July 24, 2004
Allentown tonight
Night two of Allentown is TONIGHT. Considered one of the greatest historical drum corp shows (along with Whitewater), you can check out the action online at DCI Live (http://live.dci.org/).
Posted by Ryan on 03:48 PM | Comments (0)
July 16, 2004
DCI Orlando
DCI Orlando starts tonight! This is a two day event and is important in the drum corp world because this and the Allentown show determine who goes to the Masters of the SUMMER MUSIC GAMES show. If you live within 200 miles of any of these events, you are crazy not to go.
Back to Orlando, my prediction is that the scores will break the 90.0 mark tonight. You heard it here first.
Posted by Ryan on 02:31 PM | Comments (1)
July 14, 2004
Drum Corp at it's Best
Went to the local show last week. It was a great lineup - Cavaliers, Troopers, Bluecoats, Magic of Orlando, Southwind, Capital Regiment. Cavaliers put on a clinic and tons of people went and checked out the corp warmups in the parking lot before the show. Here's a quick rundown of each corp...
Bluecoats blew me away with their show which I usually don't get in to much. I think I was most intrigued by the addition of Mike McIntosh to the staff. You can definitely hear the "Cavie sound" in the drumline book.
Troopers can drum! Even though the hornline is small, the drumline looks like it was transplanted from a Top 12 corp. They with out a doubt out drummed some of the bigger corps.
Magic of Orlando surprised me in that I thought the momentum from last year would keep them rolling, but it looks like they have hit the reality of being a Division I corp again. nice show, just needs some cleaning....the snare sound was real wet - that could have been some of it.
Southwind - sporting new uniforms (yea, no more yellow!), they have a solid show. It will be a great package when it is cleaned up, just dirty for this time of year. After seeing them for the past three years, I have high expectations for this drumline. At this point it just doesn't seem as strong as previous years.
Capital Regiment - what a surprise! I can't believe they were digging in the ranks of Div II/III just a couple of years ago. I expect to see them break into the Top 12 someday soon.
Cavaliers have another stellar product for 2004. Is it as good as 2000 or 2003? Hard to tell at this point and I hate to make a judgment halfway through the season. I'll just say that the Cavaliers seem to put the ideas out first and then clean it. So first impressions of newly added material is that they are dirty. Are they dirty? In certain places, yes. Most exposed is the drum break with question and answer snare rolls from the split snareline. It seems to be hit and miss, but I wonder if some of the problem is the direction they are facing (backwards at an angle) and the use of projectors. I'm sure they'll figure out a solution soon enough (if not already).
Posted by Ryan on 12:05 PM | Comments (0)
July 02, 2004
Glassmen's custom drum color
I thought they looked a little crazy under the lights, but figured it's Dynasty drums and they seem to do a lot of custom colors. No, they got raw shells from Dynasty and had them sent to a BASF R&D plant in Ohio to get painted. They go from a bronze to orange to gold depending on the lighting conditions. It's not so much like a sparkle or abalone where they reflect light, just color changes. DCI.org has a story about them. Click here
Posted by Ryan on 09:57 AM | Comments (0)
It's Drum Corp season
Went to one of the local shows last week. They had a great lineup - Americanos, Memphis Sound, Colts, Blue Knights, Glassmen, and Phantom Regiment. The weather was great and I was surprised at the level of the shows considering it was still June at the time. I still remember how my life was changed when I saw Santa Clara Vanguard in 91 play music from Miss Saigon. So take a student, buy a souvie, and cheer as loud as you can for the smallest corp there. Go check out the DCI Calendar to find a show near you.
Posted by Ryan on 01:02 AM | Comments (0)
July 01, 2004
And so it begins...
Welcome to Day 1 of the Drumline Blog. The grand plan is to make this a portal for all things related to drumlines. Be it News relating from drum corps to BOA bands, reviews of products, or discussion of techniques, we are going to hit it all. I look forward to providing not only myself, but everyone else an outlet to discover the latest involving the world of marching percussion.
Posted by Ryan on 09:16 AM | Comments (0)
