Being in my marching band mindset, I busted out my marching tenor when I got home from work. Plastic reed still in place, neck cork not dried out, no visible problems on the horn itself, I assembled my sax, took a deep breath and quickly remembered that something is wrong with it. I think it is just out of alignment, hopefully, but only about two notes work properly. Thankfully, I live close to West Music, so I tossed my sax in the trunk and drove right over. The guy at the service counter wasn’t overly excited to fill out the information about my life and my sax, but when he looked at me and said “What is wrong with it?” I just laughed. I have no clue, dude, that’s your job. I’ll be awaiting a call tomorrow informing me if it can be put into “good playing condition” or not. Heck, I don’t even need good condition, I just need it to play all the notes mostly in tune.
I love West Music. I love that while I was there I saw a co-worker and her daughter, and Damien, the current HMB drum major, who I know in passing because he was a sax player and I met him at a party at some point after I graduated. He was dropping off a sousie with some other random HMB member. I was nice and just said “hi” instead of railing on him for putting his name on the fundraising letter that was sent out about the uniforms saying that the current band uniforms are 11 years old. Except for the fact that they aren’t. I haven’t even been out of high school 10 years and we got those uniforms my sophomore year in college. You do the math, because apparently the UI Foundation can’t.
I was probably nice because just before that I went over to the counter to get a few soprano sax reeds to have for beer band. The nice guy at the counter, after understanding what I needed (just something to play and not care if I break), he just gave me three Rico No. 3 reeds and wished me “Happy Homecoming.”
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