2021 BOA DFW (Oct. 9)

[cjm715]

  On 9/29/2021 at 10:26 PM, Origin said:

The big fountain pens are…interesting 

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I think those aren’t really the problem, it’s mainly the music selections for me. I love the music but it doesn’t really sound like it belongs in a show about paintings/art and such. The only thing that makes sense in their music is their closer which is blue shades by frank ticheli and let me tell you man it sounds awesome

[cjm715]

  On 9/29/2021 at 10:27 PM, slowbrass said:

Keller was a pretty big band by the time 2020 rolled around, I wonder where their membership is now. Looks like they certainly didn’t slip much, if it all, last season. Saw a clip on YT

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They are still very large

[LostChoirGuy]

  On 9/29/2021 at 10:31 PM, cjm715 said:

They are still very large

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I watched the live stream of the game last week.  Before their performance they announced the rough size and unfortunately I can't remember it.  I do remember being pleasantly surprised because in the past they always said "275 strong" and I think it was more than that this year.

I'll be watching the stream again this week vs. Southlake Carroll.  The quality of the stream isn't very good, but hopefully I can see roughly where they are at.

[DallasFan]

  On 9/29/2021 at 10:17 PM, josephbandfan said:

It does seem like the DFW bands tend to be more secretive about their shows early season lol. And if BOA Conroe and Austin have proven anything, it's that there will likely be some surprises.

2012 was the last time a band other than Flower Mound and Hebron won this regional and that was by Marcus. That probably won't change this year either but it sure would be exciting if it did.

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Ironically, Marcus just posted a teaser on their facebook. Some clips of their show I think with them actually showing everyone the title of their show. 

[cjm715]

  On 9/30/2021 at 2:42 AM, DallasFan said:

Ironically, Marcus just posted a teaser on their facebook. Some clips of their show I think with them actually showing everyone the title of their show. 

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“The missing piece”

[avgbandfan5]

anyone have a hebron vid they can send

 

[josephbandfan]

  On 9/30/2021 at 2:42 AM, DallasFan said:

Ironically, Marcus just posted a teaser on their facebook. Some clips of their show I think with them actually showing everyone the title of their show. 

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I actually just found a livestream earlier today of their game against Flower Mound and it includes their halftime. I don't think the announcer ever said the name of Flower Mound's show though

[DallasFan]

  On 9/30/2021 at 2:52 AM, josephbandfan said:

I actually just found a livestream earlier today of their game against Flower Mound and it includes their halftime. I don't think the announcer ever said the name of Flower Mound's show though

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"What Dr. Seuss' Interpretation of What a Marching Band Might Be" I think???

[BandFan59]

  On 9/30/2021 at 2:52 AM, josephbandfan said:

I actually just found a livestream earlier today of their game against Flower Mound and it includes their halftime. I don't think the announcer ever said the name of Flower Mound's show though

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Found the same livestream! It features both Flower Mound and Marcus's shows with fairly decent audio quality and a multicam. If anyone wants to watch it they can look up Marcus vs Flower Mound on the tube. It may or may not be taken down soon.

Edit: Just finished watching both shows, and I have to say I really like both of them. Flower Mound still has their big sounds and the Seuss theme works pretty well. They have a really awesome tuba feature that I'm digging. They only performed about five minutes, so I think they still have more coming. Marcus was a pleasant surprise for me. Musically they sound excellent, I really do love their musical package. A little bit dirty visually but I think by the end of the season they'll have a great production at Grand Nats.

[cjm715]

  On 9/30/2021 at 2:52 AM, josephbandfan said:

I actually just found a livestream earlier today of their game against Flower Mound and it includes their halftime. I don't think the announcer ever said the name of Flower Mound's show though

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I had heard from a person from flo mo that flo mo’s show doesn’t have a title and that it’s going to be a dr suess related poem or something like that 

[Origin]

  On 9/30/2021 at 2:52 AM, josephbandfan said:

I actually just found a livestream earlier today of their game against Flower Mound and it includes their halftime. I don't think the announcer ever said the name of Flower Mound's show though

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Marcus gave a very very clean performance, but for a grand nats year, I’m honestly pretty underwhelmed with the scale of the show so far. Marcus never has the craziest drill, but it felt easy even for them. Musically, it’s a treat. The guard does a lot of the visual heavy lifting and they do it extremely effectively. I know they’ve never been the biggest band, but they looked surprisingly small? Only 5 tubas?
 

Flower Mound’s show has an interesting field setup, and is equally unorthodox in some of the music moments. I like FloMo’s more quirky shows, so I’m excited for this one. 

[WILKINSON]

  On 9/30/2021 at 3:20 AM, BandFan59 said:

Found the same livestream! It features both Flower Mound and Marcus's shows with fairly decent audio quality and a multicam. If anyone wants to watch it they can look up Marcus vs Flower Mound on the tube. It may or may not be taken down soon.

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Had seen it this past weekend! Is it just me, or did Marcus look even smaller than when they had taken a hit to their size when Drinkwater had left a few years ago? I do really like their show, though! 
 

Also, what are y’all’s thoughts on Flower Mound this year? Not sure how a show like that will do at Nationals. Wish they would’ve gotten a little more creative. Their musicianship is great. I’m sure that’ll taken them far. 

[cjm715]

  On 9/30/2021 at 3:25 AM, Origin said:

Marcus gave a very very clean performance, but for a grand nats year, I’m honestly pretty underwhelmed with the scale of the show so far. Marcus never has the craziest drill, but it felt easy even for them. Musically, it’s a treat. The guard does a lot of the visual heavy lifting and they do it very effectively. 
 

Flower Mound’s show has an interesting field setup, and is equally unorthodox in some of the music moments. I like FloMo’s more quirky shows, so I’m excited for this one. 

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One of my best friends goes to marcus (I know I seemingly have connections everywhere lol) and they’ve said their closer is pretty difficult drill wise but i haven’t seen it to believe it so that has yet to be seen

[cjm715]

  On 9/30/2021 at 3:26 AM, WILKINSON said:

Had seen it this past weekend! Is it just me, or did Marcus look even smaller than when they had taken a hit to their size when Drinkwater had left a few years ago? I do really like their show, though! 
 

Also, what are y’all’s thoughts on Flower Mound this year? Not sure how a show like that will do at Nationals. Wish they would’ve gotten a little more creative. They musicianship is great. I’m sure that’ll taken them far. 

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I don’t really care for flo mo that much this year if i’m honest, I respect their quality of musicianship and can’t deny how great they are but it’s just not my type of show. It could do well at nats tho but we’ll just have to wait and see what they do

[WILKINSON]

  On 9/30/2021 at 3:25 AM, Origin said:

Marcus gave a very very clean performance, but for a grand nats year, I’m honestly pretty underwhelmed with the scale of the show so far. Marcus never has the craziest drill, but it felt easy even for them. Musically, it’s a treat. 

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Stole the words right out my mouth. Maybe they were concerned with the size they had this year, and after a covid laden year, so they chose something not as intricate as years’ past. 
 

Personal opinion, but I think the Austin bands have overtaken the DFW bands, at least this year haha. 

[DallasFan]

  On 9/30/2021 at 3:25 AM, Origin said:

Marcus gave a very very clean performance, but for a grand nats year, I’m honestly pretty underwhelmed with the scale of the show so far. Marcus never has the craziest drill, but it felt easy even for them. Musically, it’s a treat. The guard does a lot of the visual heavy lifting and they do it extremely effectively. I know they’ve never been the biggest band, but they looked surprisingly small? Only 5 tubas?
 

Flower Mound’s show has an interesting field setup, and is equally unorthodox in some of the music moments. I like FloMo’s more quirky shows, so I’m excited for this one. 

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In their beginning part of their halftime (drill team part) they have 10 tubas out there and it looks like 1 or 2 holes. so surely they aren't only marching 5 tubas. My guess would be 8 tubas. 

[BandFan59]

Like I said before, I really like Flower Mound and Marcus's shows, but I think I agree that they're a little underwhelming for a Grand Nationals production. Both shows still have a lot that we haven't seen yet, so I don't want to count them out too quickly, but I'll say that from what we've seen so far I prefer Vandegrift over both of them. I've seen all of the Texas bands that are going to Grand Nationals this year, and personally I think CTJ is at the front of the pack right now (although the Reagan videos were pretty low quality so I'll reserve judgement on them). Still plenty of the season left to go though, and Marcus does seem to peak late season.

[josephbandfan]

I'm really excited to see Flower Mound's final product! I'll wait until DFW before I say anything too concrete but it looks like it has a lot of potential. Their guard always looks good and I especially love the tuba feature. Personally, one of my favorite shows that I've seen this season.

Marcus sounds beautiful which is expected and I like the tone of their show. I'm with others where I thought their drill could be more exciting. I sort of felt the same way about their 2019 production but even then, they march well and placed 6th at SA. Their visuals are always very effective as well and their guard is world class.

[Origin]

  On 9/29/2021 at 10:31 PM, cjm715 said:

I think those aren’t really the problem, it’s mainly the music selections for me. I love the music but it doesn’t really sound like it belongs in a show about paintings/art and such. The only thing that makes sense in their music is their closer which is blue shades by frank ticheli and let me tell you man it sounds awesome

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I haven’t seen or heard the show, only seen a picture of one of the props, and they were definitely not what I expected. I don’t really get how a show supposedly about art pertains to the “Pinstriped” title…I guess “pen” and “pin” sound the same…their uniforms are Pinstriped…idk ? i guess I’ll find out next week.

[slowbrass]

My vibe from the show was kind of an Avon’s Black Gold (a show title and design that is somewhat self referential in nature) meets Blue Devils’ Ink (a theatrical telling of a more or less made up story thru guard members). The theme leans more towards writing than traditional art (like paintings) imo. 

[Raydurs]

As the season progresses and this competition gets closer, I must update my predictions.

1. Hebron: Saw the community performance. All I can say is, Wow. Hebron.

2. Marcus: Biggest hot take, I know. With whatever the heck happened at BOA Conroe and Austin, I will assume that these judges will slightly clean towards the show that's more cleaner. Marcus has the upper hand which is why I'm putting them above FloMo. They sound musically excellent and their show looks interesting. Visually, it's pretty meh but then again, state year and dirty marching = bad. As long as they look clean marching, this may very well be the case. 

3. FloMo: One of the most unique shows we'll see this year. They look pretty dirty I would say but maybe they can get themselves together and snag either 2nd. I'm feeling like it'll be unlikely that they'll outright win this contest with the show they have on the field this year. Then again, who knows what those judges are gonna be on

4. Keller: Yeah, Keller. They sound good, they look good judging from a high cam video on YT. It's looking pretty clean imo. Going off with my initial music judging at their community performance far back, I'd say this would be a solid 4th.

5. Coppell: Everyone keeps hyping Coppell. I haven't gotten any recordings. Typically they sound great musically and I expect them to go crazy during their ballad as they usually do; visually... yeah...

6. Bell: Have mercy on my heartttttttt. [definitely does not mean anything of course ] I'm hoping they will have a great prelims run and finals run! They've made great improvements throughout the season, totally no bias saying that... I'm excited on how this program will do with the hardships that COVID struck them with and come out strong!

7. Waxahachie: Heard nothing from them yet. Wax on state years go crazy, I expect this year to be no exception.

8. Keller Central: HOOOOOOOOOO BUDDY BOA CONROE WHAT THE heck HOW DID THEY DO THAT?!?!?! And I'll just place them here just because. I don't know where else I could actually put them here, honestly they could really be put higher if I wanted to but I feel really uneasy about placing them, definitely a finalist spot. Nonetheless, excellent job KCent!

9. Haltom: I personally don't like this show's design... It's kinda too, how do I put this in the best way possible, culturally questionable. They sound alright, drill is very UIL-orientated too. It'll easy for them to clean.

10. Wakeland: WINE DARK SEA SHOW LOL. I've talked to a friend about Wakeland this year. Apparently they're not gonna have a prop on the field, which shocked me because they're doing a sea type of show and that was the first thing I thought of. I could be completely wrong but yeah wakeland 5a gods (could possibly switch w/ slc)

11. Southlake Carroll: I SAW THIS LIVE AT MANSFIELD POC AND I INSTANTLY FELL IN LOVE WITH THIS SHOW. TO ALL THE SLC KIDS, Y'ALL DID ABSOLUTELY AMAZING. THAT BALLAD WAS JUST TRANSCENDING. THIS SHOW WILL BE AMAZING TO SEE IN ST LOUIS MAN. GOD I LOVE THIS SO MUCH (could possibly switch w/ wakeland)

12. James Martin: sandman. nice. Honestly, POC screwed y'all's score so hard. I swear those judges were honestly on something. I will say this for anyone from Martin who's reading this: balance better, produce a more mature and fine sound rather than blasting horns, and clean sets more. Good luck to Martin!

[note: Prosper is unfortunately NOT attending BOA DFW, but opted to do HEB Marching, BOA STL, and the UIL process instead this year. had they were, 11th or 12th (would've depended on how heb marching goes unless the weather decides to pull a 2018 marching season)]

[WILKINSON]

  On 10/1/2021 at 4:12 AM, Raydurs said:

9. Haltom: I personally don't like this show's design... It's kinda too, how do I put this in the best way possible, culturally questionable. They sound alright, drill is very UIL-orientated too. It'll easy for them to clean.

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One of the Haltom band members had said that they personally didn’t like the show because it seemed to be cultural appropriating. 

[avgbandfan5]

  On 10/1/2021 at 4:40 AM, WILKINSON said:

One of the Haltom band members had said that they personally didn’t like the show because it seemed to be cultural appropriating. 

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what is it about?

 

[cjm715]

  On 10/1/2021 at 5:01 AM, dsiviper111 said:

what is it about?

 

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I believe it is called “year of the dragon” and the props are all traditional Chinese style buildings, but that all i know 

[BandFan59]

HEB results have definitely thrown this competition into a bit of a blender. It's not a BOA contest, but the judging rubric is extremely similar, so Keller placing 5th there is a bit of a worry for them here. I thought they performed well enough to place better, but they did have a very short show. Marcus was fantastic and far and away the best band there. I think they have an outside shot at grabbing the music caption and maybe even moving into the top 2.