But just who scored?
I zoned out often during the ESPN2 telecast that was produced by Drum Corps International. Too bad I'm not a music educator or a high school band director and could have shared in their reported euphoria. Instead, sitting with my favorite non-drum-corps fan, I endured two of the lousiest hours of television I can remember. My recent context: just two nights prior, I had watched two hours of E! Entertainment's "The Girls Next Door." Hmmm ... now that I think about it, THOSE girls would have been much more entertaining than OUR champion's girls.
The telecast was not bad because it showed only 34 minutes of performance time, 28 percent of the show's running total, according to a good drum corps friend, alum, and statistician at heart.
It was not bad because the feature stories -- good topics all -- were simply too long and needed an editor. Plus, I suppose the heart monitor demonstration was new to the coveted high school band folks who must not have been watching television at all when a Star of Indiana performer was saddled up with the machine more than a decade ago for both television and a mention in Sports Illustrated.
The program was also not bad because the performance edits were generally stupefying, offering no context, and often belying the notion that these shows were the pinnacle of marching music today. Not much way to mess up Carolina Crown's elegance, the Bluecoats' innervated aggression, Phantom Regiment's sheer exhilaration, or The Cavaliers' profound professionalism; but "God bless you," as we say in the Deep South, to what came across as Boston's random knee-flexing jazz; Madison's ... ummm ... well, that ... how to be kind ... "show design" that won't hold up well over the test of time; the Blue Devils' directionless narrative-driven show; even the cheap trappings and *wink wink* attempt at cleverness, at least; at art, art (?) in the champion Cadets' deserved victory.
No, the program was not bad for any of those reasons. The program was bad because -- insert long-standing Field&Floor bias -- the folks in charge don't even honor the idiom of drum and bugle corps and proudly wave its banner. Over and over, ad nauseum, year in and year out, now for decades, we are presented coverage that says, in essence, "Watch us; we're worth it, this is a valid program, this is sport, this is art."
Sigh.
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