Thanks to George Drapeau on RAMD for this review!
I see that the scores from the Stockton show have already been posted
so I'll just post my observations and opinions here.
The main reason I went to the show last night was to watch the
Vanguard and Blue Devils. As it turned out, those were the only two
corps I caught in competition (got to my seat too late to catch Velvet
Knights' show from the bleachers).
The weather was warm and dry: high eighties when BD and SCV came on,
sun was down. Not bad weather. Good-sized crowd at University of the
Pacific stadium. Great place to watch a show. My seat was in row 35,
just off the 50-yard line. I was able to hear well and see drill very
well. I'm no drill expert, by *any* means, so please keep that in
mind when reading my comments. I apologize in advance for any
ignorance in what I present here.
Before they went on, I walked around the stadium to find the BD and
SCV drum lines rehearse (didn't hear the brass lines much). I caught
BD's battery going over spots of the opener. They were pretty
impressive. You can tell that they like playing their drum book.
They're pretty clean, although they can certainly use the time b/w now
and Finals. The tenor line is screamin', and they play well with the
snares. I noticed problems with isolated attacks in some parts,
especially when they do that stick-flailing thing that looks so cool.
But, they'll clean that. Most of the ticks, I think, are just because
of the Kevlar heads exposing them so much. I have to say, though,
that even with a lot of high-stick music (slow long rolls with high
stick heights, etc.) they're playing well together. and the emotion
is definitely there.
I also heard SCV's line a little, though not as much as I heard BD's
line. SCV is getting better, most definitely. Their book is sounding
better to me, maybe just making more sense. From what I saw, I'd have
to say that the difficulties of the two corps' books are similar,
perhaps even a slight edge to the Vanguard.
Okay, to the shows. BD went on before the Vanguard. I haven't seen
either of them in a show since Pacific Procession, three weeks ago, so
much could change. I noticed little (if any) change in BD's musical
book; the only major changes I noticed were in the guard and overall
visual look.
Overall impressions:
* After seeing both shows, I felt that the point
spread b/w BD and SCV would be b/w 5 & 7 points. With an 87.9 to
81.0, BD's spread over the Vanguard was about 7 points. Seems about
right.
* The SCV drumline is no longer the main reason SCV is behind BD; it's
the SCV hornline that's holding them back. Percussion program is
competitive, drill is definitely competitive (and exciting), but the
horn line is not doing the job, especially high range horns. Ouch.
* BD's show has a chance of winning not because of overall difficulty
but because it's so damned coherent. The whole show makes excellent
sense all put together. It's clean, whole, emotional.
* SCV will definitely score in the 90's by Finals; they have a show
that can take them there. How far into the 90's depends mostly on
music.
That's enough of that; I took some notes:
Blue Devils:
------------
During BD's warmup, the guard came out holding black shawls over
themselves, usually coming out in pairs under a single shawl. Nice
look. During the opener, they were wearing a black-and-blood colored
outfit that looked great when using gold flags. The color scheme of
the guard complimented the rest of the corps very well (or is it the
other way around?).
The opener had individual horn soloists playing from various spots on
the field in the beginning, while the corps was circling the borders
of the field, uh, counter-clockwise (if I remember right). It was a
great way to make an opening statement. I was impressed with the
overall staging of the drill, and the drill itself seemed clean
although looked simple to me (Vanguard's drill seemed more complex to
me, but also pretty well done).
The corps' sound is mature enough even at this point to give me lots
of rushes. They just sound great.
The third section of the show starts with interplay b/w tenors and
snares playing toms mounted on stands, played with big arm movements
and large mallets. They interplay is satisfying, rhythmically, and
the brass joins in later to play with the drum line. The whole use of
rhythm to open this movement is engaging, and fuckin' *clean*. Man,
BD brass can articulate. They play two measures of isolated attacks
of two sixteenth notes, then half note rest (while battery is filling
in the gap with attacks), and there is *no* phasing b/w horn and drum
lines. Very, very nice.
From there, the show is pretty much non-stop music. They use silence
extremely well: in the past years, it seems to me to have become a
gimmick to insert so many counts of silence while the corps continues
to march to show that they can keep count together, but it doesn't
usually make a *whole* lot of sense musically (some sense, yes, but
mostly for flash, in my opinion). But in BD's show, they use silence
as a phrase, maybe one or two counts, maybe a little more when
appropriate, and you just get the feeling that it really balances with
the music. The silence really is a phrase, or ties one phrase to
another. The corps is stil moving during the silence, but it doesn't
seem like a gimmick.
At the end of the show, the guard at one point is surrounding the rest
of the corps, with huge field coverage. You start to notice that
they're individually starting to throw everything high into the air,
giving the tosses sort of a slow motion effect. Then you notice the
drum line repeat the pattern, with the flailing arm action, also
looking slow motion. It's a beautiful visual tie-in, really works,
and draws your eye away from the guard.
*Then*, the next thing you notice is a sudden flash of black-and-white
flags surrounding the corps as the guard has made an equipment change
and made a big impact on the audience.
The ending statement of the show was very nice, but it's not quite
clean yet overall. To me, it seemed a little bit anti-climactic
tonight. Maybe it was just the particular show, or maybe it'll hit
full impact when it's a little cleaner.
The drill in the end was fun, but seemed like the only really hard
drill of the show, sort of like a showcase: "See, we can march tough
stuff, too" type of thing. I could definitely be wrong about this,
though.
One more note about the drum line: the center snare is intense, and
he's *always* singing his eighth notes when he's not playing, and
looks to me as if he's doing it not just for himself but for the rest
of the (snare) line. I think that's great. They don't seem to have
big problems with time, that's for sure.
Santa Clara Vanguard:
---------------------
Much has changed since I saw it last. The show makes more sense to me
now, and is much more exciting and coherent.
The show used to open with just percussion (battery and pit), and
seemed very empty to me. Now, horns have been added and it's much
nicer. A solo soprano opens the show, then percussion starts, drill
moves, and small groups of horns play little fragments of the
Nutcracker. These little sound bites help the opening statement have
a much bigger impact than when I saw them last. A real sense of
tension is added here, and the opening loses its pretentiousness.
But man, when the high horns come in for real, they sound pretty bad.
The tone is spread most of the time, and they were ticking all over
the opener. I could hear notes cracking, missed attacks, and just a
weak overall tone. The mid and low horns sound much better than the
sopranos. In fact (and I'm embarrassed to say this), there were times
in the show where the sopranos would be in slow drill and playing
where they were exposed and I could hear the tone "jitter" the way
playing suffers when your marching style doesn't effectively absorb
the impact of marching. I have *never* heard that from the Vanguard
before, and I swear I heard some of it last night. I can't believe
the Vanguard is marching so rough as to affect the horn playing. but,
I heard it. That needs to stop, now.
But, there were also some good points about the opener. There was a
percussion solo for some point, and it sounded very full, much better
than I had previously heard. The battery and pit combined to make a
sound that didn't need horns at all to make it sound satisfying.
The drill is way cool! Too much for me to pick up on. At one point,
half the horn line was in a block, marching at tempo while the other
half of the horn line was weaving through the block at twice tempo.
Nice effect, looked great.
The music was non-stop, movement was continuous. The corps used the
effect of marching at two different tempos several times during the
show, worked very well, looked great.
There was no audience clapping at the end of the opener (three *big*
attacks by the battery, Cavaliers-style, which had a big impact on
*me* but maybe took the rest of the audience by surprise?). I can't
explain the no clapping, 'cause the ending did well.
Okay, Arabian Dance. They've moved the PVC-pipe percussion things up
to the front of the field. They sounded better back field, but
probably didn't get the recognition they deserve. Too bad. Still
sounded fine, though.
Cool drill thing: the horn line was in four independent blocks that
together formed a diamond. One block would start marching double
time, rotating and moving into its place in the diamond; when it
arrived, it matched marching tempo of the whole diamond. Then another
block would march double-time, move, and rotate into a new position.
Cool visual.
A nice high soprano ended the dance. He was a screamer, but had a
sweet, sweet vibrato on his last note that gave me a rush.
The next movement was fun, not much else to say.
The ending of the show built and built and built until a company front
had formed. It was nice, strong, but I felt that it was not quite
justified to have the impact that it should have at Finals. It'll get
there, though, when the show is cleaner.
The crowd was a little slow to rise after the show ended.
---
SCV's drill looks to me to be better, more exciting, more difficult,
and more innovative than BD's drill. It's a fresh-looking drill, and
goes well with the show.
I'm getting sick of seeing "Not the Nutcracker" all the time. Okay,
fine, it's not the Nutcracker, but then why do you have to explain it
so much? If the show were really working well enough, you wouldn't
have to be saying "But see, it's *not* the Nutcracker" all the time.
I have to say that the concept is working much better now than it was
three weeks ago, which gives me hope.
I believe SCV will have a competitive show; it now appears that they
might be able to deliver a complete show concept and if they do, it
could win. Unfortunately, the horn line has *much* work to do, and I
don't think they'll do it by Finals. Also, the drum line is not going
to win the show for the corps; it's just that it seems now that they
might not lose the show for SCV.
I saw seven snares and three (three?!) tenors march last night, and
only two tenors come out for retreat. I'm sorry, that's just not
going to cut it, especially with BD using nine snares and five tenors
and delivering greater volume with a similarly-difficult book. Also,
BD is cleaner than SCV at this point, although SCV is getting cleaner.
I'd be interested in seeing the caption breakdowns. Does anybody have
them?
BD's show is great and clean, but beatable. The best thing they have
going for them is a great show design (oh yeah, plus a killer horn
line; man, there's one section of the show where *everybody* is
playing a long, long sixteenth note run in unison, and it sounds
pretty damned good. It's definitely clean enough to hear what the
notes are. They're scary. Somebody on the net was talking about the
mid-horns of Cadets and how they have 16/th note runs all through the
show. I'm sorry, that just won't compare to the full sound BD is
delivering with the *whole* corps doing this 16/th note thing, a
whole, long phrase that really delivers a strong musical statement.
And a cool one, too.)
During the victory concert, I noticed something else about BD's drum
book writing. There's one point at the end of the show where there
are short breaks for the battery to play. The 1st break, the snares
question with an accent pattern and the tenors answer. The next
break, the tenors question and the snares answer. It's a little
thing, but it's really nice, and shows that music was a main concern,
not just getting some chops licks in when they can. It made sense
musically.
That's it for me, folks. No more California shows. Best of luck to
both SCV and the Blue Devils. I can't wait to see how they both do
against the East Coast corps (well, okay, against the Cadets) and the
Midwest corps.
George
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