yeah i agree. i personally dislike it when marching bands play overused, underskilled pieces like 'Louie Louie' just because the crowd at a FOOTBALL GAME likes it. the judges do know what they are doing most of the time, and i know that having good music is important. using harder music is a lot more interesting to an educated crowd than quarter notes with holds and one flag for the whole show, as in a normal 'traditional' style band.

The thing that is aggravting me is the fact that bands have the impression that they HAVE to play like this, or else they won't do well at competitions. And I DO understand what is graded on the rubric, i've seen the judges sheet and one paragraph tells judges to look for "artistic quality" (exact words) in a band, and to me that is pretty unfair. You could put together a stone castle on the field to serve as no purpose, other then as a backdrop and one of your scores could be greatly increased, and yet it has no relation to what should be judged. I hate the fact that some bands make immaculate props to sit on the field to "distract" the judges. Our band does not have a show to support any props like this because our music is unrelated. The only prop we use are balloons at the very beginning and our marching is exposed and not covered up by large props being towed across the field during a performance. Unfortunately this some bands have to do now to win at competitions, but I'm not saying it's the band's fault. I'm mad mostly at the people who had organized the marching competitions and had set the new trend for marching bands. I guess I'm just mad that judges aren't judging the things they used to, and they feel that all marching bands should play like this. If you think that football games should be used as a practice session then you are right, BUT it almost sounds as if you are saying: "Well, screw the audience...they don't care". Out where I come from our audience does care and they are very supportive of the band. Our audience also responds to our music by clapping along during our opener, Shine Down (basically our football team's theme song when they made it to the state playoffs about 10 years ago, and it looks like it's going to happen again this year too!). Our audience even applauds and cheers before our closer, Karn Evil 9, is done. Heck, they even cheer after we play our two middle songs: R-E-S-P-E-C-T and Mexican Hat Dance. If audiences don't respect THIS TYPE of music then their must be something wrong with them.

- Edited for double-posting. -
In response to Drummerbabe-

The music we play is not easy like that. The music is just as hard, If not harder then the music that other bands play. Louie Louie sux anyway. the only time I played that was in 8th grade at the pep assemblys and I hated it.

Tupid: ok now i must disagree with you, its coming off like you have a very narrow veiw of what modern marching bands should play.

the "artistic quality" u refered too was most likely directed towards music or drill design, that shows up on our sheets under music, which means what are we doing musicaly that is artistic, shaping, blend and balance, things like that. has nothing to do with props.

i don't know your background, but being a part of a show design team myself, i can tell you that there is certian formulas that bands usually go with.


having a ballad in a show, while unappealing to you, has a couple of uses, one being a moment to spotlight the wind ensemble, 2 it slows the pace of the show giving much needed downtime to prepare for the finale, if you went balls out from begining to end most bands would blow their chops out by the middle of the show.

as far as audience response, well a well designed show will factor crowd resonse with the critera on the judges sheets making everybody happy, but unfortunitly that is rare. while the crowd is a big part of why we do marching band most bands design their show around the sheets. most times it doesn't factor in what the crowd likes to see. unfortinitly thats the way it is.

i really don't look at marching band for cutting edge shows, my focus is mostly goes to DCI. this year was an excellent example. shows like SCV, BD, Cavies, Phantom, all had very crowd pleasing shows without eliberate themes and props.

i think you need to just relax and enjoy what your band is doing. let the trophys fall were they fall just have a good time.