stupid when the formal press release of the "concept" puffs themselves up like they were doing high art or something. Give me a break ... it's a friggin' drum corps show. If you think it's "high art" then you don't get out much!

And I am anything but "vocabularily challenged". I just think the DESIGN should sell whatever concept they choose, not some jibberish telling me what to think. This is an instrumental music medium, not a written prose medium.

Here is a friendly challenge for you: please state for me all the DESIGN ELEMENTS that Crown UNIQUELY uses (i.e. elements that are NOT observed in other corps concepts) that clearly and effectively communicate Crown's UNIQUE concept.

For the record, the sort of elements I'm talking about abound in Cavaliers' 2006 show.... one could write a list as long as your arm with the unique things they do to protray their concept. It's clear to the audience, without much (if any) explanation required. In fact, one word does the job nicely: "Machine". That to me is outstanding design. Their writeup only states the concept, it doesn't try to convince me of it .... that's what the show on the field is for!

One person's opinion.

Cheers :) ,

M

Edited July 27, 2006 by hughesmr

[crownie05]

i don't think its as much that they're trying to create "high art", but that they're trying to do something different, unique and creative. and, yeah, the in.trance.it idea is a little on the complex side, but remember that crown is still relatively young. there's nothing crown can pull out from our past repertoire that people will already get (as machine for cavies, everyone knows cavies are a machine). it's tough to come up with a (simple) concept that hasn't already been done and won't be boring when you have little to build on.

and really, you could just say that in.trance.it is about the mad rush of traveling. but then the whole "trance" part of it gets lost. so it's not all about being puffed up. it's about helping to add meaning to what you're seeing and hearing on the field, which in the end will make it more entertaining.

i hope i'm making sense.

and you know the design teams talk to judges all the time about what's on the field and is it conveying the concept. our design team got ripped apart a lot with Angelus becuase of the black guard unis and the 444's. nobody knew what it meant. WE knew, and it made sense to us, and i think if the rest of the audience could have somehow been clued in, it would have made the show that much more enjoyable and entertaining. i think there are just some things that can't quite be expressed in just music and drill/visual elements. like how do you tell someone that 444 is supposed to mean that an angel is near? or that the black unis are taken from "City of Angels" when they're dressed in black trenchcoats and standing on the shore listening to the sunrise? there was an honest attempt, with the black unis and at the start of the show they are all facing one way as the music builds like a sunrise. but it just didn't come across.

so does that mean that "angelus" was high art, because some of the ideas could not be clearly conveyed without a written description?