The Marching Abominables

I started attending rehearsals of the Atlanta Seed and Feed Marching Abominable last fall. It's a serious but very funky marching band, and I figured they needed an accordion about as much as I needed them. 

At the break that first night, I was asked what I did the previous summer (a standard question), how I found out about the Abominables (another), and then told that I had to sing or play an Elvis song. While thinking about it, I told them that I'd not imagined what a delight it would be to be an accordionist in a marching band, because, like everyone else, I get sheet music with only single notes -- no multiples on the right hand, no chords for the left. It's almost easy! Then I played and began singing "Love Me Tender" and they all joined in singing.

The music is harder than I thought it would be. Never having played in a band, I initially had trouble keeping track of multi-measure silences, so I didn't know where to come in. Now I can calculate with the best of them, but I have trouble keeping track of where we are when I'm trying to play a tricky part -- one that's fast, syncopated, or with a swing tempo.

But I really enjoy it. I keep going back, week after week. I'm gradually catching on. I've almost memorized our (I started to say "their" but am determined to belong) signature song, "Sing, "Sing, Sing".

I played my first gig with them a couple of weeks ago -- the Atlanta Jugglers' Festival at the Yaarab Shriner's Temple, the back of which is right across the street from home. That's me in the back of the rest of the woodwinds, in the fedora Ian gave me. (I told them that the accordion is made of wood, so I must be a woodwind.) It was a hoot.

It was also the first time that I could hear myself play. The band is a true marching band, with plenty of brass and woodwinds and drums. We practice at the Little Five Points Community Center, in a room just like a high school band room. It's small and it's very noisy. I have to really pump it to hear myself. I started out with the flutes, in front of the trumpets, but moved across the room to get away from the strongest blats. One night, when I didn't have the music to something, I looked on to the music of the clarinetist next to me. I could occasionally hear faint sounds coming from my box, and they didn't sound entirely right. But it was only afterward that I learned how something with one sharp is actually in the key of F for a B-flat clarinet...

It was the same clarinetist who told me to stop worrying about whether or not I was playing the right note, or even in the right measure. "Just play whatever you want," he advised. I still don't know his name -- or hardly anyone else's, except Bruce and Charles (brooms), Bill Scott (trumpet -- and the only last name I know) and Tuba Diva (Souzaphone).

They're all very friendly. I told someone last Tuesday night that I wouldn't be joining them for the Mardi Gras performance tomorrow, and she was genuinely saddened.

It must be in my fate to be part of this. The morning of the Jugglers' gig, I met Marie and her Saturday morning run group at the Georgia Tech Starbuck's. When I walked in, they were playing "Sing, Sing, Sing" on the PA. It must be fate.

After rehearsals, a regular group repairs to Manuel's Tavern for beer and fellowship. I go about half the time, because I want to get to know some of them better. I'm hoping that I can find someone with whom to make music on a regular basis. Any kind of music, but preferably something where I can be heard. Or at least hear myself.

Corina's Visit

Corina flew in Thursday evening. She's a senior in high school and looking for programs in aerospace engineering. Although she'll probably stay in California (UC Davis and Cal Poly are her first choices), I thought we should bring her here for a look at Georgia Tech, just for comparison. This is a feeble excuse for having her visit us, but hey, any excuse works for us!

She's a delightful kid, easy and open with us. We hit it off extra well the first evening, when I pulled out two accordions and showed her how the damned things work. Her music training really shows - no problem with rhythm, and she instinctively determined the locations of keys on the right hand by feel, rather than looking at the keyboard (which is what I've always done!). I've been inspired to stop looking and to learn how to do it right myself. That will be a big help, since I can't see the lower half of the keyboard with my current favorite glasses...

Within about an hour she was playing "Holiday Waltz" almost without error and was well along with "The Brave Cowboy". How is it that these accordion masterpieces aren't on the radio every day? Or at least on YouTube?

She and I toured the campus yesterday morning. First an interview with the Undergraduate Advisor in the School of Aerospace Engineering, Dr. Sankar. Teresa, a 13-year old from Missouri, and her dad were there too. He lives in Atlanta, and Teresa's going to go to high school here. Dr. Sankar was charming, witty and informative, but the interview was in an undecorated windowless small conference room in the double-ugly cinder block Guggenheim Building.

Then on to the Bill Moore Student Success Center, under the west stands of Bobby Dodd stadium. We got to gaze over the football field from the presidential suite, and Corina imagined herself marching and playing trumpet with the GT Marching Band. Only four student/parent pairs showed up for the slide show and pitch by a charming guy who serves on the Admissions Committee. Couldn't tell if he was a student or a young staff member. (We missed the first couple of minutes when he introduced himself.)

Finally the walking tour across the cold, sunny campus. I learned a few things, like the fact that several of the buildings have exterior design features related to the disciplines inside: the bands of bricks around the Manufacturing Research Center do look like conveyor belts after you're told to look for them, and you don't even have to squint to see that the north façade of Boggs is at least shaped like the periodic table (again, once you're told...). The guide, a senior ME major, exagerrated the George P. Burdell stories a lot, but I suppose that's appropriate. Still, it's hard to believe that he was ever a finalist for Time's Man of the Year.

Lunch at Octane. Marie wanted us to do the Cyclorama, but I insisted on a 30 minute nap, so we came home. I slept nearly an hour, and Corina was zonked for the rest of the afternoon.

Dinner at the Woodside Grill was delightful, though they're clearly really struggling. Excellent food, but high prices and a lousy location. Hard to imagine many people paying $50+ apiece for dinner when there are a string of "Adult" businesses so near.

We closed the evening with "Slumdog Millionaire", a film I enjoyed immensely. I'll have to see it again before I can decide whether it's really a great film, or just a really good one.

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Saturday was a lazy morning, lunch at down-and-dirty Daddy D'z, and a tour of the exhibit of the terra cotta army of Emperor Qin's tomb at the High Museum, dinner in the mezzanine at Dogwood (a new place on Peachtree a couple of blocks south of North; very nicely reminiscent of Bottega in Birmingham), then accordion practice before bed.

Sunday morning a cold walk to the Flying Biscuit for breakfast, then through Piedmont Park home, an hour of accordion practice, and then to the airport to bid our GREAT niece adieu!

Ken Pruitt's funeral

Ken Pruitt's funeral was a good one. Ken loved classical music and had been given a tuba on his 60th birthday. (I was at that party, and it was among the inspirations for Marie giving me an accordion for Christmas a few years later.) I didn't know it, but Ken gave Angela a French Horn for her next birthday; I knew he played in a brass group, but I didn't know that they played together in a large amateur orchestra for several years.

Honoring these loves, we were welcomed into the beautiful polygonal Unitarian church by a brass quartet playing Beethoven, and the service included two Handel pieces (adagio and allegro) for tuba and piano, plus "Sing Me to Heaven" sung a capella by the University of Montevallo Chamber Singers. There were a couple of hymns droned out by all of us, though I'm not sure why.

Joyce Benington, a life-long friend gave a long set of "Remarks". (Do Unitarians have trouble with "Eulogy"?) Ken introduced her to her husband Fred, and he was at their side during Fred's final illness in the 90s, and Joyce talked about family. I never knew Ken's first wife (and the mother of their four kids), and we later learned from their son Keith that she was the most beautiful co-ed at UNC when Ken won her heart, in spite of his big ears and geeky ways. (I learned later from Betty Lou Lacey that she killed herself...) I'd not known that Ken was a novelist, publishing under the nom-de-plume Wilson Abut. I've just ordered one of his four novels from Amazon.

Ken also loved poetry, and Joyce read AE Housman's poem:

   With rue my heart is laden, for golden friends I had,

   For many a rose-lipped maiden and many a light-foot lad.

   By brooks too broad for leaping, the light-foot lads are laid.

   The rose-lipped maids are sleeping, in fields where roses fade.

Virginia Volker commemorated Ken's long service at UAB, beginning when her father-in-law had just become the first president of the newly separate university. Hers was the driest presentation, but the one that connected with the things I knew about Ken.

The most interesting eulogy was from Ken's son Keith. He talked about the gifts of "sweetness and honey" his father had gotten all his life, some in spite of bad choices he made. He drew on one of the Psalms, which talks about honey oozing out of a crevice in the rocks in the desert, where apparently bees make their nests. The gifts of water and honey to a traveler in that hostile land are gifts from God. Keith didn't explain what bad choices his dad had made, but their was the implication of distance from the kids and their mother. It reminded me of Jim Campbell's funeral ... about which more anon.

At the open mike session, Jim Lacey told about Ken as a mentor, Jack Lemmons talked about not knowing him as well as he should, and Judy Vines and one other administrative assistant to Ken talked about what a wonderful boss and friend he was. I wished I'd asked Betty Campbell if there was something she would have liked to have said, and maybe I could have spoken briefly for her.

Ken was a generous man, although I knew only about what he did for me. At least I got to tell Angela and Elise about that in person yesterday.

But it made me wonder -- I know people who would say lots of nice things about me at my funeral, but I can't think of very many acts of generosity on my part...