Drum Corps

Drum corps show…gotta love ‘em. Really great stuff most of the time.

We went to Drums On the Ohio tonight at Central High School (in Evansville, Indiana).

The lineup-

Revolution
Memphis Sound
Blue Stars
Troopers
Spirit from JSU
Blue Devils

It was the 30th year for this event, and I’ve been the past 5 or 6 years. I went in high school every year as well, but that was 1997 and before. We had general reserved seating for $9. They moved it this to year from Reitz high school to Central high school. No idea why, and not sure where it will be next year. The seating at the new school is terrible compared to the old. The Reitz bowl (as they call it) is set into the ground in a bowl-like shape. The press box is set on a hill and the seats start from the top of the hill down a slope to the field and track below. So, you actually enter and go downhill to get to your seats, and it’s fairly deep, so there are a lot of seats and a lot of room. There’s very little room at Central (it seems much smaller, but I’ve no idea about square footage or anything). The seats are much smaller and much more cramped. No room for long legs.

The area is filled with more distractions too. The acoustics might actually be a bit better at Central, but there were cars driving by on the road next to the stadium which got annoying when used to Reitz and it’s relative isolation on a hill away from any surface streets.

The bands were all really great tonight. Corps from div iii and div i- 2 from div iii, in fact. The Troopers, who I have never seen susprised me with an exciting show that was halfway jazzy. Who knew? Revolution (a new corps, I guess) didn’t blow my socks off, but they were pretty good for their small size and obvious lack of a lot of funds (they had a small plastic covering and a table holding their merchandise…the others had trailers filled with goodies).

The Bluedevils were the main attraction, and they did blow my socks off. They had very cool visuals, the guard was actually interesting (and I usually say- you could do drum corps and drop guard totally and I wouldn’t be one bit upset- most of the time.) I probably wouldn’t have said that for BD tonight. Their show is jazzy, somewhat dark at points, very loud and very clean. Very very crisp from what I could tell with my semi-untrained ear. I’m a percussionist, so don’t ask me about horns. The drumline was very tight as well. Very cool moves from the snares. They transitioned from big low-toned drums on the sidelines back to the snares. They had a segment where they did very quick field movements ala the style usually seen with Cavaliers where they played the snares and the bigger drums in between notes. A lot of their field show itself reminded me of a Cavaliers-style show with the very tight moves at high speed. Dizzying in some regards.

The other corps had a good night as well, but you can’t help but concentrate on BD.

The encore…

I snapped this picture during the Blue Devils encore.

This is where the new venue was perfect. At Reitz- you cannot get this close. I walked down to the fence next to the track around the field…the pit was maybe 3 feet away. I could have had a conversation with the mallets if I wanted to.

This stuff was great. The Blue Devils are tight- they’re very loud, and very clean for the most part. High tenors in a concert arc- it’s mind blowing and ear-drum blowing. I personally like that stuff. From the looks of it, everyone else liked it too.

This was the best drum corps experience of my life. Even with better shows, you don’t get much better than listening to the Blue Devils in a concert arc feet from you. The battery was maybe 10 feet away.

I liked pretty much all of the corps tonight. And I liked all of their shows for the most part. There were parts of 1 or 2 of the shows I didn’t care for…they got a bit boring, but it was a nice surprise, as I usually dislike 1 or 2 shows during the night.

I might see about upcoming shows in Illinois or Ohio. Who knows.