Shows for the week of June 27th

[neop]

Colts are looking real promising this summer. If they hold onto this pace, they'll make finals. That's assuming Madison, Crossmen, and Academy won't have anything to say about it. Looks like the race for the last two spots in finals will come down to Blue Knights, Colts, Madison Scouts, Academy, and Crossmen.

[Shroom]

I really don't like how low BK ended up scoring. I am kind of iffy this year if they'll be finalist material come time.

Madison's show has *a lot* of empty space in it and while it's enjoyable I don't think it has enough to it to bring them into the question finals this year. They stand still far too often and while I'm sure that'll get filled in with choreo eventually, I don't know still how that'll pan out against everyone else who is always on the move.

BS and Cadets seem extremely promising this year and I wouldn't be surprised to see at least one of the two places 6th. Cadets in particular seen like they're going to be on fire if they manage to clean those visuals. BS sounds absolutely amazing this year and they are visually fantastic, not surprised at all how visually close they scored to Cavies. Their hornline is very top heavy though imo. Their percussion is horrible though and it's definitely going to be their Achilles this season

I expect the gap between Bloo and Crown to tighten even more as the season continues. I kind of expect Bloo to pass Crown in GE eventually and stay on top in terms of vis score by fractions of a point, but I seriously doubt they'll be able to touch Crown in Brass or MA come finals.

I'm interested to see Cavies and Boston go head to head again soon. Boston is definitely ahead rn but as Cavies fill their show out more and tack on the end I think they'll edge them out by like .1 come finals night.

I would be surprised if BD doesn't win again this year. It definitely won't be a landslide like it is some other years based on how insane Crown and Bloo seem to be, but them stomping SCV is really cementing them on top this season for me.

[bigtrombone]

Shows for Sunday July 3rd, 2022 (1/3)

Event: Cavalcade of Brass

Location: The Sports Complex @ Benedictine University, Lisle, IL

Weather @ Show Start: Sunny, 83 F

Broadcast: This event will NOT be livestreamed.

Lineup (All Times CDT):

7:30 PM - Welcome & National Anthem
7:40 PM - Rosemont King Cobras
7:52 PM - Music City - Nashville, TN
8:09 PM - Colts - Dubuque, IA
8:26 PM - Intermission
8:46 PM - Crossmen - San Antonio, TX
9:03 PM - The Cavaliers - Rosemont, IL
9:20 PM - Encore-The Cavaliers - Rosemont, IL
9:33 PM - Scores Announced

Scores will be posted on this thread following the event.

[bigtrombone]

Shows for Sunday July 3rd, 2022 (2/3)

Event: Rotary Music Festival

Location: Cedarburg High School Stadium, Cedarburg, WI

Weather @ Show Start: Sunny, 73 F

Broadcast: This event will NOT be livestreamed.

Lineup (All Times CDT):

7:30 PM - Welcome & National Anthem
7:40 PM - Green Beret Marching Band - Janesville, WI
7:50 PM - Sound of Sun Prairie - Sun Prairie, WI
8:02 PM - Colt Cadets - Dubuque, IA
8:20 PM - River City Rhythm - Anoka, MN
8:38 PM - Intermission
8:56 PM - Madison Scouts - Madison, WI
9:14 PM - Blue Stars - La Crosse, WI
9:32 PM - Encore-Madison Scouts - Madison, WI
9:57 PM - Scores Announced

Scores will be posted on this thread following the event.

[bigtrombone]

Shows for Sunday July 3rd, 2022 (3/3)

Event: The Beanpot

Location: Manning Field, Lynn, MA

Weather @ Show Start: Sunny, 79 F

Broadcast: This event will NOT be livestreamed.

Lineup (All Times EDT):

7:00 PM - Welcome & National Anthem
7:10 PM - The Muchachos - Manchester, NH
7:28 PM - 7th Regiment - New London, CT
7:46 PM - Spartans - Nashua, NH
8:04 PM - Intermission
8:34 PM - Jersey Surf - Camden County, NJ
8:52 PM - The Cadets - Allentown, PA
9:10 PM - Boston Crusaders - Boston, MA
9:35 PM - Scores Announced

Scores will be posted on this thread following the event.

[philodemus]

Some scattered thoughts:

Bluecoats weird, wonderful show is the most interesting thing on the field this summer. 100% sold.

Devils have the best props of the summer, and of course everything they do is next level performance wise... but the show is a real headscratcher.

I love Crown, really wanted to dig this show, but it doesn't hold together for me. Lots of cool ideas strung together, doesn't feel like a cohesive thought yet.

Love the Cavies show, but they suffer from 'crowding the front sideline' syndrome worse than anyone else in DCI. Move everything 12 steps back and it will instantly improve 5 points.

For me, SCV is cooler than Devils at the moment. I wonder if they will pass them when the whole show is on the field. I'd like that.

I am not historically a Cadets fan, but I like this show. Weirdly similar to Bloo, but told in a more traditional way. As an old guy, I appreciate the drill and use of the whole field.

I really wanted to pull for Madison, but the show isn't there. Fingers crossed for Finals.

[neop]

Jul 3, 2022 9:14:35 GMT -6 bigtrombone said:

Shows for Sunday July 3rd, 2022 (1/3)

Event: Cavalcade of Brass

Location: The Sports Complex @ Benedictine University, Lisle, IL

Weather @ Show Start: Sunny, 83 F

Broadcast: This event will NOT be livestreamed.

Lineup (All Times CDT):

7:30 PM - Welcome & National Anthem
7:40 PM - Rosemont King Cobras
7:52 PM - Music City - Nashville, TN
8:09 PM - Colts - Dubuque, IA
8:26 PM - Intermission
8:46 PM - Phantom Regiment - Rockford, IL (I'm assuming this will be another standstill performance)
9:03 PM - Crossmen - San Antonio, TX
9:20 PM - The Cavaliers - Rosemont, IL
9:37 PM - Encore-The Cavaliers - Rosemont, IL
9:50 PM - Scores Announced

Scores will be posted on this thread following the event.

Really interested in seeing the Colts versus the Crossmen after a few nights apart.

[bigtrombone]

Phantom Regiment will not be appearing at Cavalcade of Brass tonight and will be taking time off to recover from COVID-19. Can't say for sure but depending on how many people have it and with the current CDC quarantine guidelines, hopefully they'll be back in time for the DeKalb show on Saturday.

[bigtrombone]

The Beanpot Scores:

World Class:

1. Boston Crusaders 74.75
2. The Cadets 71.35
3. Jersey Surf 59.10

Open Class:

1. Spartans 60.60
2. 7th Regiment 48.80

Recaps can be found here: dci.org/scores/recap/2022-the-beanpot

[neop]

Whoaaaa Music City!!!

[bigtrombone]

Cavalcade of Brass Scores:

World Class:

1. The Cavaliers 73.40
2. Crossmen 68.25
3. Colts 65.40
4. Music City 64.15

Recaps can be found here: dci.org/scores/recap/2022-cavalcade-of-brass

[supersound]

Rotary Music Festival

World Class:

1 Blue Stars 72.150
2 Madison Scouts 65.000

Open Class:
1 Colt Cadets 49.850
2 River City Rhythm 49.750

[bigtrombone]

Rotary Music Festival Scores:

World Class:

1. Blue Stars 72.15
2. Madison Scouts 65.00

Open Class:

1. Colt Cadets 49.85
2. River City Rhythm 49.75

Recaps can be found here: dci.org/scores/recap/2022-rotary-music-festival

[N.E. Brigand]

Jul 2, 2022 8:52:52 GMT -6 bigtrombone said:

Shows for Saturday July 2nd, 2022 (4/4)
Event: Innovations In Brass: Northeast Ohio
Location: Dix Stadium @ Kent State University, Kent, OH
Weather @ Show Start: Partly Cloudy, 80 F
Broadcast: This event will be NOT livestreamed.

Please pardon a belated post; there wasn't time to clean up my notes before now. I attended this show, and my expectations for the evening were set very low. They were easily surpassed in all but two respects:

(1) This is the first drum corps or marching band show I've ever attended at which there were no food or drink concessions (apart from two folks sitting at a picnic table selling bottled water -- and I heard that was a last-minute arrangement). There was no advance notice that concessions would be closed; in fact, earlier in the day, ticket buyers got an email with show details that included the sentence "Stadium concessions will be available for the duration of the event." What happened?

(2) The souvenir program didn't include information about the performing corps other than the Bluecoats, so apart from what I'd already found in DrumCorpsXperience listings, I had to listen close to catch show titles and just do my best to identify music, not all of which I recognized.

Here are the corps in order of performance with the judges' ranks and scores noted. As a reminder, the All Age Corps are judged on different sheets (modeled on the Drum Corps Associates sheets) than the sheets used by DCI's World (and Open) Class corps. As a general guideline, you can lower the All Age scores by 10-15 points (the better the corps, the less you should reduce) to determine what their DCI World/Open score would be.

Columbus Saints (All Age from Columbus, OH) -- "Mix Tape" -- 3rd, 49.7
To date, the best experience I've had with this corps is buying a "Hearts of Steam" show t-shirt from their souvenir stand in 2019. Their three competitive shows to date were among the weakest I've seen in DCA. This is the first Saints production I've seen that actually might improve enough to deserve a score of 70 by DCA championships on Labor Day weekend -- along the lines of Excelsior in 2014 or Chops Inc. in 2015 (to be sure, Saints' top score ever was 68 in 2019, but I thought that was several points too high). That said, the performance I saw in Kent wouldn't have deserved a 70 even in an OMEA competition; they have a long way to go, but I think they can get there. Their repertoire this year includes Pachelbel's Canon in D, Beethoven's Symphony No. 7, and Ravel's Bolero. They must have at least one more movement to come. DCA has lowered the minimum threshold of members for Class A to 26 this year, but Saints aren't there yet: I counted 20 members: 8 on brass (2 on the sidelines with music stands), 5 in the battery, 3 in the pit, and 4 guard. There was no drum major.

Rogues Hollow Regiment (All Age from Doylestown, OH) -- "En-Trance" -- 2nd, 59.9
That is the rank and score announced at the show; it was missing on DCI's website for a while. I didn't hear RHR's show title announced, but it's on the corps site, which says the musical selections for last year's Class A champions (this year they're competing in the new "Open Class" for corps with 65-85 members, but I counted only 43: 23 on brass, 10 in the battery, 7 in the pit, and just 3 guard) include "Peace Frog" by The Doors, "Rooster" by Alice in Chains, and "White Rabbit" by Jefferson Airplane. The show opens with a little bit of pre-recorded narration: "There are things known, and things unknown, and in between there are the doors." Accordingly, they have a series of props meant to represent door frames, which were generally underused until their closer. Despite the intimations of bathetic seriousness, this looks likely to develop into a seriously entertaining show. They did have what I am told is their entire production on the field. It was messy, but the audience enjoyed it.

Cincinnati Tradition (All Age from Cincinnati, OH) -- "Soiree" -- 1st, 64.35
Solidly in DCA's Open Class Finals in 2018 and 2019 (that was then the top class) after twice winning DCA's Class A finals, Tradition has generally felt a little paint-by-numbers to me: well-executed but boring. This year their repertoire includes Tchaikovsky's Romeo and Juliet overture (probably best assayed on the field by Phantom Regiment in 1988), "Masquerade" from Phantom of the Opera by Andrew Lloyd Webber, and we'll see what else: they only played about half a show. Compared to RHR, I thought the marching was quite slow, and the instrumentalists covered relatively little field, staying mostly in front of the large and little-utilized midfield platform (the guard was frequently staged behind that element), but their sound was more sonorous, and they had a sizable guard to contribute to their visuals. I counted 67 members: 29 on brass, 12 in the battery, 5 in the pit, and 21 guard.

Music City (World Class from Nashville, TN) -- "Gasoline Rainbows" -- 3rd, 60.25
I didn't count membership size in the three DCI corps, but I did notice that Music City, debuting their 2022 production at this event, had 27 in the battery, including four marching cymbals and four additional players on something that looked sort of like a snare drum. I was a fan of Music City in their DCI Open Class years starting from their lovely "Postcards from Havana" show in 2013, but despite the acclaim for the Casey Jones show in 2018, I've been generally disappointed with their two previous World Class entrants and their exhibition show last year. While I couldn't really tell you what their 2022 show is about -- and no, I don't want them to add more narration -- it seems like a step up in every way (except for the music, which is rather generic). I would not be surprised to see them score above 80 in semifinals next month (although I'm not sure there's enough time for corps' scores to increase this year on the pace we're used to).

Lots of people seen the final two corps online already this year, so I'll my comments short:

Carolina Crown (World Class from Fort Mill, SC) -- "Right Here, Right Now" -- 1st, 74.40
Last Friday, watching the Flo-Marching broadcast from Muncie, I found the pretentiously voiced prerecorded preshow narration of Crown's show to be so annoying that I turned the stream off before they even started playing, and I was not looking forward to this performance. I was mistaken. While I still don't care much for the concept or narration -- and why use a British voice? -- have you ever seen video of Crown marching in a parade, loose and engaging? That's how this show feels to me (but I could use with less shouting of the title during the show). One challenge at Kent: because the drum major podiums were too close to the solid front railing of the seating area, the bottom of the QR codes printed there were cut off, so you couldn't download the interactive app.

Bluecoats (World Class from Canton, OH) -- "Riffs & Revelations" -- 2nd, 73.95
Last Tuesday, watching the Flo-Marching broadcast from Detroit, I was immensely irritated by the prerecorded Hopperesque narration that repeatedly interrupts Bloo's show, but again it's much less obtrusive when heard live. Still some of it is superfluous and could be cut. For instance, cut the "I'll just call him Lou" line; we know who you mean by that point. The diagonal lines all over the uniforms make it look like the members are crossed legged when they're standing at attention. It's a little discombobulating for the viewer, rather like the year that Blue Knights had two different colored trouser legs and they seemed to be limping around the field.

I thought Bluecoats had a tighter and more rounded show and would edge out Crown, but not by much. The judges thought otherwise.

Music City and Carolina Crown both had field mics on the sideline, and Bluecoats ensemble brass definitely was coming through the speakers at times, but finally, five years after corps started doing this in 2017, it seems they're figuring out how to use that technology without sounding overamplified or unnatural. I was seated high up on the 35, directly in line with several corps' speakers, and the full ensemble generally sounded fine and there were only a few times that the bass sounds from synthesizers sounded obnoxious. Bluecoats' preshow sounds were painfully loud for a few seconds, as was their over-the-shoulder keyboard organ solo (though very nimbly played -- some of the best featured keyboard work since Carolina Crown in 2011).

Attendance was fairly light, taking up substantially less than half of the home side of the stadium. Bloo's encore consisted of an overlong medley of tunes (including "Creep" and some Beatles) from the front ensemble, a battery feature, Wham's "Wake Me Up Before You Go Go," part of their 2022 show, the corps song "Autumn Leaves," and of course Simon & Garfunkel's "The Boxer."

[Shroom]

Jul 6, 2022 22:50:11 GMT -6 N.E. Brigand said:

Jul 2, 2022 8:52:52 GMT -6 bigtrombone said:

like the year that Blue Knights had two different colored trouser legs and they seemed to be limping around the field.

Those were probably the worst uniforms of the 2010s right up there with SCV 2019. The drill was insanely hard to read and I honesty have no idea why anyone thinks grey is a good uniform color.

[cinnamonpromenade]

Jul 15, 2022 19:23:11 GMT -6 Shroom said:

Jul 6, 2022 22:50:11 GMT -6 N.E. Brigand said:

Those were probably the worst uniforms of the 2010s right up there with SCV 2019. The drill was insanely hard to read and I honesty have no idea why anyone thinks grey is a good uniform color.

Did you see the Blue Knights in person in 2016? That would make all the difference.

The way those silver-sequined pants caught light was so gorgeous yet so overwhelming, which I thought fit the show perfectly. The two-toned, two-textured pants also provided a bridge between the mirror props and the guard uniforms (those distilled fractals of color). The augmenting fusion of chrome, mirror, and color throughout the show felt like the perfect marriage of futuristic and primordial, which feels like a proper visual metaphor of the singularity.

Admittedly, if you watch a video recording of that show (with ANY level of pixelation), the uniforms look to be a faded and muddy gray.

[N.E. Brigand]

Jul 17, 2022 13:52:43 GMT -6 cinnamonpromenade said:

Jul 15, 2022 19:23:11 GMT -6 Shroom said:

Jul 6, 2022 22:50:11 GMT -6 N.E. Brigand said:

The diagonal lines all over Bluecoats' uniforms make it look like the members are crossed legged when they're standing at attention. It's a little discombobulating for the viewer, rather like the year that Blue Knights had two different colored trouser legs and they seemed to be limping around the field.

Those were probably the worst uniforms of the 2010s right up there with SCV 2019. The drill was insanely hard to read and I honesty have no idea why anyone thinks grey is a good uniform color.

Did you see the Blue Knights in person in 2016? That would make all the difference.

The way those silver-sequined pants caught light was so gorgeous yet so overwhelming, which I thought fit the show perfectly. The two-toned, two-textured pants also provided a bridge between the mirror props and the guard uniforms (those distilled fractals of color). The augmenting fusion of chrome, mirror, and color throughout the show felt like the perfect marriage of futuristic and primordial, which feels like a proper visual metaphor of the singularity.

Admittedly, if you watch a video recording of that show (with ANY level of pixelation), the uniforms look to be a faded and muddy gray.

I can't speak for Shroom, but I saw the show live at Massillon (from the farthest right side of the very packed home stands) and at DCI Finals (from great seats halfway up on the right 40 yard line, not far behind the judges), and while I had no problem with the color scheme as such, the two-tone pants really did make it look like they were limping.

[Shroom]

Jul 17, 2022 13:52:43 GMT -6 cinnamonpromenade said:

Jul 15, 2022 19:23:11 GMT -6 Shroom said:

Did you see the Blue Knights in person in 2016? That would make all the difference.

The way those silver-sequined pants caught light was so gorgeous yet so overwhelming, which I thought fit the show perfectly. The two-toned, two-textured pants also provided a bridge between the mirror props and the guard uniforms (those distilled fractals of color). The augmenting fusion of chrome, mirror, and color throughout the show felt like the perfect marriage of futuristic and primordial, which feels like a proper visual metaphor of the singularity.

Admittedly, if you watch a video recording of that show (with ANY level of pixelation), the uniforms look to be a faded and muddy gray.

That's a really nice point tbh. I wasn't into the activity at all at that time so I never saw them live. I kinda assumed that the grey (gray? I honestly have no idea) killed the drill from the videos since, the color usually obscures the marchers when used in uniforms, but it makes sense that the crappy Flomarching quality videos I've seen probably change the effect of the uniforms entirely.