Thanks to Christina Mavroudis on RAMD for this review! Good morning: Two corrections from yesterday's post - I apologize for erroneously stating that BD 'B' have never been to DCI Finals. (Dallas '91.) AND I forgot that the Quons also have a daughter in Spirit of Sunnyvale who plays baritone. And now on with the show.... Bright 'n early Saturday morning, this cranky mom (I thought kids were supposed to be sleep-deprived) woke to begin baking. And I baked and cooked and soon realized the heat from the oven was matching the heat of the kitchen air. *GASP* By 4 PM, it was late and I floored it to Photo Drive-Up to pick up Vanguard Family Night reprints (Stuart might be able to scan these in---maybe?) and then on to Santa Clara University. Emily jumped out to meet up with her band, as I argued with a poor parking lot dude who kept insisting I pay the $2 parking fee. I ended up giving him the money figuring I was helping 'the cause'. Only later I found out it went to the University. When I got to Neil's RV, everything was set up for fun. Scorching, but fun. We didn't have as many folks stop by as last year, but since the Concord and Santa Clara shows are reversed on the schedule this year, I imagine we'll be having all those who missed showing up in a few weeks. Neil bought drinks, Tom brought his famous (wife's famous?) tabuli, Jeff Butera slaved over chocolate chip cookies only to have them stick to each other in a sun-induced cookie-hug (they tasted great anyway), Stuart's blueberry cream pie was a feast and Scott Gordon contributed a bread platter with cheese. Me? Two different salads and every imaginable dessert ---more on this later. Tom also brought some heavy duty speakers and sound system which when I rolled up, was playing 1979 shows. Awesome engineering that when you stood between the speakers, gave you the feeling of actually being on a field--in the middle of a show! One guy, Dave Gary of Vanguard, stopped by when he heard his own group playing on yet another interesting tape----that one taped by 'a snare' during the 1987 SCV show. As we engaged in some heavy debates, a guy dropped by who introduced himself as Dale Leaman, Show Coordin- ator/Brass Caption Head/Music writer for Pacific Crest. Quality talk, but all too soon ended as we had to pack it in and head for the stands. Lucky we left 'early'. Though the show was scheduled to begin at 7:30---it actually commenced at a little after 7. (Almost missed my own kid who was part of the pre-show exhibition!) Neil got us some incredible seating: on the 50 just a few rows down from the Press Box and we were joined by the Johns (King & Ng). I needed to get a few pictures, but my camera - tempermental after three drops- had to sit out the night, so Neil volunteered his camera. (Did they turn out, Neil?) On the way to the field, I was able to shake hands with Michael Cesario who was listed as show consultant with Blue Knights. Though we talked about getting together for an interview, I wasn't able to find him after the show. He seemed pretty excited about the idea though. Boy! Michael gets around: BK, VK, Phantom... After Blue Devils C, and Spirit of Sunnyvale (who like most groups that night vastly improved over the previous night's shaky first show), Pacific Crest took the field. Their drum major seemed to thrive on his podium. He bounced and danced all over the place. Back up in the stands, which were lower than Sac and thus enabled us a closer albeit prime view, we gave BD B a second look. The music was still fun and I loved the guard costume. In between BDB and SCV Cadets, I scouted the 'corps' seats for my daughter. Instead I found a BD horn that I marched with in 1981, Janet Phillips. She teaches Visual (actually M&M) to the little BD C kids and we had fun talking about the joys of 'babysitting.' ;) Later, we caught up with Kelly Houpt, BD snare '81/'82 and had a group pic (I can see the label now: The Proud, The Few. The Women of BD Past. I imagine we really are an elite group. ;-) For the first time---I actually missed a show. Sorry SCV Cadets, but sometimes socializing is so much more fun. We did catch the dynamo San Joes Sailorettes Mini-Ensemble. They performed their winterguard show and really won the hearts of the crowd. (Hard to resist a five year old spinning around doing verticle splits.) During a 30 minute break, we headed to the souvie area where I was able to pick up a BK tour shirt. (very cool). The previous night, Neil picked up a Freelancers '95 tour shirt. "But Neil," I started, "Freelancers aren't..." "Look," he said and showed me the front which read Freelancers '95 and the back which had nothing. A funny/sad moment. They had a box of them for just $5. BK has nice pins for just $3. BD's Carpe Noctem is selling fast. Didn't see Pacific Crest or Mandarins souveniers although I did see Mandarins t-shirts that looked nice. Any idea how to get these? While I talked with the Blue Knights souvie guy, I asked where the buses were since we (Cybercorps) had a welcome cake for the guard. I reasoned that since they came the farthest and we knew one of the guard ladies from RAMD/Everybody winterguard/and Marauders, we would 'adopt' her and the guard. "Oh--don't give cake to the guard!" he insisted. "They're all on diets!" I guess with those exposed tummys they'd have to be careful, but I was stumped at what to do. The cake SAID Blue Knights on the top! We couldn't just give it to another corps. I was surprised when a lady next to me suggested the drum line. "You know how much drummers love your cake," she said. Her face looked familiar and then I recognized her from Boston. It turned out that her son Dave was with VK tenors last year (the group we adopted last season) and had joined Blue Knights. Well----a quick hug for being there, and it was back in the stands to watch, who else, the BK tenors. Actually, there was more action with the BK snares than tenors, but it was nice to know a friendly face out there. One note about their costumes: most agree they have the coolest designed corps uniform, but there are some smiles when you see their blazing white socks against the blue/grey pants and shoes. Not much more to say about SCV except tremendous improvement over one night. For the past several years, Vanguard has premiered their 'magic trick' at the home show. There was no magic tonight but with so much to see it was no surprise when none appeared. This is a different show, and many seeing it for the first time were as perplexed as we were at Concord Pavilion. Don't worry---the show grows on ya. BD won. Not much room for improvement, but potential to add more visuals. We were entertained that night by a full Olympic retreat, scores, "America the Beautiful" AND, God Bless 'Em ( whoever 'Em' is) a FULL, LOUD, WONDERFUL, RETREAT! Yes, folks. BD got to blast our eardrums and it hurt so good. I don't think anyone left except old-timers who knew what was coming and had to worry about heart problems, and young parents with kids under 3 in tow. (I actually met a mom with a 3 week old experiencing her first corps show. Slept through the whole thing...the baby not the mom.) At first an announcement was made asking all corps not to play in the parking lot (city ordanence sound curfews) so we reasoned "no retreat". Imagine our delight at seeing the pit equipment move in. I guess stadium noise was OK. Talk about happy campers: all my Cybercorps buddies were grinning from ear-to-ear. We felt like we cheated the system somehow and got away with it! Oh---"America" was nice, the sound was big and brassy (and conducted by the winning corps drum major), but hey---it's a DRUM and bugle corps competition, not just a bugle show. I want my "D" in DCI! Well---this is too long (again), so let me post and I'll do an epilog later. Stay tuned.... Good morning: Here's the ending to our story. Our yellow-shirted band of Cybers quickly headed to the RV (by way of the souvies) to collect goodies for Blue Knights. The night air was not too hot, but the energy level was. What a great host: Neil contributed plates and utensils while the rest of the guys were quite the gentlemen taking all sorts of desserts. Emily, her face still thick with guard make-up (green eyeshadow and paint that give her and the rest of Spirit of Sunnyvale a Spock look) helped out too. Strange enough, a BK woman came over and said the buses would be leaving in 15 minutes. (Who was she?!! And how did she know we had stuff for BK?!!) We hauled out there, and found a tenor, but no Dave. We were directed to Dave's Mom who told us to look behind. Sure enough -- it was Dave. He couldn't believe we had "followed" him to BK and seemed floored that we had taken the time to make up a little something for them. Like the feeding frenzies we were familiar with--the stuff was gone in minutes. (And yes, those guard enjoyed the Rice Krispy treats.) Even their friendly drum major helped himself. (Interesting body-piercing, dude! And I thought Vanguard's tatoos were fun!) Well---the plates cleaned, we waved good-bye and wished them luck. Back at the RV, we realized our little party had been seperated. (Sorry guys!) But back at camp, we had fun with other 'forgotten' desserts, discussed the shows, and promised to see each other at Concord. Some stragglers came by to introduce themselves (including some- one's sister who teaches BK brass---sorry, bad with names unless I write it down.) Other points of interest: - PP's announcer was from a local radio station. He wrote a long article in DCW and seemed to have a blast handing out the awards. - Speaking of speakers. The poor show sponsors were horrified to find out that the audio check they spent a great deal of time on, did not work and the entire first half of the show was in virtual audio silence. To the amusement of the crowd (and field announcer), the floor mic created a feedback akin to the Twilight Zone. - After 50 years of service, the guy who runs Parade of Champions in Santa Clara was calling it quits and was given special recognition. Gonna miss that parade----it was the last chance to see all the Vanguard perform one last chance. I still remember seeing the Phantom Show in '89, performed in October by tearful age-outers. - If they ever start a senior corps in the Bay Area, it's gonna have a membership of hundreds. I saw that many alumni with jackets in the stands. - Nothing but good feed back regarding Disney. Some concern about what's happening with the airing of finals---or rather the lack of airing. - Lighting was much better this year. Some may recall the front side was lit, but faded to black at the back line. Cool effect, but I'm sure murder for marching members. I'm sure there's more, but I'm typed out. Hope we'll get other fun reviews out there. Don't forget to let us know what happens at the other Cyber parties. Stay tuned....
Thanks to George Drapeau on RAMD for this review! I see we've already seen scores for the SCV home show on Saturday evening so I'll just post what little I can remember about it here. I realize that I'm taking some amount of risk posting my own personal opinion here on the net, but what the hell, huh? Here is my opinion about the top three shows, in a nutshell: Blue Devils: Wow. Great musical show, very, very interesting stuff. I would be satisfied if they won, and I'm a Santa Clara fan (and alumnus). Santa Clara Vanguard: Interesting show, great in some spots, needs much work, ending isn't done yet. The writing of the show seems to lack some of the transitional cohesiveness of BD's show, but that can always be cleaned later, as I'm sure it will be. Blue Knights: first half of the show, good; second half starts to lose focus. You don't get a strong sense of where it's going. They're executing it pretty well, musically speaking. Okay, some more thoughts for those of you who have too much time on your hands at work or can't fall asleep. I don't have much to say about the first set of corps. The Blue Devil C Corps is pretty much the same entertaining corps it is every year. You gotta love those kids. :-) Long aside: --- I do want to make a comment about one group that went on in exhibition. I don't recall their name, but they were a dance-only group, pretty much, very young kids (maybe ages 5-10?). They were in this black leather costume motif thing, and did a lot of sultry little moves. I have to admit, they executed their thing well, especially for that age group. But I also have to admit (watch out: prude alert?) that it bothered me a little bit to see a six year old girl gyrate her hips in a way that I find hard to imagine she could understand. I wonder if anybody else who saw the show had any reaction to that group? I know we could get into a big, gnarly discussion about whether drum corps shows are too racy, blah blah blah, and I'm sorry if this article ends up starting such a discussion, because it doesn't normally bother me. I just wanted to comment on something that affected me when I saw it. --- Okay, back to the main review. So, the second group of corps (Blue Devil "B", SCV Cadets, Mandarins) got a little more exciting. I can't say I recall much of BDB, but I enjoyed SCV Cadets' show, with the Red Pony and all. And the Mandarins did an interesting job with the movie theme from "Speed", and overall did a good job, especially considering this is the beginning of the season. I guess the same applies to the other two corps, too. I'm really anxious to see how the Mandarins' show progresses: they usually do such wonderful show design and make the most out of the small corps size they have, and this year they have a larger group of people out there. We'll see... Before I move onto the top three corps at the show, I'd like to take another break to discuss the venue and weather. It was damned hot! Saturday in the Bay Area was hot for everybody; it must've been in the high eighties come show time, easy. And the "renovated" Buck Shaw Stadium at Santa Clara University seemed to mean metal planks instead of wood ones, as Martha Leeson pointed out. The venue must be one of the worst places to put on a show: crowded seating, back-breaking, low with no slant (so I can't comment on drill at all), and few seats. It's about as bad as Diablo Valley College! (site of BD's home show, Precision West) So the venue sucked and the night was a little on the warm side, but not too bad. Thank you for listening. Now, to the top three corps. I don't recall many specifics about the Blue Knights, so I can only give you my overall impressions. I think the summary at the beginning of the posting says it: the first half of the show was exciting, but the second half lost me. To me, a lot of the transitions between musical phrases or movements in the show seemed, uh, muddled. They weren't clear, although you could tell the corps was trying very hard to make the show exciting. They clearly put a lot of effort into the performance, and that helped make the show more enjoyable. I would like to see the show again in a few weeks, to see how it works out musically. I think that the biggest problem with the show is the writing. If they can decide (and again, I say that this is *my opinion only*) what the main musical statements are throughout the show and get from one to the other more clearly, they will have a nicely competitive show. The Vanguard *does* have a competitive show, but it still needs some writing work. I had heard that until a couple of weeks ago (that recently?), three minutes of music still were to be written. Well, I believe we heard a complete show on Saturday (I could be wrong; I didn't time it), but it doesn't seem complete yet. I thought the opening movement was good, but didn't quite grab me the way I think the corps intends it to grab the audience. I'll note again as the season progresses, at least after the Stockton show. I loved the second movement, however: just a gorgeous treatment of the Arabian Dance. And, watch for this: in the backfield, there are these fascinating percussion instruments that seem to be made of large plastic tubing of some sort, and played with --- what? paddles? huge mallets? I couldn't tell --- by two people, and they make the bass ostinato of the Arabian Dance. It's a gorgeous sound, and really helps set the mood of the show at that point. Brass sounds good, percussion sounds good. The pit was clearly the best there that evening (BD's pit was excellent, but I was just blown away by the stage presence and approach to the instruments that the Vanguard pit showed; also, their relation to each other and non-verbal communication is excellent, which makes for a very entertaining unit). The cymbal line is also not to be missed: they really crank; I'd advise watching them closely whenever you can. No comment about the battery just yet. They sound good, they'll get better, it's early in the season. I did feel that the Vanguard show also lost some cohesion in some of the transitions between musical phrases, but hey, that could just be me not understanding the show. The possibility is definitely there. However, I will present an empirical data point: after SCV's show, the audience was very happy. After BD's show, the audience jumped to its feet, screaming and applauding. Which brings up the Blue Devils. If I had anything to criticize at this point, it would be their marching. Lots of interval problems, but that's about all I could see from where I sat (on the 50, eight rows up, which put me at about knee level :-) ) . Watch out: profanity alert: those of you younger than 12 years of age, please close your eyes for this next paragraph. The BD horn line was *fucking loud*. Jesus H. Seawright, they were loud! Man, the horn line sounded *great*. Not just loud, but loud and pretty clean, too, and in tune, and they never seemed to overblow (Vanguard did seem to have some spread tone in the horn line at times, whereas I never noticed it in BD's horn line). This does not sound like a June horn line. They're scary. The battery ain't bad, either, and you can tell they love their show. It's nice seeing musically creative BD drum lines (I haven't always been a fan of BD's drum lines from a musical writing standpoint: they have played very well for many years now, but their writing has been more for chops in my opinion than for musical clarity; that has changed in the last couple of years, and it has heightened the show experience, again, in my opinion). There are about a million people in BD's pit (13, did I count? Geez), and they play well and really add to the show well. BD played a victory concert. I gave up using sunscreen 'cause it just didn't do enough good after having my face completely blown off. Man, what a victory concert. They were screaming. I can't wait 'til BD gets to the point that they play their show better marching than at standstill; right now, they still play it better in concert than in movement. Listening to the concert, I heard so many more interesting things in the show, especially the last four minutes or so. It seems to me that around the seven minute mark, the show just decides to start building and building and building and building until you just want to die screaming in pleasure. Musically, all the phrases make sense, transitions are clean, but not just clean: they take you a direction you don't expect to go, and then when a main musical statement sneaks up on you, it all of a sudden locks into a groove and *goes*. I can't explain it any better than that, but if any of you see the show I'd be interested in hearing if you agree with what I said here, or if it makes any sense at all. A lot of their transitions in the latter part of the show are rhythmically-based; you start to get caught up in some funky rhythmic pattern, then they turn it around on you and you're in the next tune, or phrase. It's waaaaay cool. I'd say they covered the point spread nicely. It was tough to see how they could be beat. I would say that Santa Clara has a chance of beating the Blue Devils once SCV gets its writing nailed down, but I think it also says something about SCV's chances this year that their show *isn't* nailed yet. Not that it has to be finalized: God knows the Cadets of Bergen County always tinker 'til the last minute, but Vanguard isn't yet ready to tinker. The execution will come; the show writing needs to get in place. Those are my impressions. I welcome comments, and hope this was useful to some and a little entertaining, too. George
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