I wanted to find a certain pic of my brother playing the trombone in a Mexican style poncho but for the life of me I couldn’t find it. Photos (on my Macbook) will find pictures of trombones but the only thing that shows up is video of a trombonist in the Detroit Party Marching Band (google it if you want) at the Planet Ann Arbor Festifools parade a few years ago. Pre-COVID and not my brother. So you get this pretzel-shaped flute player instead. Uh, meeeee.

So I wonder if I can write a coherent entry about my family’s (both sides) musical talent. Most people in my fam have at least some talent. Some also have the interest and the guzzinto. Others maybe not so much. Me? I was gonna write that I was the only person in either fam to get an actual music degree. But then I remembered my favorite MacMu Aunt Charlotte (The Comm’s sister), who was an accomplished singer. A soprano. She actually USED her music degree although she also taught a third grade classroom for many years.

When she died, The Comm was really pissed off that Charlotte’s sendoff included a church ceremony with a bunch of choral music sung by the choir she had directed for many years. The Comm preferred a more subtle, “elegant” style of funeral. I actually thought it was a fitting sendoff given how much time she had spent with that choir. I think they missed Charlotte and it was a way of paying tribute.

Others? My trombonist brother was VERY talented, especially at jazz. He became an auto engineer but never stopped playing the trombone and even borrowed a tuba from his daughters’ high school to fool around with. Both my uncles Don were good amateur singers and I can remember the Sault Ste. Siberia uncle singing “Oh Holy Night” solo every xmas eve service. Maybe not Pavarotti but pretty darned good! Mom played the “puano” as a reasonable amateur. My old coot? Lemme see… Piano? He once played a short bit of a chromatic scale. Trombone? He once played taps. That’s about it unless you count his singing renditions of “You’re in the army now”. (You’re not behind the plow. You’ll never get rich, you son of a bitch. You’re in the army now.) Aaaaand… When I was really small he often did “scat” singing. Not bad at it if my baby memory is accurate.

That’s my brain dump for today. On to a couple GOT episodes. Cheers!

This entry was posted on Wednesday, April 12th, 2023 at 7:35 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.