31 years later and one has to wonder, was Curt Gowdy reading the newspaper as this show was playing ? ? it's the only explanation I can come up with. Unless he was having some kind of PTSD from finals in '88 & '89, which was in Kansas City.
How did you get a high cam? I only have the legacy DVD with multicam. Can you still get these somehow? 1991 in high cam only? That would be incredible!
Thanks for posting this, Scott! Still to this day one of the most amazing shows ever put on the field. First time I’ve seen that drill from the top in a very long time. Breathtaking!
Star of India 93' had better music and overall sensitivity to musicianship. Drumline WAY better. Cadets 93' had better drill, visuals, and overall general effect. Hornline was WAY better.
7:48 to 8:40 is THE most glorious minute I've ever heard on a field. Absolutely shocking. I always loved Medea by Barber. It's heavenly and magnificent from start to finish. I can't believe I'm hearing it played with such utter musicianship and finesse by a marching brass ensemble- by this great drum corps. Notice the unbelievable applause. That's the greatest applause I've ever heard after a DCI corps. Can you just imagine how much this music grew on the players over the months? If I were in this corps in 1993 I would be beautifully haunted the rest of my life whenever I heard these pieces. I am sure I would cry a little each time. And what's amazing is that they're too TOTALLY different composers. When I first heard Medea I thought it would make a great drum corps piece. And haven't some corps done it since?
Notably, Crown did it in 2016 while Matt Harloff, head drum major of Star 93', was the brass head for Crown. I'm sure it was a massive throw back and tribute to Star.
What a stupid thing for the announcer to say: "A lot of people don't like this music. Barber and Bartok." How provincial. Here we have one of the greatest corps in history getting criticized for being too patriotic the year before, and now that they literally become the New York Philharmonic on the field, people STILL have negative things to say? Unbelievable. What on earth is wrong with Barber? Or the great master Bartok?! This is the greatest musical achievement of any drumcorps to date. That I am aware of. And they did it ALL while moving. Not a moment of park and bark. They are so in sync too with their movements, and the music is so clear, and they have the best dynamic range I've ever heard. This is the first time I've heard this performance. This was the FUTURE of drum corps. Great classical music performances on the field. Some day more corps will attempt this quality again, instead of cluttering the music with props galore, gay pride rainbow tarps, (Cavies 18), and pop song tracks or voiceovers covering up entire drum lines performances.
This band had determination. They started the season in Flight 2, then jumped up to Flight 1 despite having just under 90 members. In an upset, they won the Flight 1 state title, then went on to place 3rd at the BOA Toldeo regional, and ended the season in 13th (out of 14) in Grand National Finals.
This was such a difficult show to learn. We all pulled it off here at Grand Nationals. This music and the show in general was considered pretty innovative for the time.
They should but they won't. In that age you watched as they went form to form and you watched it build. Now they run to a spot, then stop and pop. They might have 5 singers on the sideline singing 4 part harmony plus the synthesizer shaping notes for them or, at a minimum, raising the bass by 10 decibels. Some people think that 2023 drum corp is so much better than 1991 or 1985 drum corp. I disagree.
It always struck me as odd that people refer to this show as being ahead of its time when this approach to musicality never really took hold in the activity. There was a trend towards abstraction after this, but honestly even that didn't take hold for very long. If you look at modern drum corps, it has much more in common with the meta of this era than Star: a tendancy to not use much open space musically, frequent, large-scale musical arrival points to keep the crowd engaged, shows centered around an easily identifiable theme, sometimes going up to an explicit storyline with narration, etc. Sure, the body choreography took hold, and the way that front ensemble writing was done changed after this show, but in all seriousness, the list of shows that have approached abstraction, modernism and musical minimalism in a similar way is an extremely, extremely sparse category. This show wasn't ahead of its time, its time never actually came. Which makes it seem all the more alien and innovative given the time that has passed.
The being ahead of its time is more the visual approach where the full corps "dances" and has movement typical of the color guard like we are seeing today
Full Disclosure- Star Alum: This is the most misunderstood show ever. 1. Musically the textures were supported by STRONG MELODIES, it wasn't texture for textures sake. 2. The chorography was supremely musical and there just to check a box, unlike today where it is referred to as "vocabulary." Not for nothing- a language with 3-5 words is not a language, thus the term "vocab" is completely stupid.
did they? (they played something "quite similar" in 2005 as well, called "False Mirrors," composed by Jay Bocook, Cadets brass arranger, and I'd bet it was meant to sound like this music (couldn't get the rights perhaps. I was asked to compose something in the style of Danny Elfman myself, because (guess what:) the school couldn't/wouldn't get the rights to the actual music.
The cross on one side, the reforming it on the other side, along with that music, at that tempo, is probably the best 30 seconds in drum corps history.
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The drill at 8:16...sublime...and amazing. That's a visual style we've lost...the drill as an evolutionary part of the show instead of just staging for the next stand-still scale feature.
