June 23, La Crosse, WI

Thanks to David Miller on RAMD for this review!


Since I posted the scorees a few days ago, I thought I'd let you all know 
a little bit about the show from a percussionist's point of view. 

Nite Express--46.4
-Personally, I thought that they should have scored in the low 50's. 
Their drumline was really tight, especially the snares and basses. There 
was a few fracked notes in each of the solos, but it's still early. The 
Blue Stars scored a 45.6, and I thought that Nite Express was MUCH cleaner.

Glassmen--63.7
-This year their on-field warmup is a quick little number involving only 
the horns and the pit (no battery). The really strange part is that the 
warmup has a drill. Thats right, they march through their warmup. 
-The opener was really, really, really loud. And very cool. After about 30 
seconds of that ear shattering playing, they slow down and the drummers 
do this ballet-like dance/drill. This looks just plain goofy, but it is 
even worse considering that the drummers aren't wearing their hats, and 
most of them have shaven heads. 
-The writing seemed to be pretty good, but don't go to the show expecting 
to hear Bach. I only recognized a few phrases. 
-As other people have already said, the G-Men have brought back all of 
the annoying toys....those big lame REMO world percussion drums, the 
oh-so-famous SPOKE TENORS that we all love so much, and the snares play a 
solo using a rack like last year. They also used brushes on the tenors, 
which sounded like hell. Oh, they also borrowed BD's idea and have cut 
off scuba tanks in the pit. 
-One more thing.....the snares have MYLAR HEADS!!!  Man, does it ever 
sound like mush. If you're gonna use mylar, at least tune them a little bit.

Phantom Regiment--70.9
-WOW. I missed Drumcorps. This is gonna be a good season. 
-The drums (Premier) are purple with black hardware. I have been looking 
into buying a snare from a corps after their season, and I think that I'm 
going to try to get one of these. They are just beautiful. Very mystic.
-The snares weren't tuned quite as high as '94. Close, but not quite. 
They sounded much better in the ensemble this way. 
-The tenors have the same toys as last year...the cymbal thinggy for a 
spock, plus the two jam blocks, which are by the cymbal in the middle 
now. 
-The slow section was good, but not nearly as dramatic and emotional as 
1994.
-For props they had these giant white rectangle frames that the 
colorguard and/or snares were holding in front of the soloists. They were 
neat, but they kind of looked like the biggest roll of toilet paper that 
you have ever seen.
-The drumline this year is TIGHT. damn tight. They were much more exposed 
than last years too. The snare line of 9 people was very locked in. I 
watched them the whole time, and I only heard them off 2 times. Both 
times were during really loud loud loud parts. 
-I was mildly dissapointed by the guard, though. Last year they seemed 
very graceful and elegant. This year they are, well, ugly. They are 
wearing these light purple sleeveless body suits. I hope they change the 
uni's and practice a lot before August.


If anyone has any questions or comments, feel free to mail me. Go ahead 
and flame if you want, these are just my opinions, though.

Andrew M. Miller
Chopstix Percussion Marimba 1995

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