packwick

the announcer here is great!! and the onfield music judge is kinda a snack!! ok, back to the bands...

Pearland w/ my first non-forced standing ovation of the day lol. stunning performance, maybe top 3 here. id like it eeeeven more if it didn't look like every other Cartwright show known to man, but still very effective. first of two of Lawrence Central's GN champ music we'll hear today lol.

ctj from their game tonight, only did the first two movements. it's very... pink!!! lol. bird sounds after the opener are amusing, music in 2nd part is super fun, very, like, effervescent. can't tell what the tarp is, prob some sort of flamingo. https://fan.hudl.com/usa/texas/san-antonio/organization/7976/johnson-high-school

ugh they moved Reagan later, dammit. i kinda wanted to see them side by side w/ Bridgeland and wanted to leave after CTJ, if i end up going. vast majority of your finalists here are gonna come from that Pearland through Reagan middle section.

i don't think they've started at the actual beginning of their show at a football game in several weeks. looking forward to finally hearing it. really like what i see.

there's a post-rehearsal parent exhibition performance vid from yesterday from upstairs w/o muffled audio. but it's..... hidden. lol.

nope!! and there won't be either. y'all can wait 2 whole days and form your own opinion. forget to mention, about 7 mins 30 secs on the field w/ a bit of a park and bark w/ no visual at the end. prob not their complete show.

also like how they replaced those low brass files that move across the 50 in part 2 w/ some fluttering. literally LOLed when i saw it. they were like, nope, not cleaning that! smart move!

hmmm twhs is still struggling w/ their show a bit, esp musically. im hearing the struggle in their ensemble brass sound riiight away, trumpets particularly. wondering if it's a younger section, 'cause their trumpets were so killer in 2021!! kinda goes back and forth b/w stuff that sounds okay and stuff w/ significant balance, blend, and tuning issues. ending clearly still a work in progress, some cool stuff in there, could be more interesting visually, very blocky, more like typical Vanderkolff. actually kinda an old fashioned music program from them, virtually none of the interesting electronic or vocal stuff that u come to expect from a Vanderkolff show. good or bad depending on how u see it. no idea how it compares to CTJ, etc.

haven't seen it but this radio broadcast has some mediocre audio of it https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=EhJlMn39SCY&pp=ygUbQ29wcGVsbCBsZXdpc3ZpbGxlIGZvb3RiYWxs i recognize Blue Rondo a la Turk in the opener and Hallelujah in the ballad + hints of major scales lol. sounds like it'll be impactful!!!

i hope FloMo goes to this!!! it'll prob be the only time i see their show (w/ the music) before UIL State. kinda a bummer they're not doing a late season BOA. hopefully they have a super knockout UIL season to make up for it!! gonna have to find time to stream that FloMo/Hebron combo at the end of prelims on Sat.

i think the current system would be okay for you then since achievement and content are symbiotic. if your drill is filthy i can't tell if the content is good. even tho the BOA effect sheet in its current form doesn't explicitly give performance primacy over repertoire, most GE judges wont fully credit all the fancy design crap if it's performed badly. that said GE IS the totality, or is supposed to be anyway, so performance shouuuldn't be the only consideration, even if it holds major sway.

wait u mean to tell me that the judges aren't as consistent as Richard Saucedo says they are when he defends using two panels to determine super regional finalists?!!!! b-b-but he said they're all the most experienced in the business and that they know what a 16.0 in September looks like!!! surely this must be a mistake!!!! these recaps are fake!!! /s kinda a miracle i ended up mostly agreeing with the results overall. some bizarro caption rankings based on what i saw. F-wood in 15th for VGE is absurd. twilight zone level judging as i call it lol. prob wouldn't have had them 1st either, bc of dirt, but the content was prob 1st. Wylie East def fell into that category of "was expecting them to be a little stronger" along w/ cywoods and 7L. the bands ahead of them mostly sounded and looked better + had stronger designs, tho the gap wasn't that big.

CRY FAIR!!! LOL i love this typo!!! i think twhs maybe has winning content/design, i don't know if they'll have winning perf (besides guard) by this Sat. they also need to figure out how they'll get 6 mins on the field to avoid a penalty lol. i think this is a good opportunity for them to retool the ballad a little bit into something more goosebumpy, also to let it breathe more, add 15 secs or whatever, sounds like they're rushing through it and trying to get it over with right now lol. youre supposed to be judged on the quality of what is presented, not the length, at least that's the way it's done in wgi, thinking prob the same for BOA based on Marcus 2011. hope B-land finds their way into finals and the top half!!! what other ppl have been saying about their music has me a little freaked out tho!! cywoods, 7L, and Foster will have to be a little cleaner than yesterday to top Dawson here methinks. actually i recall thinking Foster and cywoods were a little underscored in finals, we'll see.

something resembling a full show from Reagan post-game https://fan.hudl.com/usa/texas/san-antonio/organization/3456/reagan-high-school/watch?b=QnJvYWRjYXN0NjQ1OTQ4 neato! still needs quite a bit of cleaning but they're not alone there.

Beekachu. well it's either that or 2021's A Clockwork McDonalds. pick ur poison.

aaaaand just like that Cy Fair became a likely lock for the top half at this contest. gonna be interesting to see what a different panel at Katy thinks about the bands at Conroe which were all pretty close in score. stiilll not quite sure who id have on top here. been a season of surprises (ish) so far in TX. Pearland upset??? that'd be fun!! every time twhs comes out imma think of Nic Cage in The Wicker Man. "Not the bees!!! Arrrrghhh!!!" still needs some cleeeeaning in first half, not sure the bee/Pikachu costumes are doing them favors, can't tell how those woodwind blocks are supposed to come together after the jazz running + not totally in the pocket rhythmically. very hard show, hasn't been this tough since 2019, may leave an opening near the top at Katy.

yep yep. really nothing that surprising in finals results. agree w/ the top 2 and the spreads. i would have had College Park in 3rd on the strength of music, nice to see them snag that music caption. still need some work on the vis perf and design side of things. guard seemed to be overreaching a little w/ all those 5+ rifle tosses. don't need to always do the big tosses when u can do other ones more cleanly. friendswood, again, super cool eye-popping design, incredible set pieces and color palette, delightful music, but it all needs some cleaning. i would have swapped Dawson out of the top half for one of the top bottom halfers, my pick prob would have been Cy Woods tho they seemed to have some mic issues + their last movement was kind of all over the place.

really not much for me to disagree w/ judging wise after watching finals and seeing them all side by side from the same perspective. don't think there was like a huge difference b/w top half/bottom half scores, lots of bands were pretty close in quality. cy fair def killed it. loved Friendswood's design, if anything i would have expected the more content heavy GE caption to go to them rather than the perf captions, where they seem to have a lot of room for growth imo. but then Clear Brook was pretty all around excellent.

i love these extended ad tours of the Fred J Miller sweatshop!!! ngl some of the ones in the bottom half were actually quiiite a bit dirtier than expected. clear brook just killed it, delightful show.

oooo both Woods and Lakes in the bottom half too. now thats a surprise. but seeing College Park and Friendswood in the top half is kinda yaaassss! love CP's music and Friendswood's look, tho i haven't heard their music yet LOL.

yayyy Cy-Fair!! well-deserved!! actually technically i didn't watch anything from prelims LOL. had a c. diff infection that lasted 8 months in 2020 when the pandemic hit, screwed up my immune system, left me w/ very long lasting IBS, ate the wrong thing last night and have been throwing up. good times!! guess the only surprises going in for me would be cy woods shut out of the top 3 in 4a entirely. would say 7L as well but i haven't seen any of their show, haven't seen any of Dawson either. super happy for Clear Brook too. that's a strong show!!

Danpod!! now there's a name i recognize! one of the ancients.

no. jk jk. some of u are a'ight. hold on, where's that Meredith Brooks song. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_ivt_N2Zcts there we go.

omg i looooove that Tomball Memorial show. it makes me so happy!!