Don’t think we have gone normal just because we added a blog to the website.
Yes, we are the most famous Bugle Quartet in America currently playing contemporary classics, and we ought to be more widely known. But, our biggest fans (and contributors) are complaining they can’t keep track of us and they are missing concerts. We get it.
(To the fan who wrote “As the first modern bugle quartet you have a duty to history…” Thanks. Someday a demented music graduate student will try to write a thesis on The New Canaan Bugle Quartet, and he will need evidence. Here it begins….)
Apologies to those of youse (mostly New Yorkers) music lovers who showed up after the cops came to our first big Apre Tanglewood concert. (We showed up on time, you need to show up on time.) In hindsight, the poster was not a good idea. Someone (or probably more than one) tipped the cops and they were waiting when we got there. Two guys, one patrol car.
It was a little hot, but we were dressed fashionably, in our best contemporary music attire. We pretended not to notice them, but they knew who we were and followed us over to the sculpture we use as the band shell. We had music stands and our bugles. Some of our Massachusetts fans were already there and tagged along. One of the cops watched them and the other cop approached me. “You can’t do this,” He says.
“You can’t do this.” Like “this” is “illegal music” or “chopped liver”. Standard issue small town cop. Blond hair, close cropped. Annoyed look on his face. His partner was taller. Maybe ex-military. Suspicious.
“It’s Art, man. Music!“ I said. “I can’t believe this is happening again! This happens every time. We have permission to give a concert at 5:00 today. Hold on, just one second…” I had a letter with a MASS MoCA letterhead that indicating approval for our “Contemporary” music concert at the Field’s Sculpture Park. I spewed indignation like a giant fog machine.
He looked surprised and took the letter. He started reading it and said, “MASS MoCA is in Massachusetts, and this is New York.”
“Yeah,” I explained, “The grant was to MASS MoCA and they made an agreement with Fields to host the concert in exchange for a very important piece of sculpture and administrative costs. Who told you we can’t do this? There has been publicity. We’re expecting maybe 50 or 100 Important people from Tanglewood. This has been planned for months.”
He looked at me flatly. “You can’t do this.”
(I once attended a Mother’s of Invention concert at Cobo Hall in Detroit. At the beginning of the concert, Frank Zappa came out and said, “The police are backstage. A detective told me that if we do anything ‘WEIRD’, they would shut us down.” The audience cheered and applauded and made rude sounds. The band noodled around for a minute and then began to play Swan Lake. (Frank was a genius.) From the opposite side of the stage Ian Underwood, the great Ian Underwood, dressed in a pink tutu, twirled to the center holding a rubber chicken. (Did you know he graduated from Yale?) The band played a credible version of Swan Lake, and Underwood danced a kind of modern dance with the rubber chicken. We were all expecting the police to come out on to the stage. Nothing happened. People shouted and cheered. Ian Underwood twirled off the stage, and the Mothers segued into a driving polyphonic Zappa masterwork. Later, Underwood played “Louie, Louie” on the great Cobo Hall organ and the audience went nuts.
Frank, I am so sorry you’re gone, but you wouldn’t believe the shit that is going on now…)
“But, we have permission! We got a grant from the Massachusetts Contemporary Music Council, Important Donners gave us money and they gave the people here at Field Park, money to do this. I pointed at the Field’s center. If it doesn’t happen there will be all kinds of problems. There is some kind of mistake. Can’t you call someone? I have the telephone numbers for the people who arranged this at MASS MoCA and here at Fields.“ We stood there looking fearful and indignant.
Our conductor, Penna, Penna Rose’s evil twin, said to the cop in her best administrator’s voice, “I am sure there is some mistake, officer. My name is Penna Rose, maybe you know who I am? I was the conductor for the Berkshire Bach Society for many years and I conduct in many of the local churches. Maybe you can give me the name of someone at your station I can call. I am sure there is some mistake.”
“We have to start warming up,” I said and pressing a paper with names and telephone numbers into the cop’s hand. I shouted, ‘John, you better get started’.” John had his trumpet and walked over to the shell while we stood close to the cops. More cars and some motorcycles pulled into the lot. John, who still has his chops, laid down some recognizable melodies.
Momentary confusion flickered across the cop’s eye. “Let me check,” he said.
We moved into the shell and set up our music stands. (I left the beer cooler in the car.) John switched to the bugle. Cops like bugles. He played “First Call” and “Revelry”. The crowd moved closer…
Penna Rose, bugle at the ready, shouted “Let’er Rip!” and we launched “Kick out the Jams.”
We were playing full out and trying to avoid eye contact. The audience, thirty or forty people by this time, were applauding, whistling and screaming… after two minutes I looked over and the short cop was shaking his head “no” back and forth. The big cop looked like he might laugh.
They walked over. We stopped. The audience remonstrated for a few minutes. We smiled. “Come on, just one more…” The cops were smiling. “Unfortunately, No.” Good work dudes. No bugleers were harmed at this event…
They closed the parking lot and turned away a bunch of people on motorcycles.
Bummer. Fuck. We shall return…
The modern-day artist refuses to die!
John K.