Its been a great year with Block Band ths year, as a goal myself and a few staff members made it down to Honda. I really enjoyed myself. I haven't been to Honda since 2004, but I'm definitely going to have to make this a regular event again.
Anyway those sitting around me could see that I had my notepad in hand.
Anyway those sitting around me could see that I had my notepad in hand.
What's scribbled on those notes will be available to everyone over the course of the next few hours.
So the question,
Are you Ready for the Honda Prunalysis??
The Prunester...Telling it like it is.
Replies
(With my best corpstlye announcer voice on). First up in field performance today, The Sonic Boom of Jackson State. It was a great move to open up with Jackson State. Jackson woke everyone up with a very powerful performance of “Talkin Out The Side of Your Neck” as a drum major intro.
Right after that performance entrance though there was a lot of dead time as the band prepared for the “Tiger Run On”. Very anti-climatic. This dead time took away from the energy and flow of the show.
JSU continued their shows with all of their traditions starting with the “Tiger Run On”, “Blowin’”, “Get Ready” and floating JSU across the field.
The tiger run was exciting to watch. JSU sounded well-balanced (great trumpets). The tuba sound was almost totally lost during the beginning of “Get Ready”. Not that they weren’t playing I, but the sound of their roughly 16 tuba was just lost in the Georgia Dome.
Nice full mellophone note at the end of the song.
More to come.
Great energy from the drum majors, though the marching from the band was pretty poor. Although all formations were relatively tight, there was very little high knew lift from the band. Little energy.
Great sound from the band! Here’s the only thing, all of that great sound was going into in the end zones and very little of it was being heard.
JSU may want to adopt of concept of doing step-2 for a little while and then facing the crowd for a while to keep the connection. The concept playing to the end zones helped JSU to begin to lower their crowd when their overall power should have made them win the crowd.
There was a mellophone player out of line on about the 45 yard line on the South side of the field. (The West side is always the home side, so use that info to triangulate where he was).
“Fantastic Voyage”- The mellophones said “yes” on the chorus of this great piece. Good job mellos.
Slow Song – “What’s Love Got To Do With It?” I’ve been waiting on someone to play this truly perfect song for band.
The beginning of the arrangement was funky with a nice groove laid done the tuba, with the trombone and baritones laying it down over top of them (great glissing in the t-bones).
JSU really grabbed the crowd as the trumpet took over. A huge portion of the crowd started singing. The band sounded powerful and well balanced during the chorus. The rest of the song gave the band some problems though. Every section played their parts well, but the trumpets were considerably weaker in their low register, and the baritones were having a very hard time cutting through. Perhaps the trombones should rejoin the baritones here.
More to come.
Featured Dancer Tune – “What Song Was This?”
The trumpets were not solid here. The baritones definitely were.
Dance Routine
“Bia Bia” – The band has a Wyle Out Section (which are never very effective to me). A lot of attention was focued on 2 wind players who did not make it back to their spots. There simply mistakes cast a lot of aspersions of JSU’s dance routine. “This Is How We Do It” – Great low notes from the tuba throughout particularly on the very last note.
“JSU Rocks The House” – Not very effective. This seems to only work if there is a JSU friendly crowd.
Over the routine was ok, but watching JSU’s drumline was well worth the wait. They really get into everything that play and provide a lot of energy. Last song and field exit. Nice high mellophones notes. JSU’s lines were really not straight as they exited the field.
The Blowdown.
This seemed to be everyone’s favorite part of JSU’s show. They exited with tremendous power particularly in the mellophones. The drumline added so much energy to the Blowdown.
More to come...
Jackson State exhibited so much power during their show, but so much of it was lost as the band faced the endzone for almost the entire drill. This really took away from the impact of the show.
This combined with the low energy in the show made it well, kinda average. Except of course for JSU's drumline which made the show fun to watch.
The Prunester...Telling it like it is.
Next up...VSU
Virginia State University
VSU's show started with a rather surprisingly short drill to the song "Celebration". I thought they were borrowing a page out of BCU's book.
After transitioning to a concert shell, the band began to play Fantasia's "Pieces of Me".
From the back, VSU really seemed to possess a very warm and controlled sound.
On of the majorettes dropped her baton during the climax of the song.
Very interesting ending to the song.
Great high trumpet notes. This band really plays with a lot of great tone quality and control.
Drill - "Back in Stride" - Really clean marching. Good high-knee lift.
I noticed that the multi-toms did not play at any time during this close quarters drill. This is not a put down just an observation. There was one really cool part were all of the multi-toms turned to the side and exactly the same time, during a pass through.
This was a really good drill performance from VSU. They really executed all of their drill formations very well.
More to come...
VSU brought out a gospel choir to perform with them during their next concert selection.
Please help me to identify the name of the gospel song.
Initially I couldn't tell if they were a drill team or not since they all marched unto the field.
Nice choreography in the choir. I will say that this was the first time I had ever seen the matrix performed in a gospel song. Unfortunately although the lead singer was very audible through his microphone, it was very hard to hear the choir in the background.
After the gospel song, VSU transitioned via drill to another formation. Once again, VSU's drills look really good.
Great trombone melody in the next song. (Please help me to identify the song). The song also had a very creative ending.
More to come...
VSU Dance Routine
Round of Applause - This was the most commonly played song of the whole night.
Chopper Style - The sousaphones throughout the entire dance routine were creating a tremendous amount of sound. Way to support your band, horsepower.
Lotus Flower Bomb - VSU's bass drums are rocking. The entire dance routine seemed like a tonal bass drum feature. They did a great job of adding energy and finesse to the routine without being overbearing.
The band ended their show with a great sound performance of "Party Rock Anthem".
More to come...
Ok, so here is where many of my Bandhead.org peeps may disagree with me.
I will admit VSU's performance wasn't terribly exciting, but their skillful marching, high-energy knee-lift, great sound, incredible sousaphone section, and technical bass drums put gave them the edge over JSU.
In addition, VSU continued to deliver sound to their side instead of sending all of it to the sidelines.
Props to VSU for a technically sound performance.
So far...
First place - VSU
Second Place - JSU
The Prunester...Telling it like it is.
South Carolina State University
Wow, 13 bass drums.
South Carolina State looks large as they wrap around almost the entire field.
The drum major look very uniform on the field as the audience waits for the band to make their entrance.
The auxiliary are grouped into 2 tight groups on the field. Their positioning adds to the feeling of visual anticipation which makes SCSU's entrance all the more exciting. Later as the rest of the band entered the field they encircled the drum majors in another visually interesting formation.
Before a note was played, SCSU played an intro video on the Georgia Dome's jumbotron to the tune of “O Fortuna.” The video was actually very well done and recapped their performance from the previous show. The video focused on the fact that the show would be new and that last year was only a sample. It did a great job of heightening suspense about the upcoming show.
Interestingly enough while everyone’s attention was on the jumbotron, the band adjusted from straight lines to a very interesting curvilinear formation. (Note when the band first entered the field, there were some very, very noticeable spacing problems on the North end of the band in the woodwind section).
Next SCSU’s pit (yes I said Pit) opened with a beautiful sound. SCSCU has made me a believer in having a pit. The pit gave the band a warm symphonic-like sound similar to that of the movie. Seems like quality instruments were used here.
The pit traded licks back and forth with drum corps features in the battery percussion.
Slowly wind sections of the band started to join the group. This was aided by the band using not one but three directors to conduct. The multiple directors only added to the grandioso of SCSU’s entrance.
The band continued to crescendo and crescendo until….
More to come…
SCSU’s Band continued to crescendo until the wrong thing happened.
The band opened up and unleashed a massive wave of sound…TO THE ENDZONES.
I simply could not believe that just happened. SCSU clearly had the most dramatic, creative and suspenseful entrance of the whole day and the effect of the entire thing was completely lost when the band reached its climax facing away from the home side.
I hope that they adjust this in the future. This one tragic flaw took what probably would have been a great show and lowered it to something else.
Drill – “Ride A Rocket” by the Brothers Johnson
The band eventually did turn to the front and give us great sound, but by then the effect was lost. Even so, SCSU’s sound was very big. The end of this song featured a great run in the trumpets. The formations during this first drill were clear for the most part, but there were areas of discrepancy.
Drill 2 – “Once Beaten, Twice Shy”
The next drill was not so clean though. My biggest issue personally with the show at this point was the music selection. The audience did not seem to recognize the more obscure songs played in SCSU’s show. SCSU was performing pretty well but the show was losing energy because the band did not seem to connect with its audience. It seems that sometimes State goes back a little “too far” in the music crate. Reminds me of when the band played “Spend the Night” by Earth, Wind & Fire back at “Defeat the Beat” in Charlotte in 2010. The same loss of connection despite an otherwise pretty good performance happened here as well.
“Spotlight Groove” – This was a highpoint in SCSU’s show. The playing here was really good. Solid sound in the band. Solid marching as well.
More to come…
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