As a musically advanced sophomore in high school I was encouraged to arrange an original composition for the jazz ensemble. Sure. How hard could that be?
To avoid shoehorning my prog rock epics into a bunch of horn sections, I worked up a doofy little blues shuffle called "An Old Song." Its key of E flat made transposition easier when creating the parts. Yeah this was back when you had to do all this shit by hand. Transposing, notating, everything. I had a drafting table and pencils and rulers and a french curve because this was your only choice in the 1980's. Hours were spent scribbling and I hated the stupid half-assed composition more and more as I went.
Thankfully the senior musicians in the ensemble were willing and able, if not also remarkably welcoming to this outside underclassman bringing in smudgy charts. This was my first time ever attending such a big band rehearsal, and they could have easily eaten me alive. Instead they happily read down my dorky ass number and hearing it come to life made up for all the hard work. The simple tune kinda just played itself - which was fine as I had no skills conducting a band nor how to offer any guidance about what to improve. One more time running the whole thing down and I felt pretty good about myself.
This rehearsal was where I first really got to know Jeff. He was my age, and also a piano player - the regular pianist for the jazz ensemble. And, also, the winner of some New York State piano sonata competition or other last year. Basically he was a prodigy and had chops for days. Years, maybe. Possibly centuries. Of course he had to be my age and in my high school class. Meanwhile he was infuriatingly sweet and non-competitive. I almost wished he was an asshole if only to justify my insecurity about being in some sort of battle with him for accolades and attention.
Turns out he, too, arranged a song. His charts were meticulous. It was his own take on "Sweet Georgia Brown." He conducted it like a madman, swinging the baton like a pro, tapping the stand and pointing sternly at the horns whenever they flubbed. Meanwhile his arrangement - holy shit. He brilliantly added brain bending harmonies to a double time version of this classic melody. It was a game changer. Watching him work, I truly felt like a complete poser fraud.
I was quite nervous for the big show. I was barely a seasoned performer at this point, so the stage fright, coupled with feelings of obvious inadequacy compared to Jeff, was paralyzing. I arrived for sound check and sat in the theatre seats waiting as the band ran down all the tunes before mine.
Turns out we had another guest this evening. An older gentleman who was a local composer. He, too, brought his own tune and arrangement for this event. But it had a novel twist: pre-recorded backing tracks. It was a cute Peter Gunn-like original number written for jazz ensemble accompanied by a tape of 1985-esque beeps and boops and primitive drum machine clicks and splats.
They spent a while dialing in the recording and figuring out how to blast it over the sound system. Once again I'll mention this was the old days, and this was a high school. In other words, given the small budget there were no ample monitors available on stage for the band. Somehow they would have to play along with whatever was blasting over the general sound system aimed at the audience. In order to hear anything the recording was cranked to the point of ear-splitting distortion. It sounded like shit, and was most certainly going to be fucked up. There was little that could be done about it except hope for a miracle.
The show started, and this band-plus-tape song was early in the program. After a long introduction the composer came on stage, and lifted his baton until the tape started playing. He swung along in time for the first 8 bars before the band kicked in. And then, almost immediately, they were completely and irrevocably off from the recording. What a fucking embarrassing disaster. I cringed and squirmed beholding this nightmare. Jeff, who was stuck playing keyboards, had one hand on his ear the whole time to protect his hearing. The poor composer kept swinging his baton as if to mask the disaster unfolding for three seemingly endless minutes. He basically shrugged once it was over and left the stage to the sound of sympathetic applause. E for effort.
I still remember this horror so vividly, and witnessing this traumatic car crash is exactly why I will never, ever perform live with prerecorded backing tracks. But as much as this sucked for everybody else, I suddenly felt a wave of calm relief: there was no way my song will be the worst thing of the evening now. Phew.
My bit came and went. I barely remember it, mostly because it was so incredibly basic. Really just a proof of concept that I can arrange something and get it performed by somebody. I do fondly recall hastily leaving the stage a bundle of nerves, and once out of sight of the audience I collapsed to the ground right there in the wing - sort of a celebratory half-faint. Gravity no longer an issue, I let out a big, big sigh.
Jeff's "Sweet Georgia Brown" was of course a highlight of the evening. If it wasn't already settled before, it was settled now: Jeff's a fucking genius. Fine.
But instead of fighting it the rest of my high school career, I made a lateral move to bass guitar, which I already started playing for fun a couple years earlier. Jeff recognized my general musical prowess and happily had me play bass on everything he did. We became a dynamic duo of sorts, performing in the jazz band together, several musicals (high school and professionally outside of school), at various public functions, even in a Bar Mitzvah band. And this is why I still happily bounce between keyboards and bass guitar.
Oh, and I did another arrangement the following year. Instead of cobbling together another original, I followed Jeff's lead and reworked a classic for the jazz ensemble: "Abacab" by Genesis. Gawd I'm such a dork.
Welcome to Dork World, Matt! In HS I put together a band that included members of the stage band and mixed with other friends and called it The Musk Floral Ensemble; very Zappa inspired but also, let's just say, not quite fully formed. In some ways my writing had the same or similar identity to the way it is now. We put on a special one hour concert for the school and parents, which was pretty well received. Next year, the Steve Kirk Band played a piece of mine called "Thought Patterns Of A Psychotic Nun"; an instrumental - very Spinal Tap in a shoot-yourself -in-the-foot kind of way. We were asked not to announce the name at the concert, which included performances by other students as well. This was all to be recorded and released as commemorative vinyl. Of course we did announce the title of the song, got righteously scolded for it, and guess what? No "Thought Patterns Of A Psychotic Nun" on the record. Ha ha, we showed them!