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First Friday Night Lights Performances


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Vandegrift has the most interesting show of the bunch. I love how it subverts the tropes of the typical "Planets" show. For instance, who would have thought of opening a show with Mercury, of all the movements? And then the predictable movements like Mars and Jupiter are played in ways that I haven't really heard them played before. It's all very fascinating. I think they're putting on a strong early season performance in that video as well, though I don't know if it's the best-performed show of the Austin BOA groups I've seen. For instance, I think Cedar Park sounds better, but it's definitely close.

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Love how different each of the LISD shows are. Each band has certainly established an identity and are really playing to their strengths this year. maybe its just the hype being generated on this board, but I really feel like these bands are going all out with these shows this year. It'll be interesting to see how/when each group peaks and who will peak at the right time.

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Looking forward to another great year - in just 48 hours we will begin to see the early shows for the BOA cycle with McAllen and Austin shows opening up but the real tests will coming in the following  weeks in October with the Conroe and NTX show.

 

it is a shame that Grand Nats does not rotate sites - would love to see it in Texas and see the flood of Texas bands that could challenge the Avon/Carmel domination as they can appear every year in their back yard

 

looking forward to great season and good luck to all

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Looking forward to another great year - in just 48 hours we will begin to see the early shows for the BOA cycle with McAllen and Austin shows opening up but the real tests will coming in the following  weeks in October with the Conroe and NTX show.

 

it is a shame that Grand Nats does not rotate sites - would love to see it in Texas and see the flood of Texas bands that could challenge the Avon/Carmel domination as they can appear every year in their back yard

 

looking forward to great season and good luck to all

 

Don't get on the Music for All forums and say that. You'll have every arrogant Indiana jerk trashing you there in mere seconds! Even the moderators. As Texans, we're beneath them in every way. I found out the hard way just how unfriendly they are there. It's a real shame how insulting and vicious they are. I'm not ever even going to read or comment in those forums again. I made comments that were very flattering and just plain band fan friendly and was attacked full force as if I had said something against Indiana bands. I even tried to explain myself and was further pooped on. Nope, never again.

 

On a humerous note, I was in a downtown Indianapolis hotel riding the elevator down to go to the GN finals in 2013. Several of the people on the elevator were band parents from different Texas bands and we were having polite conversation and wishing each other a great perfoamance in the finals. Right before we arrived at the lobby, one very crabby woman asked what schools we were all here to see. She stated that she was there for Carmel and that "Texas bands never win here". I guess The Woodlands ruined her night!

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Don't get on the Music for All forums and say that. You'll have every arrogant Indiana jerk trashing you there in mere seconds! Even the moderators. As Texans, we're beneath them in every way. I found out the hard way just how unfriendly they are there. It's a real shame how insulting and vicious they are. I'm not ever even going to read or comment in those forums again. I made comments that were very flattering and just plain band fan friendly and was attacked full force as if I had said something against Indiana bands. I even tried to explain myself and was further pooped on. Nope, never again.

 

On a humerous note, I was in a downtown Indianapolis hotel riding the elevator down to go to the GN finals in 2013. Several of the people on the elevator were band parents from different Texas bands and we were having polite conversation and wishing each other a great perfoamance in the finals. Right before we arrived at the lobby, one very crabby woman asked what schools we were all here to see. She stated that she was there for Carmel and that "Texas bands never win here". I guess The Woodlands ruined her night!

 

I'm really hoping Texas does "really" well this year.  That topic was getting kinda nasty, really shocked me how many on there only defined success as winning, there's a lot more to it than that in this activity.  To be fair, some Texas people were getting really feisty on there, some times it's best just not to respond, I've learned that over the years on DCP, here, ect.  

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This isn't a video, but I've been tracking The Woodlands' music performances on their football radio network. Here's a link to tonight's performance. It was homecoming, so the band performed their show after the football game. The plus to that is that it's a lot quieter than usual, and you can hear the music really, really well. The show announcement starts at 3:02, but if you'd like, you can hear the percussion and band warming-up/practicing bits of their show music beforehand. This is around the time of year that I usually see my first good Woodlands video. I'm still hopeful one will come out. That said, I gotta say, although this isn't the best recording in the world and maybe I'm overrating it a bit, it's pretty clear that The Woodlands sounds freaking SPECTACULAR this year. They're playing so many more notes than usual, and they're doing it so well that it just boggles my mind. And all the choirs sound so freaking powerful. My jaw hit the floor listening to it. And just when I thought they were going to sound old-fashioned this year with all that Mahler stuff, they throw in those weird, distorted bits and that ballad, which, by the way, sounds like the thing Avon opened with in 2013. Again, not the best recording, and maybe the quality of sound they're producing live isn't actually that good, but man... I don't know. If the visual matches the music, we're looking at our second Eagle contending show of the season, along with Avon's.

 

https://archive.org/details/TWHSvsConroeSegment

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Don't get on the Music for All forums and say that. You'll have every arrogant Indiana jerk trashing you there in mere seconds! Even the moderators. As Texans, we're beneath them in every way. I found out the hard way just how unfriendly they are there. It's a real shame how insulting and vicious they are. I'm not ever even going to read or comment in those forums again. I made comments that were very flattering and just plain band fan friendly and was attacked full force as if I had said something against Indiana bands. I even tried to explain myself and was further pooped on. Nope, never again.

I"m glad I'm not the only one that has noticed that about the moderators. There is one in particular that needs to go sit in a time out corner. And on another note, good luck to all the bands today. May the force be with you.  :)

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I"m glad I'm not the only one that has noticed that about the moderators. There is one in particular that needs to go sit in a time out corner. And on another note, good luck to all the bands today. May the force be with you.  :)

I have noticed that - stayed a spectator and did not get into the fray - in McAllen today to see the shows - lots of great bands that we do not normally see in BOA and it is interesting that MFA/BOA added the BOA Austin 2-3 years ago and has now added the McAllen show this year and has 30+ bands today.

the largest growth of BOA is in Texas and you could argue that the SA Super Regional is more competitive than GN - would love to see Broken Arrow trek to the Alamodome in October - would bet that the next BOA addition would be a regional in San Antonio earlier in the season - like they do in Indy with a regional and a super regional

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I think the McAllen regional serves as the SA regular regional you speak of. It allows SA area bands something else to go to besides the Super. Pretty straight forward how most BOA Texas bands will go to their closest big city regional and most all will go to the Super in SA. This way SA bands are not having to go to Houston or Dallas just to get to another regional. Austin, although a young regional is certainly one of the most competitive. McAllen not as much but can pick up 2-3 good SA bands, and some SA bands will opt to go to Austin instead.

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I'm glad I got around to watching that Wakeland video, because I am FLOORED by it. One of my favorite shows this season, especially visually (though it's not clean yet). We'll be seeing them in national finals in a year or two, or whenever they decide to go again.

 

I agree, nice show. They'll need to clean up their sound, but many other elements in their show are going quite well. I was impressed with them last year and am expecting them to continue to improve and be a real contender. I was pulling for them at the Grand Nationals last year and hated to see the semifinal performance just miss the cut for finals. Funny though, I thought their semifinal perfomance was as good as the bottom few bands performance in the finals.

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The latest from Leander including the third movement:

 

 

 

The drill is obviously very new, but I'm kind of sensing they're going to add in a move around 7:00 that resembles something like the jazz running The Woodlands did in 2013. And man, their brass sounds really really good. They could definitely medal again in San Antonio, but I guess that's true for like 7 or 8 other groups as well.

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Oh, absolutely loving that closer from Leander right now. Obviously, looks like more drill to put down yet

but the visual and splash of color at the end makes for some great GE moments. Can't wait to see the

actual final product. San Antonio is going to be absolutely sick this year...

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I'm happy that Leander has seemed to try to ease the transition into the Glass symphony. I think it's working better than it was before. Musically and visually, some of the first parts of the show still lack a bit of clarity, but I won't really worry about that unless the issues are still there when I see it (or don't see it) at San Antonio. I think Leander would also benefit from building up to the climax of their ballad even more and hitting that climax HARD. Right now, it's a little underwhelming. That said, let me say this about the closer: I think musically it's the single most interesting thing I've heard this year. It's strange and jazzy and really quite wonderful. Visually, it's very colorful, though I don't think the colors will make them stand out as much as the music. If the rest of the drill matches the music, and if Leander is able to add a little bit more finesse and clarity to their performance, I don't see why they couldn't win the San Antonio Super Regional based on what I've seen so far.

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Not a fan of that synth fill at 0:51 and 1:04 in Leander's show.  Too much distortion. 

I don't know if they got the EQ right, added more voices or more voice synth to the choral section during the intro, but I feel like that section has really fleshed out in the past few weeks.

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