It’s weird the things that stick with you. I was sitting in fourth grade music class at West Elementary and the music teacher was explaining that the difference between a band and an orchestra was the presence of a string section. Orchestras had them; bands did not. A few years later I was in one of my first ever band classes at Long Beach Junior High. I looked around and saw the different sections of brass, woodwinds, and percussion. Sure enough, no strings – I guess we are a band.
The vague memories I have for seventh grade band tryouts are of us all lining up and taking our turns at every instrument fielded by the school’s band program. Apart from perhaps the saxophone, I found the woodwinds incredibly shrill and annoying, and I don’t think I had the rhythmic dexterity to wield drumsticks. They were out.
The brass section held more promise. I think I laughed when looking at French horn and trumpet mouthpieces more closely. They just seemed impossibly small to play. The bass section of brass instruments seemed more promising. However, hitting the proper positions of a trombone slide seemed like a perennial guessing game to me, so I preferred the definitive fingering positions of the baritone.
I soon learned there were some disadvantages of playing baritone. It is not a small instrument. Unlike a piccolo case that could fit into a backpack, manhandling that baritone shell and my bookbag on the bus and hauling them across campus every day was a pain in my ass.
At the end of the year, our band director asked if I wouldn’t mind transitioning to tuba and sousaphone. Mr. Hamilton was “car salesman” level persuasive, and I agreed. An immediate benefit was, because of its size, I was given permission to keep a tuba at home for practice. I no longer had to deal with schlepping one around every day.
For the next five years, I played tuba or sousaphone in every game, competition, concert, and hometown parade. Wikipedia lists “Special Effects” that can be done with the sousaphone. One of these was using a “sock” – tight fitting fabric fastened over the instrument’s bell. Larger bands would spell out the school’s name on these socks. We only did it once. One football game after hurricane Elena, the entire section converged at my house and we jerry rigged socks emblazoned with the hurricane logo. They were a hit, as Long Beach, along with the entire Mississippi coast, was still digging out and recovering from the recent storm.
Another effect was affixing flash paper inside the bell. Igniting it would look like the player was breathing fire. Now that would have been cool to pull off, and Mr. Hamilton is fortunate I was never aware this was possible.
A couple of the guys from band are still my closest friends, and a half dozen of us have our own group where we check in with current with band memes or videos and rehash old shenanigans. One that comes up often is a group of us walking down Magnolia Street after a parade, still in uniform, still with instruments. The (un)fortunate residents in that neighborhood were subjected to an impromptu concert with our rendition of J. Geils Band’s “Centerfold”.
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