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Dirty-South Blues Harp forum: wail on! >
A Long, True Tale of Music and More
A Long, True Tale of Music and More
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Randy G. Blues
178 posts
Apr 12, 2010
11:45 AM
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A Humorous Story
Being a Slightly Exaggerated
Overly Long
And Partially Irreverent Tale
Of Music and Aromas
And True as Well
So Help Me God
With Enough Musical Content to be Relevant
© Randy G.
It can be a bit of a curse to be able to make music. The more you work at it the better you get, and the better you get the more painful badly played music can be whether it is yours or created by someone else.
I try to carefully listen to my own playing. At the few times my mind is able to multitask, I attempt to pay special attention to tonality, accuracy, appropriate volume levels, and so on. The more I do this the more I notice my mistakes, and the more critical I become of my playing and singing. It's good because it helps me become a better player, "better" being a relative term, of course. At the same time, and to the same extent, I become more critical of the playing of others. It makes me appreciate good playing all the more because I appreciate the time and effort involved, but it also makes mediocre or bad playing that much more painful and annoying to endure. It's the old story of, "a curse and a blessing."
This past weekend we attended a 50th wedding anniversary party for a community-resident couple. It was held at our local, small, rural church were the husband is the maintenance person. We met him and his wife about 20 years ago when they were stranded after running off the road after a snow storm. We were in our chained-up 4WD Blazer so we gave them a ride to where they needed to go.
The party this past weekend included a ceremony to reaffirm their vows, and I was unaware of that part, having only been told it was going to be a party... If I knew I probably would have dressed a bit better. The crowd was mostly older, a good many attendees being in their 60s and 70s. Much of the crowd was dressed leisurely, so I did not feel at all out of place.
The room is probably a bit smaller then most would envision when thinking "church." I will guess and say the room is 40 x 60 feet, with a vaulted ceiling about 15 feet high at its center. The room is simply decorated, well lit, and beautifully kept- bright and clean. Six ceiling fans keep the environment very pleasant, and even with my marginal back, the pews were actually comfortable, spaced far enough to leave ample room to cross my legs comfortably.
After being seated, the crowd awaited the beginning of the ceremony. During that time the room was filled with live music played on a large vibraphone. The score was somewhat repetitive and while it was played with sufficient accuracy, it was not the most pleasing musical performance I have ever endured. Parts of the score seemed somewhat appropriate, but others made me think that the villain was about to enter, preparing to tell poor Tess that the mortgage was due in just three hours and she would be evicted.... UNLESS she agreed to join Snidely in marriage! MWAHH Ha Haaaa... (twists end of long mustache).
After about fifteen or twenty minutes of this the ceremony began. Candles were lit and a procession down the center aisle took place. The wife wore the same dress in which she was married. While it had yellowed just a bit, it fit her quite well. We should all be so lucky to enjoy fifty years of marriage and be able to wear the same attire we donned half-a-century earlier. Their smiles and adoring looks towards each other during the ceremony showed that they did, indeed, enjoy he time they have had together. It made me think about my nearly 39 years of marriage to my high-school sweetheart, whether we will make 50, and whether or not she wants to.
My concentration on the ceremony was interrupted no less than five times when various cellphones rang in the room, each followed by the rustling of clothing. It was just amazing to me. The first ring in the room could certainly be a mistake- we all make them. Someone forgot to turn off their phone. But wouldn't that be a reminder to the others to turn their devices off? "I don't want that to happen to me. Better check my phone!" But no. Two ringtones were each heard twice, so it was not just a matter of forgetting but inappropriate behavior.
Two of the rings came from the woman seated next to me (not my wife). When she was first seated next to me she carried with her a potent cloud of perfume. My wife does not use any such products, neither do we use air fresheners, scented detergents, nor any other perfumed product in our home, so I suspect that such aromas are stronger to me that they would be to the general public. Still, I could barely take it and at one point I nearly got up to leave. After a few minutes the wafting cloud of her perfume subsided a bit, but it was followed by an aroma I wish not to discuss further than to say that I scooted over towards my wife as far as I could and kept my head turned away from the stranger.
There's nothing you can do in that situation. Moving away would cause a disturbance. If you choose to just sit there you have to take it in silence. There are few ways, if any, in which to broach the subject to a stranger without the possibility of causing a scene, or worse, possibly earning a beat-down from her significant other. "Dear madam, I hope it is because you have trodden in something on the way here this fine afternoon."
I began to think that I was being tested by some higher authority as the room's ventilation system kept me on the leeward side of her throughout the ceremony, offering me at various time the alternating aromas of alcohol-wafted floral fields followed by that of bodily function. I tried not to judge. We all have the potential of being the carrier of such an odor, and at various times have done the same, but when her cell phone rang I lost any sympathy I could have previously mustered for her.
An upright piano was used at different points to accompany other portions of the ceremony and it sounded as if it were tuned by an amateur. Some of the chords sounded quite odd..JI vs. ET tuning I guess. Maybe it was just dropped off a loading platform at some time during its long life.. I don't know. It was not pleasant. Whenever it played I kept waiting for the screen to drop and a silent Buster Keaton feature to begin.. In my mind I was thinking "Hooterville" (a la "Green Acres"). The addition of some frayed straw hats for the men and artificial-flower covered hats for the ladies, and Mr. Haney charging twenty-five cents per person for cups of punch would have completed the scene.
A young woman sang at one point, and she accompanied herself on an acoustic guitar, but she had evidently failed to re-tune the instrument coming from the outdoors where it was cold and rainy to the heated and dry indoors. The effect was very annoying. She had a pleasant voice and her intonation was good, but the out-of-tune guitar was grating to say the least. My wife whispered in my ear, "You think she can play the blues?" I replied, "I don't think she even knows what the blues are," and we quietly giggled.
Next was a harp (stringed variety) player who was actually very good and pleasant to the ears. It's sound filled the room nicely. Quite enjoyable and a real relief at this point.
At the end of the ceremony as the crowed filed out into the reception room there was live organ music. While the choice of music can be debated with no real winner, the volume could not. It was loud- unpleasantly loud. Very much foreground music when background music would have been the thing. It was being played through the two, ceiling mounted monitor speakers and even though we were sitting about twelve rows back it was quite uncomfortable.
I am not a church-goer, and I find organized religion to be contrary to what I think religion should be. When it comes to issues of morality I tend to be more a man of deed than word, or at least try the best I can. So with no basis in knowledge of their ceremonial moires I was a bit perplexed when all the instrumentals were each followed by a congregational-wide "Amen." I assumed that the tunes being played had specific significance of which I am unaware, but the Amens for instrumentals had the effect of making the crowd seem just a little too thankful.. How far does it go? Can it go too far? When does too much thanks dilute the adoration? "Thank you, Lord, for giving us this plastic silverware with which we are about to enjoy your bounty in the form of this frosted wedding cake from Von's Market... Amen." Anyway...
While music certainly has inspirational powers which dip deep into our past as well as our genetics, my thought throughout the ceremony was that I was being presented with a small taste, a sampling if you will, of my own, private, personal Hell, if I believed in Hell. An eternity of out-of-tune guitars, overly-long organ tunes played too loudly through PA systems that give the music weird resonances that grate, and oddly tuned pianos that sound a bit honky-tonk, but playing music that should not sound at all like honky-tonk, while I sit, surrounded by rude, smelly people with ringing cellphones loaded with inappropriate ringtones.
I hope the harp I had in my pocket that day is not now cursed. It does not yet smell of brimstone, but you never know... A dip into Holy Water before playing it again may be in order.
A true story, so help me God, whilst I duck from the impending lightening strike.
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bluemoose
179 posts
Apr 12, 2010
9:42 PM
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(I've always wondered how they fit such great long stories into this little box? :)
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nacoran
1643 posts
Apr 12, 2010
10:32 PM
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Nice! I think it's true of anything you can get good at will then become annoying to you when not done well, from music to straightening picture.
My personal version of this hell is office work that is done backwards. I once was doing volunteer work for a very worthy charitable organization. In the course of the day I was handed a stack of legal papers and told they needed to be translated into braille. Although the papers had started their day on a computer they were no longer a wonderful string of 1's and 0's. They needed to be typed back in... and then read aloud so that the person with the machine to print out braille, who was visually impaired, could type them in.
I couldn't believe that in this day and age they couldn't just take the original document and feed it into a machine that would print out braille, or at least read out the words for the typist, or at least save the document in the first place. I suppose if I wasn't doing this as a volunteer it wouldn't have bothered me as much, but I was trying to get a feeling that was accomplishing something. And if I didn't know anything about technology, things like voice simulation software computer interfaces it wouldn't have bothered me, but because I knew it could be done better it drove me nuts.
But at least no one was wearing too much perfume.
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Nate
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