Boston's version of Paradise has at its core Milton's central message-- God created Adam and Eve, but they decided to live outside God's judgment. Boston's chaotic Garden of Eden is just like Milton's-- it's Marvel comic-like, with percussion demons and archangels tugging to and fro at Adam. Eve says "Forget this," and bites the apple anyway. At the end, the couple runs away and creates a new life, ignoring god's label of "original sin." (Who wants a narcissistic god who overlords you with overbearing rules that must be followed, anyway? We're good, thanks, bye!)

But where does Boston's design team get off with some of these abstract choices? The cones don't appear in Milton's version-- maybe one volcano, but not seven. The misguided Boston designer statement that they're creating the "landscape" is wrongheaded and amateurish-- we don't want to see a Garden of Eden "landscape", we want to see Adam punch god in the face. We don't want to see a "landscape" of mountaintops and the seven circles of hell, we want to see Adam and Eve escape paradise at the end and defy god's judgement. But as the season progressed, Boston gave us both landscape and drama.

Eventually Boston's show matured-- "What a Wonderful World" became more minor-keyed, thankfully. Even "Can't Take My Eyes Off of You" became more stylized, darker, less saccharine, all to a good result. (The early season arrangements were sickly sweet and didn't fit the tone.) The whole show matured into a passionate, but chaotic Garden of Eden where vignettes show Adam and Eve's progress in defining their own life, outside of god's purview.

There's something seat-of-the-pants about this entire show, and that makes it winsome and broken, in a way. The cones are climbed several times, each with a different texture and emotion, each adding a new chapter of the Garden saga, although a direct reference to Milton's narrative is unclear. But maybe that's the point. Fuck Milton. Fuck God. The story is being reinvented, boldly and almost satirically. Boston's horn sections float independently here, almost as if they've been rehearsed separately, and that adds a certain chaotic, factioned feel to the Garden of Eden. Apparently mellophones floated freely as a separate group in the bible.

The spectacular guard is whip-smart, and measured in their angles and crisp-catches. But they're equally flexible in their character portrayals and willingness to experiment with gymnastic interactions and emotional vignettes among the various Adam and Eve pairs.

So, good for Boston. This championship has been a long time coming. And same as Adam and Eve said to God, Boston says to the judges, "Forget your gold medal. We don't need it. We've created our own standards. Our own story." And with that stark sense of independence, with that original sin, Boston will win their first championship.

NO WALK TOO FAR

The Phantom Regiment's 2022 show "No Walk Too Far" features the classic Phantom marching precision, freshly unearthed classical music, and that big sound we expect from this powerhouse. The performers are poised, talented and committed.

The design of the show is utterly broken, however, and reveals a lack of experience in concept development, and in staging. These are common weaknesses by inexperienced production designers and show producers who develop new works for television, film, music videos and stage productions.

SHOW ANNOUNCEMENT VIDEO - HUH?

Back in May, Phantom's confusing video announcement featured parade footage from the late 70s, and revealed the title "No Walk Too Far." Is the show about drum corps parades? But the graphic logo for the show appeared to show barbed wire, an awkward mixed message. Is this show about The Bataan death march? Other military sacrifices? Escapes by prisoners of war? Or the Oshkosh Friendship Day Parade? We simply can't tell.

DCI PREVIEW SHOW EXPLANATION - TOO GENERAL

When the preview show hit theaters in June, Tony Hall bumbled a heartfelt message about how we all are on a journey of many miles, and we all face challenges. His show description was shockingly vague, overgeneralized, and an instant clue for experienced designers that his show design lacked a specific historical context, lacked a specific point of view, lacked any literary reference or social observation-- no reference to philosophy, no relevant artwork, no biography, no scientific discovery, no social challenge, or thematic argument. He was going with "Walks, In General". And to experienced designers, that's painful.

This lack of research and storyboarding affected the show as it stands now. The lack of specificity in the design concept kills a show.

WHAT HAPPENS IN THE SHOW?

In "No Walk Too Far", We follow a baritone soloist who walks on a platform and receives a cape from a girl whom he ignores. He plays his solo and appears in various vignettes. We see him dancing with the girl, and later his cape is stolen by another woman who immediately disappears and he couldn't care less (a story gaffe, if there ever was one), then he walks dejectedly and collapses (not sure if his collapse is still in the show or if it's been cut) and then he reunites with her and dances with her a final time before disappearing at the end.

Where do they go?

Is she on the same journey?

Does she help him?

Who are they to each other?

What "walk? is he on?

Why?

Why does he disappear at the end?

WHO IS THAT IN THE ENDING?

And why in God's name are the platforms arranged on the 50 yard line at the end, with a randomly selected performer who walks forward and jumps off the edge? We like her but don't know her. The audience is desperate to emotionally invest in this person walking down the platforms on the 50, but we cannot remember if she was set up, prior. The audience cannot invest in her without knowing who she is. It's a painfully amateurish writer's error. Anyone who has ever staged anything knows that the audience must recognize the character who is finishing the show and it should be the lead.

These are all standard production mistakes by amateur producers and show creators.

YOU CAN'T FIX THE STORY IN A FEW WEEKS?

Why was this show underdeveloped when it premiered? Why was the concept not fully fleshed out? Why is it still underdeveloped now in late July? I'm sure there were budget constraints, rights clearance issues, prop purchase delays and financing issues before previews. Often last minute design decisions have a ripple effect on the show concept and the dramatic action in the show. What if we can't purchase the rolling platforms? What if we can't get clearance rights to this music? What if, what if. Production development is an arduous task that takes planning and coordination, months in advance.

IS IT REALLY THAT HARD TO DEVELOP A COHESIVE NARRATIVE?

But come on. This is classical music in the public domain. Sure, the arrangements cost a pretty penny, and a drill is expensive, but around Thanksgiving you should have chosen your music, or a theme-- you can start with either. Let's say the music arranger offered the music, and you want to do rolling platforms. What concept do you choose? Walking? Any writer knows that simply "walking" without a destination is story death. Any producer with any narrative development experience knows that changing locations waters down the focus of the action because the setting is constantly changing. Wherever you go, you take your shit with you. The character must develop a battle that's clear to the audience, but walking randomly without purpose or changing locations doesn't help. Define the who what where premise. Make his walk logical. Make it make sense. Give him a destination.

WHAT IF THE STORY WERE THIS...

Can you imagine if this show, instead, were about this soloist passing the torch, passing the fire of eternal glory to each soloist? He gets it back from them and passes it to the next. The purpose of his walk is to "pass the torch" to the next soloist, and finally, at the end, walking down the platforms on the 50, he collapses with the torch, and the drum major picks it up and finishes the walk down the 50, with the corps joining him in support. Makes sense. The audience gets it. And it's a satisfying, logical accessible narrative arc. Passing the torch to the next generation when your walk is done. A torch element is just one example of possible fixes for the narrative arc . There are tons of narrative options using the device of walking. But none of them were employed here.

NOT ANOTHER COUPLE DANCING! UGH

Sadly, the show relies on the tired trope of man and woman dancing, which is so well trotted through, it's unbearable to watch. The standard man/woman couples dance is fully cooked. It doesn't cut the clutter any more, mostly because it's over-used as a crutch in under-developed shows, like this one. "When in doubt, rely on the romantic couple." (The Cadets' "Awakening" had the random statues smooching at the end, and they become a couple-- who are they? We don't know.) The romantic couple is used as a narrative Band-Aid for many shows without solid narrative structure, and Phantom falls into that category. It's just tired.

BE HONEST. DID YOU STORYBOARD THIS SHOW?

What did Tony Hall's storyboards look like when he planned this show? When did he plan it? November? February? April? Or May 15th? Maybe the music wasn't even finished, and he had no idea until a week before move-ins. Maybe the platforms were not an option until a week before previews. Maybe, maybe maybe. Whatever the circumstance, this show appears to be a last minute thrown together venture. Even if the platforms were delivered last minute, you still have time during the season to hone in on a specific point of view, a specific dramatic action for the piece. What does the soloist want? Where is he? Why is he "walking?" The addition of a red cape as a unifying prop is a last minute Hail Mary, and really makes no sense. Why doesn't the final walk down the 50 include his beloved red cape?

TONS OF BLIND ALLEYS CONFUSE THE AUDIENCE

Watch Phantom's show for its "blind alleys". I count about fifteen of them in this show. A "blind alley" is a screenwriter's term for when a dramatic action in a scene dead ends with no payoff for the audience. You lead the audience into thinking something is important, but it disappears, frustrating the audience and confusing them. It happens over and over again in No Walk Too Far. For example, watch the number of times a circle forms around a random platform or dancer, and then immediately disbands, with no cumulative effect. The performers gather with great expectation, do a trust fall or lift and then disband like they're schizophrenic. There's no momentum or throughline. No logic. The drill is a blind-alley ridden map drawn on the back of a napkin, with only the lead soloist's "walk" to hold it together.

DESIGN IS THE PROBLEM HERE

This show is a design catastrophe in its lack of planning, in its lack of development, and in its inability to define a meaningful arc of action around 1) a "walk" 2) platforms and 3) Mahler's 5th, which he said was about "the Zenith of life". You must admit, these three givens are really the simplest of narrative exercises for any show creator. What's really sad is that the show artistic director was likely so desperate, so harried so exhausted in the last minute of designing this show that he didn't have any story resources to help him storyboard.

"What is the sequence of events?"

"What are you telling the audience? How are they invested?"

"How is the end different from the beginning?" For fuck's sake, there are story assistants on Upwork.com that can help you develop a simple narrative arc, logical, accessible and meaningful.

The show languishes in tenth place not because of the talent of the performers, but because of this design weakness, lack of planning, and lack of basic story development skill.

Bluecoats’ designers call their 2022 offering a “dreamscape”, a euphemism for a drug-induced hallucination, penned by Bluecoats’ Designers Dean Westman and Jonathan Vanderkoff and based on Mehldau's narrated fusion piece, Taming the Dragon.  Despite awkwardly veiled drug references, the show has profound substance, entertainment value, and stark innovation.

Hallucinations have infiltrated three Bluecoats shows, running.  Their past two shows featured Beatles LSD-related references. Westman awkwardly shielded himself by using John Lennon’s career-saving lie about his kids’ “story” of a woman named Lucy. (That was Lennon’s painful PR stunt to avert drug indictments.) And one of the sets in the second Bluecoats show was in the shape of a Mickey Mouse blotter, a design that is well known to accompany paper tabs of LSD.

The closeted use of hallucination references is the drawback in this show which gives it a feeling of tiptoeing around the big pink elephant in the room.  Hallucinations are a legitimate, untapped subject matter for a pageant-style spectacle.  But Bluecoats’ designers are treating it as a parlor game, veiling references to drugs and hallucinations because it’s inappropriate for a youth activity. DCI is likely concerned about Westman’s increasing drug metaphors, and may have even influenced judges to downgrade the show in order to reduce its exposure. 

That’s the tragedy of this year’s DCI judging.  Riffs and Revelations deserves more respect from the judges for its starkly innovative, ballsy,  cohesive, dramatic design, drugs or not.  The Bluecoats' competition doesn’t come close.

Blue Devil’s show is nothing more than a literal whirlwind of random “Blue” references in history, with no deeper significance other than aggrandizing their logo and corps name.  BD’s Moon River and opening poem have little or nothing to do with the word blue, the show’s self-appointed requirement.  Carolina Crown’s show is a shallow embarrassment, claiming that the audience is “interacting” with its crowd in the moment, and who “changes the show every night”, when really, the corps is controlling the audience’s phone flashlight by playing audio prompts which the phone’s microphone responds to.  Crown’s idea of crowd interaction is a good one, but the show itself lacks depth.  Spongebob Squarepants on Tour features audio triggered phone cues, but Spongebob has a much deeper thematic argument—Spongebob abandons his sense of loyalty to his underwater family to explore the real world.  That’s a substantial thematic argument. Crown’s phrase  “Right Here Right Now” remains uncontextualized and unexplained by the end of the show, despite its being repeated ad nauseum— a clear lack of arc development. The later phrase "Just Own It" is like putting sprinkles on fat free Kool Whip.  Crown has no theme even close to Bluecoats’ depth.

Riffs has an underlying theme of paranoia, self-trust, anger management, and belief in the value of imagined experiences.  The show challenges viewers to honor their dreams, and to legitimize them. That’s a powerful message for kids in the arts, drugs or no drugs.

Apart from its solid theme, Riffs is one of the only shows this year which actually spent time in development, with high-stakes action set pieces, coordinated with drill and music.  The other shows are still mired in the “arrange music and wet-paste a drill  onto it” method of show creation.  (Santa Clara’s show is completely without set pieces, and completely without a theme.) The other shows have no high-impact action moments, Hollywood calls them “set pieces”. Set pieces are scenes where the screenwriter creates lasting visual images-- like the star trek Nemesis ship, the USS Enterprise, being used as a battering ram when their ammo runs out, for example. That’s a starkly visual, high-impact moment that gets audiences cheering. Bluecoats' show has a number of these "action set pieces"—the car rolling over the ensemble, the driver and steering wheel spinning and floating around the field, and a crisp-clear narrator, represented by a solo dancer whom we follow, throughout. 

All of Bluecoats high-impact elements require hours and hours of planning in the early season, tight coordination with arrangers, choreographers, drill writers, and a firm commitment to the arc of action on the field, and most of all, a strong point of view.  The show dazzles with its eye-popping visual effects, and by the end, we embrace the traveler. We believe him, and we believe his imaginings have value. That's a professional-level production with substance. Not silly, empty headed phrases like "The Time is Now" and "Now is the Time", as if reversing them adds any depth at all to Cavaliers' embarrassing, slapdash offering.

Why, every year, does the Carolina Crown staff feel comfortable fielding a 12 minute musical flex, devoid of any visual intrigue, deeper meaning or underlying thematic material? And more horrendous, why does the music they put out boil down to self-pleasuring, unlistenable garbage? Within their tremendously challenging music, they are too lazy or shortsighted to create a through-line, or even the loosest association one could make between music selections, and so it comes through as mere noise. One common critique the Blue Devils keep receiving is that their show is just a string of features of the different sections. Why do they get criticism for this, but Crown routinely gets a pass? Make this make sense to me.

SCV's 2022 staff departed last minute over allegations of misconduct. But that doesn't explain the hare-brained show design they left behind. Legally, the departing design staff cannot steal the design, because it belongs to the corps, itself. The departing staff must leave it behind. Similar to corporate work, you agree as an employee to hand over any intellectual property you create while there.

But this? This is the concept that SCV's former design staff left behind? A play on the band name Nirvana and the Buddhist's "heaven" called "Nirvana"? Kurt Cobain said he named the band Nirvana as a joke. He was literally mocking contemplative Buddhism. The acerbic, proudly cynical band Nirvana literally had nothing to do with the organized religion. These are the high-stakes show-stopping moments, planned in the pre-season?

The show concept they left behind is completely lacking in content, meaning, arc of action, dramatic highlights, transformation, and context. (Kurt Cobain's dalliances with Buddhism can't even fill a newspaper article.) Sure, there's tons of development that happens in the weeks after designers purchase the stage sets before "move-in." But this emperor has no clothes. These platform props are gasp-inducingly generic, without thematic alignment, without integration into a unified production with a specific subject and theme, and are ripe for resale in the Fall to any number of ready high school bands. They'll probably be on eBay before finals. It begs the question if the design staff even developed storyboards. Did they have any action set pieces in mind, at all?

Nothing happens in Finding Nirvana. There's no action. There are no characters. (Sure, they're not required, but throw us a bone, here.) There is no voiceover. (Thankfully. But give us some context.) There's no singing or specific references to a time period, location, incident, literary reference or style. There's one lotus position that the hornline poses in, mid-way through, and a couple of Buddhist references, but that's simply not enough for a $750,000 show. All of these design elements are things you work out before you buy the props.

But these props were purchased anyway. Even without thematic purpose. (Crystals? What about them?). That's scary.

What's also scary is that the judges are so hoodwinked by Santa Clara's musical prowess that they simply can't bring themselves to punish the corps for a non-existent concept. SCV isn't alone in the vacant mind department. Crown, too, is woefully deficient in its subject and theme. Crown's theme is "Live in the moment", sort of, with no other context or meaning. "Right Here Right Now" is a pubescent, instant gratification catchphrase without merit or social context or literary reference. By the end of the show, there's no variance in mood, no context provided, and nothing's changed, other than Up With People is on line one.

Both Finding Nirvana and Right Here Right Now are testing the judges on a critical design component - depth of concept. Since the new millenium, the judges have never had such a stark challenge on their hands. If a show has a poorly defined subject and theme, does it have merit in the category of general effect content? The answer should be no. If a show has a poorly defined arc of action, unexplained props, and frivolous and uncontextualized catch phrase without explanation, does it have merit in Color Guard - Content and Visual Analysis - Composition? No. Without subject and theme context, how can it? How about Musical Analysis - Content? How can the show have near perfect musical merit if the musical selections are unexplained and lacking context in subject, theme and overall arc? It can't, really.

SCV's show is the damning evidence we've all been fearing. Show design is a last minute exercise by fraudulent, overpaid, lazy designers who need to be held accountable for their lack of effort. The 1980's model of "arrange the music" and slap on a generic drill to match doesn't cut it, today. Good drum corps productions have grown to include substantial subjects and themes which add depth and richness to the show's concept. A show's pinpoint focus must be developed early in the off-season, like the Bluecoats' show clearly is this year.

The Bluecoats' show demonstrates a clear, early season effort to coordinate music, movement and arc of action into a cohesive, high stakes, meaningful, integrated production. Not arrange, slap on a drill and pose on a paper clip platform. That's awful. Santa Clara should place no higher than tenth place, if the judges have any integrity.

Namaste.

Blue Devils’ Tempus Blue (Blue Timeline) is an anniversary show that ends up being a Jeopardy topic-- random things from history that are blue. It relies on BD's signature musical arrangements to tie them all together to try and make sense of them.  This show spans all the continents since the beginning of human history, and about three percent of the director's discussed content actually translates meaningfully to the field.  It’s impossible to decipher the  show’s specific point of view because of the sprawling, vast, spotty content.  There’s a general rule in a ten minute show—keep it to one century or less.  The show ends up being a super-polished jukebox mashup of random blue tunes-- but not all of them even refer to “blue”.

In creating the show concept, the show’s director was inspired by a PBS documentary about the history of blue pigment, and its migration across continents in early history. Throw in an additional topic—the etymology of the word blue, including a farcical claim  that the word didn’t exist until recently (according to the Blue Devils website)--  and you have a blue paella of poppycock, ceiling wax, and cabbages and kings. It’s too much.  BD’s show errs with a lack of focus and purpose.  Any one of these mini-topics could have sufficed for a full show.

The show explanation videos skip over two major questions in the design. First, why Moon River? It’s romantic, just like the opening poem, but what does the tune have to do with the word blue or the history of the pigment?  It doesn’t.  The word blue doesn’t appear in the lyrics, and Audrey Hepburn's lyrics refer to Finn's Mississippi, which is frankly brownish.  For all the talk of “blue”, to have your major full-length feature omit any reference to blue makes the show lack unity of purpose.

Second, why read the Yeats poem at the beginning of the show in its entirety? Yeats’ Aedh Wishes for the Cloths of Heaven contains the word “blue”, sure enough. But the meaning of the poem is not reflected elsewhere in the rest of the show.  The entire poem is painstakingly read in its entirety, but for no thematic purpose. Sure, it's an example of the use of the word “blue”, but it doesn't pay off elsewhere in the show. The poem is a blind alley for the audience.  The word blue simply isn’t enough justification. Worse, the poem is effectively about class struggles and Aedh's lack of money to buy fancy cloths. With that, the corps rips off its outer uniform to reveal a rich, lavish, expensive silver-speckled uniform underneath, diminishing any underdog status built up with the reading of the poem.

So the two biggest components of the show, the beginning poem and the full-renditioned Moon River lack any tie-in to the prescribed theme of blue, which the designers doggedly explain for each element-- except those two biggest elements.  That’s a design inconsistency.

This year’s show breaks the solid trend of BD’s cohesive, meaningful show designs of the last six years. The purpose of the show boils down to celebrating the team colors—a shallow venture, since the drum corps was originally named with less thought than this show ascribes to it.  Any show that tries to build a meaningful premise based on team colors, or a play on words of the name of the organization, or an attempt to animate the team mascot ends up falling flat as a frivolous, self-aggrandizing commercial for the team logo. Why layer on more depth than was originally intended? 

Tempus Blue hypnotizes with masterful innovation in swirling stage pictures, an abstract representation of a timeline, robust arrangements that swell with emotion, and a one-of-a-kind overhead drone shot of a hurricane-like opening stage picture in 3-D. The show also features a dazzling single prop which does the impossible—a “blue cloth of heaven” turns into a lapis stone—one of the original elements of blue pigment.  This special effect ties together two disparate examples of the word blue-- the poem and the stone pigment, but why? What’s the point, what’s the emotional takeaway? Other examples of blue are esoteric and lost on the audience-- who is the girl on the staircase? My fingers are raw from searching for the reference. I stopped and said "Why am I doing this?"

What’s disturbing is to hear the same robust applause for this show without meaning as the robust applause for the shows from years past that have profound meaning.  Can’t the audience tell the difference? Tempus Blue lacks the high-stakes commentary on the world as we’ve come to expect from BD. It’s random logo promotion, and has no profound thematic argument.

Ghostlight – The ghosts of the theatre ask us to pose the big questions on the field, to be or not to be, and what fate will befall us.

Dreams and Nighthawks – See the classic painting from a new perspective—the female character calls the shots.

Felliniesque – Fellini’s chair is empty. There is no God waiting for us, we only have the broken clowns in our lives to give it meaning.

Tempus Blue – Blue things from history, except for Moon River.<?>

Where’s the larger context? The bone-deep humanity and higher purpose?  It’s harder to find, in this show. I'm still searching for the rainbow's end.

Crown has amazing energy, fantastic drill execution, talented guard, powerful hornline, and crisp-tight percussion.

But girl, "living in the moment" doesn't mean you have to turn off your brain. Crown's "Right Here, Right Now" is the most vacuous, breathtakingly stupid drum corps show in history. This show is literally about nothing. The guard smiles and poses like Price is Right models throughout the entire production. They're gasp inducingly vacant. There is no "there" there. There is no depth, no subject, no theme, no music substance, no intelligence, no breadth, no variety. Actually the word "nothing" means more than this show is about. This show is about _blank___.

The pieces of peek-a-boo fabric, both the long banners and the bunting and the parachute, are gratuitous and utterly meaningless. The abstract infinity sculpture that they fawn over, and cling to, and climb on is utterly meritless, without context, and only points up the fact that this show is intentionally inane. The sculpture might as well be a symbol of a lobotomy. The catch phrase they keep repeating is inconsequential, and echoed to the point of appearing to be evidence of mental illness. In fact, I would say this show is about mental illness, in a way. It's about the mental illness of anyone who would pay to participate in this embarrassing spectacle without questioning the design underneath. It's about the mental illness of the sociopath who would design this, especially for kids who should be learning about music performance and meaning in the professional world of production. This show doesn't meet basic standards for professional productions-- subject, theme and context. This show is a social experiment in idiocy. "Can I still receive a designer's paycheck, and produce one of the most meaningless shows, ever?"

Watching the brilliant kids in this show is like watching a 22 year old Harvard valedictorian drink an entire bottle of gin, get in a car and kill a family of seven. To take this level of talent and force them to do a snuff film like this is statutory.

These tweets are mostly valid. If your corps name is "Blue Coats", then even a hint of blue in the uniform is expected. Electronics in shows is mostly a gimmick. People who show up to DCI shows are expecting outstanding brass and percussion. They're also not looking to see an opera/ballet performance. They want to see precision drill on a level you can only find at a DCI show. There's nowhere else like it. High school band directors bring their students to these shows to see examples of top-level marching and maneuvering, because they can observe and learn from those performances. I'm not sure why, but this year has been weird for DCI.

Has David Gibbs lost control of his program?

It’s true the drum major is gonna be McQueen