LOL. Oh, how I wish I had a photo of my old rock band! Those were the days of horn bands, and we pirated tunes from BS&T, Chicago, and even a couple of simplified Chase tunes. The horn section (me plus one other trumpet and one t-bone) played on about half of the songs. I was even the emergency, back-up keyboard man. The other songs were R&R standards, but they let us play tambourine and cow bell on those. More cow bell! More cow bell!
Seventh grade, first year of Junior High School. I needed an elective and I thought if I took band it might get me out of piano lessons. I knew how to read music and my cousin had started on cornet, but dropped it. (He didn't stick with much of anything.) My Mom gave the relatives $20 for the Besson cornet my cousin had ignored for a couple of years and I got started.
The Jr Hi actually had two bands: a beginner's band (for people like me) and the "advanced" band for experienced musicians who had been playing since, oh, maybe the fourth grade. When I started eighth grade, the band director told me I could move up to the advanced band if I switched to french horn, but that I could switch back to trumpet (in the advanced band) when I went into ninth grade. Well, who could refuse an offer like that!
When I moved up to high school, they once again needed french horns, so I played trumpet for marching band but horn for concert band, the first year. After that I was on trumpet except for occasional digressions into horn for things like pit orchestras. I was first chair my senior year and in other groups, including a rock and roll band. I continued playing in college, but as an architecture and engineering student, I didn't have nearly as much involvement as the music majors.
But the trumpet never got me out of piano lessons...
The cork on the pistons looks like it was never played at all....
@barliman2001 Whatever happened to sethoflagos anyway? I always liked his British/African point of view.
Playing horn is kind of like being an airline pilot -- hours of boredom interspersed by moments of terror. The most extreme case was one time when I played horn in the pit orchestra for a production of "Brigadoon." For two hours, the horn part mimics bagpipe drones BUT THEN they suddenly want an alpine hunting horn solo when the mist and fog parts in the mountains of the Scottish Highlands.
I used to double on horn. When I mostly played horn and occasionally cornet, my trumpet embouchure deteriorated rapidly. When I mostly played trumpet and secondarily played horn, the embouchure was OK for both.
@Kehaulani You're not foggy. I don't get the point either.
Chet played a whole bunch of different horns over the years. He kept pawning them to buy heroin.
The very-obtuse-angle bell braces also look like Committee (0:49). If I heard the audio without the visal, I would probably say "maybe Committee, maybe not."
Played yesterday for a city event. They left today for families.
@Trumpetsplus Ivan: I know you're an expert, but I have owned quite a few vintage horns and I have never had one where the bell looked very shiny, but the area around the valves had this weird craquelure / scratch look. You don't suppose the player actually had a prosthetic hand or something like that, do you?
