Recently I came to possess a moldy VHS tape from my youth. Mom had cleaned out the basement and all of a sudden her keepsakes, became mine. One tape in particular was marked “spring 1994 SHS Jazz band, Channel 39”. My wife found the tape and recommended we watch it, with the kids. Chills ran down my spine. I was terrified of what forgotten nuggets of youth the tape would unearth. Scared yet? You should be scared. Some of you are on the tape with me. There we were, paisley ties, sun dresses, enough hairspray to choke the EPA. I had a crystal necklace and a hematite ring…doing our best to channel Glenn Miller while suffering through maybe the worst acoustics ever for a sound stage. “Moose the Mooche” “Misty” and what I know now to be the worlds worst arrangement of “Birdland” closed out the set. Honestly, for a high school jazz band we were good. Time, experience, and the fungus on the tape just didn’t do us justice.
Beyond the paisley, (I still have the tie) what was so scary was the large dose of reality the tape shoved down my throat. I have fond memories of playing in that band, the Jazz was good, people fun, and we got to travel a bit on the school’s time. The 6 year olds and 80 year olds loved us when we came to their schools/ nursing homes, and in my humble opinion messing around with the eighth note doublet (dot- dot, became do-dat) was the best thing to happen to music since the piano.
Back to the reality….listening to the tape, listening to the tape, ugh when will the tape be over? I can see “Big-A’s” hands waving frantically, the patterns on the sun dresses are blinding me, “Misty”, is soooo slow. A sticker of a bear with an umbrella on the bell of my trombone (still there) has spit on it. Painful. The camera man didn’t help much, he couldn’t zoom out enough to get the entire band, and focused intermittently on some people while ignoring others (may have something to do with the hair, in the 90’s it was always about the hair) Did we know it? Was it a bust of a show? Some people who were in the band are now professional musicians, what did they think of their first TV appearance? Until I watched the tape my memories of that day were happy, the show was a peach…”Birdland” sat down and swung like it was supposed to, “Misty” was fast, and my trombone solo was an in tune masterpiece fit for a virtuoso. The film proves otherwise.
Man reality sucks.
Writing this I keep thinking about Al Bundy, from “Married with Children.” (Bet you weren’t expecting that reference) For those of you who didn’t watch it or those who did but only paid attention to Christina Applegate, Al was an everyday man who peaked in high school. He had flashbacks of catching the game winning pass, but it was always clear his memory wasn’t true to history. For me high school was an unending day of mediocre classes shoved between music practice in the morning and performance in the evening….and those performances were all stellar. Music, not life, peaked in high school . I walked away from Jazz performance and the trombone on December 12, 1994….just walked away, maybe 6 months after that tape, ended 8 years of music after a show for a college function, and it wasn’t even good.
So here I am, one tape down one, memory shattered…..6 tapes to go. Do I watch them and take the chance that more memories will crash and burn? Is delusion of high school jazz grandeur dangerous? Really, I’m curious. It is great to see who was there, what we looked like, and the flood of memories like who was dating who, or what the prom was like. It is nice to think of the good times and find names to look up on facebook. But is it worth it? Not like I’m posing as a jazz great, or pretending the band was so cool as to have groupies, so why mess up what has been working for me for the past almost 20 years and stop the delusion. Finding out the truth didn’t help Truman any. I’m happily married with children, do I need any more reality than that?
Any thoughts out there? Those of you who were there….what do you think, let me know.
Jim,
ReplyDeleteI haven't played tuba in ten years (trombone even longer than that), and I am relieved there are no extant recordings of me playing, because I like to live with the happy memory that I was at least a pretty decent tuba player.
I'm not saying you should throw out the tapes, but maybe you could set them aside and possibly save them for another time.
In the meantime, my university's music department is going to let me practice on an old beater tuba (it's more dents than not, but at least it doesn't whistle from holes) because lately I've felt like I want to play again. Maybe, once I get my embouchure back in shape, I wouldn't mind hearing an old recording, because I could then put it all in perspective. We were just kids, after all.
Play again. Then listen to the old stuff. Maybe then you won't mind.
And don't forget to forgive your younger self for not living up to your older self's memories.