Tag: music

Please, Sir, Buy My Trombone!

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To get you to buy a trombone, the Trombone Salesman will get you to try a trombone.
“I assure you: the reeds are clean,” he says, placing the trombone to your lips. “Now blow.”
Sure, you do not know how to play it, but one is at your lips. Your hands clutch the instrument, your fingers work the valves and slide.
“Now blow,” he repeats.
And so, you do.
The most horrible sound rushes out of the device.
Children scream.
Dogs howl.
Glass shatters.
The Trombone Salesman tries to take it back.
You refuse. “I’ll take it,” you say, grinning.

Tevye and His Vertebrae

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Tevye lay in the mud, staring at the sky, silently cursing the people of Anatevka.
He had tried to explain how living was hard, with so many challenges and problems to balance.
Nobody understood.
So, he said “it’s like a fiddler on the roof.”
They still didn’t understand.
So, he got out his violin, climbed on the roof, and tried to play it to show them how shaky he was.
“Tradition keeps us balanced!” he shouted.
And fell.
He couldn’t move. His neck was broken.
His wife shrieked the traditional prayers of a grieving widow.
“Not yet, Golde!” Tevye thought.

Crime In E Minor

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The detective looks at the body and says “Round up every violinist.”
He is holding a smashed instrument, and his conclusions would be sound if he were correct about one thing: that is a viola, not a violin.
They dust it for fingerprints… none at all.
I wore gloves, you see.
Yes, it was me, dear reader. I am the murderer.
And that is my viola.
The violinists come in, one after the other, but each has an alibi.
It is a year later, he is no closer to solving the case.
Good.
Because my new viola thirsts for blood.

The Infernal Tune

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It was said that Beethoven composed a melody so powerful, it could summon The Devil.
He never wrote it down, and never played it with anyone nearby.
Except his nephew Karl.
Perhaps this is why he fought to keep custody of Karl, to prevent him from revealing this secret?
Or maybe Karl attempted suicide after seeing his uncle plead with The Prince Of Darkness for his hearing back?
His doctor prescribed treatments containing lead to block out the infernal influences, sending the composer into painful and confusing fits.
Karl whispers, “The piano is out of tune. Does Satan listen now?”

Country Music Star

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There’s a country music star on television.
She’s standing there with a guitar, but she doesn’t play the guitar.
She doesn’t play anything.
Doesn’t write anything either. Someone else writes the songs.
She doesn’t even sing her own songs. Someone else sings them for her and she just mouths the words.
That’s not even her up there. Someone stood in for her, and nobody noticed the difference.
When she won a Grammy, she didn’t bother showing up to the ceremony to pick it up.
They filed a missing persons report that night.
She was never found.
Isn’t this music great?

Dancing Rocks

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The louder the speakers, the greater the vibration.
Ever had drinks rattle off of the table in a loud bar?
Sound vibrations.
What if the sounds were huge? What could they do?
We built the test facility far out in the desert, miles from everywhere.
The entire floor is a gigantic set of speakers.
Workers pile up boulders on the floor.
The camera system is good, says Control, and we race off to the bunker to perform.
I flip three switches, slowly turn a dial, and the boulders dance on the monitors.
Experiment? What experiment?
This is just for fun.

Boxcars

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The commercials called Boxcar Willie the king of the hobo musicians, but old Willie never spent a day riding the rails.
He was a gambler. Craps was his game. Guy owned a pair of dice, loaded for sixes: Boxcars.
“Boxcars Willie” didn’t sound quite right, so they called him Boxcar.
The same went with his bandmates Snake Eyes Sam and Acey Duecey. They were in his band as well as at the craps table as much as Willie.
Get Drunk And Hole Up With A Transvestite Hooker Howard, well, he didn’t gamble. So we called him Howie. He played drums.

Halves

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It was a beautiful marriage, and they made beautiful music together.
While it lasted.
It didn’t last.
Arthur ended up with the player piano. Leslie got all the scrolls.
Arthur would sit at the piano, tap a key now and then, and listen to the note.
He searched for the scrolls on eBay, but never found any for that model of piano.
Leslie would open up the scrolls and hold them up to the light, the intricate patterns of holes making her wonder what style that song was played with, what nuances.
Apart and alone, they made horrible silence together.

The Peace Hunt

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It was an awesome peace concert in the park, and at the end, we opened the cages that released the doves.
Majestically flying into the air, a cloud of white wings upon the air.
That’s when the hawks came.
Doves became puffs of white feathers as the raptors hit them with their talons and flew off with their prey.
Bloody chunks falling on the crowd, the remnants of collisions raining down.
Everybody staring at the hunt, unable to move.
“This is a disaster,” whispered the concert promoter.
“No, it’s not. It’s totally natural,” said the lead singer. “It’s fuckin’ beautiful.”

Eighties

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The club is dead on Wednesdays, so I picked a theme and bought a few ads.
One after the other, these old people started to wander into the club, using walkers and canes.
A few had powered scooters. I had to move the tables further apart to handle those.
One woman with an oxygen tank and a white beehive wig complains about the music.
“What’s with this rock and roll crap?” she says.
“It’s Eighties Music,” I say. “Duran Duran. Flock of Seagulls. Van Halen”
You know, Eighties Night.
Oh. Right.
I switch to Benny Goodman for the happy geezers.