Well, after all my grandstanding about buying a Yamaha personal watercraft, Wife finally took the leash off me and sent me to the music store to buy a Yamaha saxophone for Chubs. Technically, we are renting, but even if it doesn't work for Chubs, I intend to keep the instrument as I had been wanting to buy a sax for me to play. Instruments are not cheap, this one, a student beginner version, was $2100. I added an extra mouthpiece, so Chubs and I don't have to share, and that was $240. Everything was expensive, I don't know how my parents just went along with this, maybe mine was $800 back in the day, but that is a lot of money. Even a box of 10 reeds was $32. I would buy a new reed once in a while at school. There was always great care with these, they were made of thin wood (reason it is called a woodwind instrument) but were supposed to last months. My parents did alright, but they had four kids in the house. I was trying to do like I like and just getting everything, but damn! Everything the guy suggested just looked like dollar signs after awhile.
But I am excited that Chubs is choosing to follow in my footsteps and play my instrument. Last year, he was talking about the clarinet, and I just made a face like when you taste something gross. Not to be sexist, but as I remember my favorite band director telling me "all the great instrumentalists have been men.", so even if he played clarinet he could be good at it, but back in our marching band at home, flutes and clarinets were for the girls. There was a time back in the jazz days of the 1940s when the clarinet was more popular and would even carry a song, but modern jazz doesn't really incorporate that sound anymore.
I have to control my urges to push him, he has to be comfortable with what he is doing. I was always competitive, when I saw there was a Jazz band which was much smaller and frequently had solo breaks for an individual to play something by himself, I needed to be part of that. I remember in every outing with the jazz band, I would have a solo, I loved that stuff. It was much harder to shine in the marching band, and then my sophomore year, I was asked to join the drum section to play the tri toms, three drums, set at different pitches. The drum section was pretty much filled with dodos, and the tri-toms required some ability to read music and lead. The rest of my time was spent with the orchestra band, so yeah, it was band year round and I loved the camaraderie and everything that it involved.
I don't want to get ahead of myself, and push Chubs, he has to want to do it, or he will be miserable as my brothers and sister were. I imagine he will be back in Austin by high school and if we still live here, he will be playing with the Akins band. They have gone and competed at the state level, so they have good people in there, and I have seen them practicing, they resemble our marching band, over 100 members out there. I won't get excited just yet, but I am staring at a brand new saxophone sitting on my kitchen table, so that is something, I hope.
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