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packwick

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Everything posted by packwick

  1. packwick
    i'll watch Phantom in a bit. i saw Crown just now. great playing. i love all the joyously triumphant parts. visual program reminds me of a late 90s/early 00s Plymouth-Canton program. probably b/c of all the fabric and ribbons and ribbon flags. not necessarily a bad thing. the attempts at audience interaction are too cloying for my tastes. they might as well be YouTubers asking me to "Like and Subscribe! xoxoxo".
  2. packwick
    u mean the old pro quality marching band videos people put on YouTube? i don't upload them, but some of them probably originate from my collection, based on resolutions, occasional frame rate issues, which angles the posters seem to have, etcetera.
  3. packwick
    favorites, too early to know. i probably won't be on here to the end of the season. i was supposed to share videos and leave, but ended up reliving my childhood BOA forum troll days. lookin' forward to seeing that Boston music on the field. no TVs this time hopefully. Bluecoats fielded a show last year. i thought it was pretty obviously the most effective one despite being a rehash. they'd be my guess heading into this season. their set designs the past few years have been second to none. immediately appealing.
  4. packwick
    my thoughts tonight were BD in first with a score approaching 72 and SCV just over 70. actual scores were about half a point higher than i would have had them, but spreads are accurate. BD's show has character and big MOMENTS and lush and powerful brass playing. still doesn't make sense and has flow issues, but when placed beside SCV, the bland parts of the latter come into focus. adding a closer will probably help.
  5. packwick
    lots of good things happening w/ SCV, but as i was watching, i was thinking a 68 or a 69, if 70-72 is future champion. they could still win for sure, i'm not blown away by any corps yet, but there's something just generic and bland enough about this *modern* design that i'm not convinced. i like how the corps moves. the opening is almost sensual. brass is good. oh what a serendipitous misspelling! you've given me yet another scathingly brilliant marching show idea. i call it Babe-a-lon, an ode to sexy pin-up calendar models, both male and female. the field will be like a page you're eagerly waiting to turn. i'll do it right after my Showgirls show. i'll do the drill for that one myself so that i can save up the money i'll need to purchase the stripper poles to recreate the Cheetah on the field.
  6. packwick
    oooo have y'all listened to that standstill performance by Boston Crusaders yet? i was ready to crap on it because everyone has been hyping them and i'm a contrarian, also because Maslanka's music sucks, but overall the show music is really quite good even if the performance isn't there yet. mostly it presents a strong, coherent, emotionally impactful narrative. the tango arrangement of Can't Take My Eyes Off You is brilliant and full of character and will be a big hit. i was in a tango mood today too. was listening to Astor Piazzolla's Fuga y Misterioso while on my exercise bike, feeling like Morticia Addams when she dances with Gomez.
  7. packwick
    i was bored and YouTubed Blue Devils just now and watched a couple different angles of their community performance. usually a big fan despite the pretentiousness. i would have no idea what this show is about just looking at it and listening to it. yeah, some cool and impressive moments for sure, but overall it's very scatterbrained and incoherent right now, like a freewheeling drunk. i hope they fix that and pull it all together. performance polish will help. knowing that the title is Tempus Blue, i was wondering if it's supposed to be an homage to their previous shows. weird and kind of try-hard foreign vocal clips like the Dada show, stairs like the 2017 show, that big single file that rotates near the end like in Felliniesque. i don't know, i'm just trying to figure it out. cool moments, but what do they add up to? i wish all corps and bands would stop over relying on fluttering and scatterforms. it's lazy looking. like how many thousands of dollars are u getting paid to write this crap drill? my mom would write better drill, and she's more of an "I like the color and design of the flags and when they play loud" kind of DCI fan. honestly she'd make a great effect judge.
  8. packwick
    oh was she involved in the process? i don't do social media. if they were smart and she were willing, they'd hire her on as a consultant for at least the 1st year, considering both of their wind specialists are leaving.
  9. packwick
    results for the proposals were posted. https://wgi.org/2022advisoryboardvotingresults/ it looks like the guard members mostly voted to keep the status quo. i guess that's not surprising. why change the system much when you've been successful in it.
  10. packwick
    hurray! they'll have a director! they won't turn into a Rice University-style scatter band! hahaha. it looks like the assistant position has also been removed from the Conroe ISD site. i wonder... good luck to Mr. Frederick! he seems like a nice guy. younger than me, which truuuly makes me feel old. does he have DCI experience? obviously not a requirement, just curious. he could be a woodwind player.
  11. packwick
    advisory board proposals were posted over at WGI. https://wgi.org/2022-advisory-board-proposals-now-online/ does anybody know which ones passed? has the meeting happened yet? some of the guard proposals are remarkably stupid lol. maybe that's typical. i like the ones that encourage upward movement through the classes. A class is overstuffed and has lots of groups executing open class skills. i also don't like that open class finalists perform in the morning to a smaller audience. that's not how you reward more advanced groups.
  12. packwick
    they should be posted on the TMEA site eventually. usually they mark the advancing groups in the entries section. just checked the Good Ole Boy Board for the first time in like 20 years. not much info there either. i'm honestly surprised that site still exists. it looks like it was made on GeoCities.
  13. packwick
    i would never! check ur messages on the Discord BD server, hon. i thought of another one i thought was pretty haunting: Blessed Sacrament 1996, the year they did music from the film The Piano. Sac does such a good job of designing shows with deep wells of emotion without excessively telegraphing that emotion.
  14. packwick
    i've concluded that layering music is one of Vanderkolff's obsessions. it's in so many of the shows he's involved with, starting w/ TWHS in 2006 and continuing into his work with SCV winter guard and the Bluecoats. hearing Imogen Heap on top of Bartok was weird af at the time. the vast majority of designers simply sequence pieces if they include more than one piece in the same movement.
  15. packwick
    i can't recall a recent time i was moved to the point of tears by a marching show, if that's what u mean. there are many that have given me major goosebumps though. honestly most of the ones that try to make me cry make me slightly annoyed, bc they're too facile and manipulative. hahahaha. a personal one would be Marian Catholic's 2002 show, Dialogues with a Muse. we were in the tunnel waiting to perform in our first ever national finals and Marian was playing their ballad, the slow section to Harrison's Dream. serenely beautiful and a little anxious. the music was perfect for that moment, kind of like a movie scene. it still takes me back. had i decided to not do something "more" with my life than "just" be a band director, Gregg Bimm would have been my model. brilliant guy who directs the band, writes the drill, arranges the music, etc. crazy! u don't need to spend the big bucks when u can do it all yourself!
  16. packwick
    also sorry for derailing the convo. hahahaha. the whole "Greeny" (Greenie?) band stereotype was just the first thing that popped into my mind to describe that scenario.
  17. packwick
    i think some of the bands are a bit overly controlled, but i'm not sure it's unique to Houston or Eddie Green. H-town groups still seem to do decently well in the concert band area. as recently as 2017 over half of the top 7 Honor Band groups were Houston bands. maybe that's more a nod to their technical accuracy than their ability to excite. maybe it's more of a general UofH thing. i can verify that around the turn of the millennium Mr. Green was working with groups as far north as Dallas, although maybe not as many. i think Duncanville may have been one of them. at least that's one of the bands he'd negatively compare us to. 😂
  18. packwick
    sigh, the nostalgia. i still remember his clammy old man hands on my shoulders trying to keep me still while i played my instrument lol. he was a great teacher and had a good ear. i got a full 4 years of Mr. Green days + extra ones in the fall bc we went to 2 concert band clinics. oh the joys of double duty marching and concert band. like falco from star fox, "i guess i should be thankful."
  19. packwick
    if i had bothered to name literally the next song that popped into my head it probably would have been that one. or something by the Beach Boys. hahaha. i must have liked the bombast of the OC one. i wasn't paying any attention to copyright issues obviously. they'll do their own thing with it. an interesting theme is just a cherry on top anyway. it's more about how the design and performance are executed. when Thomas Pynchon was writing Gravity's Rainbow he said something like, "if it comes out anything like it looks in my head, it'll be the event of the century." the real challenge is getting it to come out like how it looks in your head. BD also already did part of an idea in 2019, so i'm good lol. i got my fix. it's just marching band.
  20. packwick
    i was over at the toxic cesspool that is Drum Corps Planet for the 1st time in like 20 years. ain't never goin back, y'all! it seems like the Cadets independently landed on one of the like 20 show ideas i manically sent to TWHS' staff as i was ripping band DVDs at 2am about 2 years ago. the whole idea of moving across the country with music for each region. my least favorite of the ideas lmao. seemed like a hokey low-hanging fruit at the time. but Cadets' musical selections are waaaay better. for that idea i was just pulling stupid songs out of my a** late at night. "When u reach California, u can, like, do the theme to The OC" lmao. im sure it'll be better than i think. Leander kinda did it this past year but like the hippy version.
  21. packwick
    they aren't competing in the Honor Band contest this season so maybe not relevant at all here, but there is a vid of TWHS from UIL on YT. often i'm impressed by their technical accuracy but not as much the musicality, u know the Eddie Green band stereotype that's mostly unfounded and born from the jealousy of less successful directors, but that Festival at Baghdad performance... gurrrl, that was Fabulous! full of life. i know that piece backwards and forwards, too, as i've been listening to it since the age of 9. so many difficult often double-tongued technical passages, and that exposed as f*** tuning in the flutes at the end. goin' out on a high note, Joni!
  22. packwick
    lmao. such a read, but an accurate one. it's definitely a low hanging fruit idea. but really hon, people without high IQs need something to love, too. oh see i loved that show precisely *because* it was campy and different and made me laugh and probably couldn't be done today without the outrage machine starting up. "oh hey let's do a show based on a ridiculous 70s TV show about a young woman with multiple personalities!" "yeah, brah, that sounds great!" hahahaha. i love it. but let's face it, if i got my way TWHS would be doing a marching show based on the movie Showgirls, and the cacophony from the parents would be glorious, just endless amusement. but yeah, the Pollock show is prooobably Bishop's best one artistically speaking. thanks for answering my question.
  23. packwick
    curious what ur favorite show was and how u would have scored it. i actually didn't add anything to my permanent collection this year. may be a good time to stop keeping up w/ it.
  24. packwick
    she arrived waaay after i was in the band. i don't know her at all. but tcgc did a little bio vid on insta last year. https://www.instagram.com/tv/CNLponflO0y/
  25. packwick
    it is the lowest scoring wgi scholastic world finals at the top since 1993. not that that should be very surprising, given the circumstances. there was a little prelims panel/semis panel split in GE in finals at the top, with the prelims panel being a bit stingy, in my opinion. i adore that Bowie show. probably my pick for best scholastic show of the 2010s, if it's not Carmel 2018. criminally underscored. it's the closest thing to a work by Merce Cunningham i've seen in winter guard. an original in a sea of mostly sentimental imitations. i'm thrilled for TWHS. most people don't know this, because why would they, they aren't following like i do, but this guard kind of skyrocketed into world class after Cyndi Robbins took over. some history: TWHS guard went from being world class and rock solid on the marching field in the early 00s, to distractingly weak on the marching field in 2008 and 2009, to being ok in 2010-2013. Robbins took over in 2014 and the improvements were immediately obvious. they went from not being able to make A class finals to getting promoted mid-season two seasons in a row. Robbins took them from A class to world class in one and a half winter guard seasons. never seen anything like it. it's nice to see them start to live up to that initial promise. with their feeder programs now more developed, i'm hopeful they can continue to improve. at least *that* aspect of the marching show next year should be strong, if the band director transition isn't so smooth.
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