weddings and funerals
i think i had my 20yr hs reunion last night? i'm still not quite sure how to process it?last night we shared a show with a long forgotten friend (from kansas) that turned out to be much more than i ever expected. you only expect to run into people like this at weddings and funerals.
my 20yr hs reunion is this summer and my old friend marc tweed asked to play a show with us on his west coast tour with his band the hearers. my hs experience wasn't the worst, but since my family only lived in kansas city for a few years, i haven't had any reason to go back. last night i ran into 8? 10? 12? people that i went to high school with, and many of them now live here in los angeles.
for the last 16 yrs i have lived in los angeles and never met anybody from kansas and in one night i see them all. one classmate (michael lichtenauer) i sat next to in my high school music theory class is a 2-time grammy award winning vocalist and sings with all my friends in the master chorale! another classmate is a jpl scientist who lives right down the street in glendale!! i shared a show with people i played with in a middle school garage band over 20 years ago!!! wtf???
on top of all that, one of my earliest high school students showed up last night***. she is now the same age as when i taught her (25) and we talked over the long path from high school to adulthood. introducing her to my band and my old high school classmates was a surreal combination of all three parts of my life; past, present and future.
that is the best type of reunion i could have ever had. fto!
myself with marc tweed of the hearers.i played in my first garage band with him in middle school
updates and miscellania:
- we got a good recording of 11/25/05 from saturday night, enjoy.
- needless to say monday nights show was much better than saturday night. we met some great bands. i barely got to hear the candyland riots, but everybody said they were fun.
- pictures from the scene are now online.
- if i can edit the video so it looks a little better i should be able to upload parts of the show. (i don't think you want the parts where the camera is bouncing up and down because of the dancing)
- tim mangan(oc register) is giving us a nice writeup on his blog.
***the jmhs students i taught from 95-99 will probably be my most peronal and proudest achievement of my teaching career (long story, more on that another time)
posted by paul bailey at
6:52 AM
2 Comments:
Paul --
You taught at John Marshall? Amazing. La Monte Young went there, even played a saxophone solo at graduation.
I wonder if anyone has looked at clusters of musicians. From my own Jr. High band, in Montclair, at least three of us of have gone on to be professional musicians -- a bassoonist, a drummer, and myself. The more that I think about it, I realize that our band director was an exceptional teacher (something largely lost on us at the time -- we were Jr. High kids, after all), and he really tried to find time to give some very individual assistance. In my case, he gave me his old college harmony books, and let me take home each instrument in turn in order to get familiar with the sound and basic playing technique of each one.
Let's hear it for public school music teachers!
i did meet a couple of clusters musicians through the years. when i was at disney i met a group of brass players that all grew up with my first trombone teacher in kansas city. it seems that there was big brass contingent that moved out west in the early 80's.
although there are a few of us from high school that are still in music, i still am running into many old friends that i went to ms and hs band camp with. the last one i saw (keith bland) was a conductor of an air force band.
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