SCV into the Finals against Phantom Regiment
By admin on August 6th, 2011
Competing against the Phantom Regiment in the VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE DRUM CORPS will be the Santa Clara Vanguard. You can start voting on Monday. The voting for the two corps will continue until Friday night at 11 pm EDT.
Both corps, Phantom and SCV, beat their respective opponents (BD and Crown) with 65% of the votes. I had thought perhaps the BD and SCV votes would have been closer but they were not.
Here is the PDF of the brackets so far.
So how did both corps get here? Here is who they each beat to get to where they are:
Santa Clara Vanguard
Marauders
Black Knights
Boston Crusaders
Madison Scouts (they beat Bluecoats)
Blue Devils
Phantom Regiment
Defenders
Sky Ryders
Crossmen
The Cavaliers
Carolina Crown (they beat The Cadets, Star of Indiana, and Troopers)
Phantom Regiment into the Finals of VFYFDC
By admin on August 6th, 2011
The first corps into the Championship bracket of VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE DRUM CORPS is the Phantom Regiment. The winner of the Blue Devils vs SCV bracket will be announced tonight around 5 pm EDT.
DCI Atlanta Show Thoughts
By admin on August 2nd, 2011
My wife and I went to the DCI Atlanta show this past weekend. Here are my quick (hopefully) thoughts on the show:
- Overall, I thought the corps this year were much more entertaining than last year. Almost every corps that I saw took a step in the right direction in terms of entertaining the audience.
- I started watching the show from Crossmen on, so I did not see everybody.
-One factor that I think separates lower placing corps from the higher placing corps (besides talent and other things) is missed opportunities. Take Pacific Crest’s show for example. You have a show called Push, Pull, Twist, and Turn. With a show like that you would expect to see a lot more of that type of motion and body movement throughout the show, but as far as I saw they really only used those body movements one time for each section of the show. During the push movement I only saw one instance of push, etc. If there was more then it needs to be a lot more. A show like that makes me wonder what the Cavaliers could have done with it and when you think of it in those terms you know that there were missed opportunities with that show. They weren’t the only ones but their show is a good example of missed opportunities.
- Troopers had a show that was well thought out and had some especially nice moments. Their show had a different feel-good feel to it with lots of sentimentality in it, of which we haven’t heard much before in drum corps before, so that was a nice change of pace to hear. The show reminded me a lot of the type of emotion that the Crossmen 92 show had at times.
-Blue Stars- great trumpet sound and scoring at the beginning really impressed me. I thought this show was really well thought out. The only thing was in their opener it felt like there were 3 phrases in a row that felt redundant. The build ups and the impacts were almost the exact same.
- Spirit of Atlanta- very nice show with a cool sound that was unique to the field. It is one of those that makes you wonder why no one has done something like this before! Very well done from the design team. I usually don’t get into Spirit shows but this one was very nice.
- Blue Knights-I liked this show again, like I did last years. Definitely a nice way to start the show. The end of the show was different as well. It wasn’t my favorite ending, but it worked and was a risk in ending that way. It worked though.
- Santa Clara Vanguard- more on them later, but this provided the first goose bump moment of the night for me.
- Boston Crusaders- nice first impact. There were some good moments in this show. Not one of my favorites this year but it was still very good and it worked.
- Madison Scouts- This show was very good again, but the ending was absolutely unforgettable. A very nice build to the end and very emotional. I really liked it.
- Bluecoats- not one of my favorite shows of the night. They played very well but it just didn’t do it for me.
- Phantom Regiment- absolutely incredible show design. The music was great and totally Phantom and a thrill to listen to. One of my favorite shows of the night.
- Carolina Crown- very well thought out show that is risky to do without coming across as cheesy. As always, they played fantastically. Very good show that a lot should mimic in terms of how to maximize a show’s potential.
- Cavaliers- For the past 10 years I have likened Cavaliers’ shows to be like action movies. When you watch an action movie you go to see the action and the plot is a minor factor. This year was exactly the same. They provided some great moments as always and once again provided some innovative approaches to GE, but music wise there wasn’t anything memorable that I could hum to you (besides the Moulin Rouge sound clips). I enjoyed watching the show as it happened but didn’t take anything away that was substantial (like listening to Phantom’s show, for instance). I’m not saying that that is bad- it is just a different way to design a show. It is a more in-the-moment type of show.
- Blue Devils- I’m glad that they provided more substance to their music this year. They still wandered into segmented portions of the show but it didn’t seem to bother me as much as previous years because of the music they were using. Such as, there is a section where they are using a Bacharach chord progression minimalistically in the background and it worked very well because the chords are just beautiful and lush. For me, I would still like to see them do more in terms of completing musical phrases and giving us more there but it was still nice to listen to. I can see listening to this show more on the CD than previous years. Also, these guys are definitely playing very well. They are LOUD and playing with a very well balanced sound with great tone quality. Very nice.
- The Cadets- My favorite show of the night. Very well put together and well done. I can’t really type anything new here that hasn’t been typed before. I would have liked to have been there though when they were assigning who would be an Angel and who would be a Demon. I’m sure that was exciting for the members and I am sure they really hyping that up throughout the season on the bus, rehearsal field, etc so that must really be fun for them. I laughed at the Demons when they came on the field and were tossing around a DCI cone and the baritone. That was so awesomely in character and right away stated that they absolutely did not care and were pure evil. The design team this year should get a bonus, as well as Hopkins. Very nicely done.
- I would like to close by talking about SCV. I wasn’t the biggest fan of last year’s show. I really like the Bartok music but it felt like they were trying to imitate the pacing of the Appalachian Spring show from the prior year, and it didn’t work as well. This year however, was a different story. They brought out music that was not accessible to a lot of people and took a risk and, in my opinion, achieved a huge success with this show. Here is why- Key Poulan’s pacing of the show, direction of musical line, and intent of musical phrase made this show what it is. Holy cow! I think start to finish this was the most professional and well written musically written show this year. Every musical line had a purpose and intent and got to the arrival points at exactly the right times. if this show was written by an arranger of lesser experience and talent, this show would not work. It simply would not. But Key knew exactly what to do and when and where everything was leading to. It wasn’t my favorite show of the night (it was right up there though) but in my opinion it was the best written musical book. The best part of the show was the ballad and the color guard choreography. I’m not exactly sure, but it looked like a Rob Billings choreography and it was absolutely perfect. PERFECT!
My favorites in order were:
The Cadets
Phantom Regiment
Santa Clara Vanguard
Carolina Crown
Madison Scouts
Blue Stars
Spirit of Atlanta
Blue Knights
Cavaliers
Troopers
Boston Crusaders
Blue Devils
Bluecoats
Final Four of Vote for Your Favorite Drum Corps
By admin on August 1st, 2011
Here is the Final Four round for the VOTE FOR YOUR FAVORITE DRUM CORPS bracket. You have until 11 pm EDT on Friday August 5th to vote for this round. Then next week we move onto the Championship Round!!!
Please remember that when you are voting on these that you are voting for the corps that you think are the most ENTERTAINING over the entire span of the history of DCI (not just this year, obviously). Not what corps you think would be the best overall competitively. This is voting on pure entertainment. In other words, vote for the corps that you would rather see perform. Enjoy!
Elite Eight Drum Corps Results
By admin on July 30th, 2011
This round, by far, was the closest of any of the other rounds, which was expected. Here are the results of the Elite Eight round. The winners move onto the Final Four, which will be voted on this upcoming week.
Blue Devils beat Velvet Knights with 60% of the votes.
They will match up against Santa Clara Vanguard in the Final Four who barely edged out the Madison Scouts with only 52% of the votes.
Phantom Regiment had a tough task this week by being matched up against the Cavaliers, however they came out on top and beat the green machine with 58% of the votes.
Phantom will match up against Carolina Crown who beat Star of Indiana with ONLY 51% of the votes.
Let me say this. I think Star of Indiana receiving 49% of the votes against probably one of the top 3 most popular corps the last 5 years, after not having competed for 18 years, says A LOT about Star! I don’t think any other corps, after having not competed for that long would have been able to get that close to beating Crown, much less almost beat them.
Moreso, I think Phantom beating Cavaliers with 58% of the votes says a lot about Phantom as well, because I fully expected this match-up to be neck and neck until the final minute.
So next week’s match-ups will be Blue Devils against SCV and Phantom Regiment versus Carolina Crown.
