packwick

Carmel is always so darn artful lol. overall id say it's the cleanest perf ive seen today, shout-out of course to the guard, only guard in the country that approaches tw's top to bottom depth and clarity of technique imo. way to go Eryn Boone for keeping what Rosie built alive and well!!! def more of a brain tickler, there are other shows more viscerally exciting and that im sure a general audience will like more, but for what the show is aiming for it's great. guess my main criticism would be communication of theme. besides the plague masks what about the show says prophecy? it feels like you could call it any other number of names. just call it great drill + great music lol. oh yeah and that blue fabric they pull out was friggin' gorgeous!!

not my fave from them either but betting against Avon is a hard bet to take lol. top 3 at Nats since what, 2007??? that's approachin' 20 years!!! crazy impressive!!

ok center grove guard i see u improving each year. keep. it. up!!! activity is richer when y'all are killing it!!

luv luv looove how Daniel Wiles choreographs for guard, they're always like running around the field but he manages to stuff those phrases w/ spinning and tossing and dance. guard moves real well, band does too, opener mvmnt is so cool and energetic, look at them rolling around, Jesus! love the costuming. looove how the frames just kinda pop up outta nowhere too, at first i thought something happened and they were missing. kinda cool how they materialize. def better perf than before, still needs some significant cleaning, difficulty galore ppl. flow of the show is a little strange but it'll grow on me. closer stuff more like the aggressively dazzling Avon i know, at least from the content side.

yeaaaah i hear ya, but u know im of the judging hive mind, the borg, or BOArg as i call it lol. Wes' shows still check a lotta boxes. i was soooo so very fortunate to see that westfield show live several times in 03. goooosebumps galore, u knew they had something special. my instructors were gushing too, like Steve Bond my private lessons guy at the time, now head director at Tompkins, during the lessons he'd be like, omg, did u see Westfield, did u hear the double tonguing bassoonists and trumpets and yada yada lol. like, um, yeah, and it's arousing a lot of insecurities!!! but u know you always work harder when u have such stellar programs like spring and westfield just a little down i45, even if the honor band process was always frustrating lol. we actually had a sash or something from the Spring 93 uniform taped to the top inside of our truck as a good luck charm. probably acquired illegitimately lol, just like in 04 when Brett was pissed at us bc someone acquired a rose plume from Lawrence Central and Randy Greenwell was calling him LOL. good times.

lovely show from Mason, thank goodness the cloaks didn't end up black like in earlier performances, woulda been ugly lol. very colorful and eyepopping but they're smart to remove the cloaks halfway through, was startin to overload my senses lol. a liiittle slow for me in spots, but overall solid again. ill admit i like Pearland's Wes show more. bigger and more frequent impact moments. buuut Mason's does have a sort of elegance to it.

lol okay so is Wes doing the music of all the TX champions that won in a yr ending in 3 this yr, all the Houston ones? Lol, now im just waiting for Water Night or something. B-burg was solid, music still needs a lot of work tho. i think i thought they were musically weaker last yr at Nat finals too but they still ended up near the top of the bottom half, so u can take my opinion w/ a grain of salt. better in vis than music, guard was fab too. not the most inspired Wes program for them this yr, pipe dream, so here are some pipes, lol. id have them just outside of Nat finals right now, but we'll see!!

welllll speaking of affluent schools and personally biased rankings, i think twhs is going to slay the rest of their season after watching their region vid lol. well technically still need to see the ending from high up, but music overall is much improved. way to go trpts!! better tuning too! no major weaknesses and a lotta major strengths. just some little things. can't wait to see this one indoors, just sucks that the first time will be that crappy crappy crappy UIL state stream lol. not gonna buy it, just will wait for the YT leaks. college park, klein oak, and north shore should be up there at area F also but i haven't watched everyone in some time. shout out to Tomball memorial too, i just love their show, had me cracking up at BOA Katy. [insert fair and unbiased commentary of other schools here]

juuudging panels have been posted for all classes, again 6A is verrry DCI/BOAish, but ofc the system itself is more music perf oriented. less in-state influence i guess. Steve Bentley (mus), Jeff Brooks (mus), Darrin Davis (mus), Glenn Fugett (mus), Mark Hoskins (mus), Jay Kennedy (mus), Kyle Miller (vis), Carl Nelson (vis), Chris Romanowski (mus), Mike Stone (vis), Jim Sturgeon (vis), Steve Wessels (mus) perc judges likely will be J Brooks and C Romanowksi swapping b/w prelims and finals. Mark Hoskins likely judging brass in at least one round lol. S Wessels for woodwinds both rounds?? only one i don't know for sure is brass/perc oriented lol. design imma guess it'll trade off bw 1 of D Davis, G Fugett, J Kennedy and 1 of M Stone and K Miller, both groups judge effect at major DCI/BOA comps for mus and vis respectively. other perf captions = everyone else not doing design lol.

actually now that im watching some of the bubs side by side i don't think my original list is comprehensive enough, there are other non-listed bands hanging w/ em. also there's at least 1 band in that 10 probable finalists grouping that i could see not in the top 5 in their panel and just barely making it into finals. could def expand my list to include more H-town or DFW bands, a little central TX skewed atm.

im gonna have to watch all 11 bubs one after the other on YT to make my decision on that lol. this week w/ uil region and area shouuuld produce some useful vids. don't think we'll get any better info than that before the late season contests hit. just have to imagine the shows performed indoors, can be useful.

hmmm judges are actually able to go back and change earlier scores in comp suite so i don't think this is as much of an issue these days. ehhhh if a judge can't remember who the best band was after just 6 bands, or even just 12, they prooooobably shouldn't be judging lol. don't think that was the case here. i think the upstairs vis judges at Austin just really liked Rouse. thaaat said i personally would have had vandy over rouse at BOA Austin, so i view this contest result as more of a "correction" of sorts, as fab as rouse is this season.

imma update my original group of 9 by adding Wakeland. sooo then we have the following 10 bands: Cedar Park (P1), Round Rock (P2), Vista Ridge (P2), Cedar Ridge (P1), Rouse (P1), Vandegrift (P1), Ronald Reagan (P2), Marcus (P2), Wakeland (P2), and The Woodlands (P1). that's 5 from panel 1 and 5 from panel 2 if i did that right. which leaaaaves 4 spots for Westwood (P1), Claudia Taylor Johnson (P2), Keller Central (P1), Westlake (P1), Leander (P2), Lake Travis (P2), McNeil (P2), Bridgeland (P2), James Bowie (P2), Timber Creek (P1), and LD Bell (P1). a few others you could prob throw in there from H-town and south Texas but im guessing these ones are the most likely finalists.

yay!!! vandy comeback!! well vandy annihilation really. over 2 points is a giant gap. prob the most experienced group of BOA judges we've seen so far too, despite not being an official BOA contest. bodes well for vandy late season at San Antonio methinks.

soooo Pearland then??? lol

i mean i think they're the front runner right now, they could easily easily steamroll over both carmel and twhs in all the music captions. nobody else has that combo of difficulty and achievement, i mean it's like they're Simone Biles or something lol. on the other hand i think carmel and twhs are currently a little more well-rounded having very high level music + visual + design (+ guard). Hebron has over a month to work on the vis stuff tho, so that could eeeasily shift late season. and again their music is so strong it might not even matter.

well since it's been bumped up... i really think Pearland may crash the top 6 here. sure it's a familiar style of show, but it's still reeeeally emotionally impactful. last yr after Conroe i was left wondering if Pearland would end up as Cartwright's new LD Bell in terms of sheer competitive dominance, this year i'm thinking about it even more. ive only seen Mason's opener, wondering how that Wes show compares. hmmm.... i guess Blue Springs would be the other contender. saw an earlier football vid of them, solid show, cool fingerprint motif, didn't quite give me 2018 vibes tho, which it prob needs, at least to land in the top half of finals here.

i just recall thinking that Rock looked like a solid Nats finalist this yr and that i thought their ens vis scores should have been higher. maybe im just expecting the late season judges to agree w/ me about the vis which may not happen LOL. it's kinda weird yeah. i think the Marcus thing may have just been a diff panel at Nats strongly disagreeing w/ the SA one. maybe the UIL result made an impression?? buuut the scoring of the two circuits is very different obviously.

sucks that we're missing a good number of DFW + Houston contenders but the contest is still ludicrously competitive. sooo ive seen everyone now. i count 9 bands id be surprised to see miss finals. Cedar Park, Round Rock, Vista Ridge*, Cedar Ridge, Rouse*, Vandegrift*, Ronald Reagan*, Marcus*, and The Woodlands*. asterisks next to the 6 strongest bets for top half finalists. weird weird weird for me not to include CTJ as a lock, im betting they surge late season tho for a comeback and make finals here. iiif that happens that leaves only 4 spots for a ton of good bands which totally sucks. id give the edge to the Austin and DFW bubbles for now. they just sound better than the Houston ones atm and music counts for more of the score. it's harsh to say but not a single band i heard live at West Houston sounded like a really really top-notch Texas band, besides maybe twhs, but they had issues w/ trumpets struggling in the upper register, Mello and flute tuning, and that really weirdly balanced/phrased small woodwind ensemble where it sounded like every instrument was doing their own thing lol. so yeah, Houston groups need to get those music scores up to match the vis if they wanna make a splash here, reeeeally pulling for Bridgeland. at the same time some of the scores at DFW and Austin were a bit inflated, not gonna sugarcoat it, almost all of which came from relatively inexperienced BOA judges, so id be even more cautious than usual comparing scores across contests. gonna be interesting for sure. always is.

yeah and that's something to keep in mind too about CTJ. Lipman is friggin' legendary. it may take time to adjust.

my top 3 future projection for Nats has been Carmel, TWHS, and Hebron since that Kentucky regional in mid Sept, buuuut i gotta say that betting against Avon for top 3 is like betting against Meryl Streep not getting an Oscar nomination every time she's in a movie. prob will be wrong lol. twhs could "flatline" as well. ughhhh im just so happy happy happy for Bridgeland. ive been sounding the alarm on them all season so far!!! and. they. deeelivered!!!

WOAH CY FAIR!!! YESSS! AND BRIDGELAND OVER CTJ!!! the scores may seem low but i wanna point out two things 1.) i think the shows here have a lot of room for growth and 2.) the early season scores, like at Austin, were really inflated. when i left Katy prelims i told myself, if i were scoring this id prob give the champ an 86ish. exactly what happened!!! can't wait to see these late season!!

my feed friggin' crashed during ctj!! i will say this, what i saw seemed way more energetic. also the flamingo walk thing is the single wittiest design thing in the entire contest. twhs was great, very controlled performance. waiting for more of an emotional punch. vis design from opener through ballad is prob the prettiest Jon has done for them since 2006. kiiinda drops in quality/imagination in the closer or rather what they have of a closer. kinda impressed they came out on top in prelims w/ an incomplete show. dont know how you compete with their guard. just on a different level. still waiting for those trick tosses i saw in May tho!!! amazing job by all of the Bands of America!!

Reagan was fab as well. what they do w/ minimal set design is brilliant. not many can pull it off. CyFair is just sooooo much better when the electronics work! thank goodness!

oh yah, it ain't just the woodlands running the show in marching band in H-town anymore, as B-land, P-land, and about to be CyFair will show us. wowzer Pearland!! ill never not get goosebumps from that ballad. they may very well be the main "Cartwright" threat at Nats this yr!!