Poll: Happy Independence Day 2023! Doing anything special for the holiday?

It's just pouring here, so I'm spending time cleaning unused apps off my phone.

More productive than anything I could come up with, did bake a loaf of dark rye bread, though.

Envy your rain.

I went to see Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse (2023) for the third time in the movie theaters that afternoon.

I performed with two different community bands. The sky was pretty threatening for the afternoon concert but the rain held off and we had a successful performance.

What do you play, hightor?

I played soprano clarinet in the morning and bass clarinet in the afternoon. The regular clarinet is trotted out once or twice a year; the bass is my main axe.

So, technically, you can play the sax?

I can, too. Never had a lesson. Never played an encore either. Philistines. There is nothing like good music, and I played nothing like good music.

I played tenor sax for many years in blues bands and then for ten years in a pretty good jazz band that I put together myself. During the first year or two of covid we couldn't practice together and there weren't any gigs anyway so I let the band go and concentrated on bass clarinet. It's more in line with my "musical personality" – I never really liked being out in front of a band, a few feet from the audience, with amplified instruments and loud drums behind me. I like having a role in the woodwind section of a concert band, keeping the clarinets and flutes in line. Playing in small wind trios and quartets is also fun and I'm currently playing in a duo with a classical guitarist.

Every second Saturday during the school year, we go to the Prime Time Big Band Brunch at a local club. The Prime Time Big Band is a 20 person orchestra who plays jazz, swing, show tunes, etc. There are 5 sax players, 4 trombones, 5 trumpets, 4 rhythm, a keyboardist, and a singer, all led by Dave Jones. They often have guest musicians who happen to be travelling through. It's wonderful to listen to and I can only imagine how wonderful it is to play with talented musicians. I always wished I'd learned an instrument. I did go for lessons in my 30s with a tenor sax but got sent into the attic and then hooted out of the house. Ah well, maybe next life. Lucky you, though.

A lot of the small towns I've lived in had ice-cream socials that always had a pickup town band. It was always good and it was neat to see how the town butcher could play violin or the seed and feed clerk could play piano. The music was always good.

Yeah, it's difficult picking up an instrument later on in life, at least instruments where its takes a while before you even sound half decent. Keyboards are nice that way as you don't have to worry about breath control, embouchure, and tone. Personally, I'm sorry I never took piano lessons – besides the benefits I mentioned above, it's also a great way of getting your head around music theory. And you don't need an accompanist!

That Prime Time Big Band Brunch sounds great – that's another problem trying to play in a band around here, you end up spending way too much time on the road. There's just not enough people to play – and people who want to listen. I played in a big swing band for a while and it was so discouraging to get all sixteen players in cars, drive for an hour and a half to some god forsaken Legion Hall, and there'd be more people in the band than in the audience!

Mame, forgot to ask – what kind of tenor were you playing?

No idea - I wasn't playing it long enough, ha ha. I borrowed it from a friend. I chose it because I love the sound of the sax.