Cassettes
Dec 5, 2009 sojourn
Christmas means rearranging spaces in our house so we can setup the tree and decorations and make room for presents. Which in turn means having to make room for the ‘stuff’ that has to be cleared out so we actually have room for the aforementioned decorations and presents. Good thing is during this process we also get to throw out a lot of things we no longer use or need. You know, things like rabbit ear antennas, manuals for long-gone VCRs and today we cleared out a big drawer full of old video and cassette tapes obviously no longer in use and should be trashed.
So glad I looked through the bag BEFORE it went to the trash bin in the garage because I found a couple of cassettes I would have been WAY sad to lose. One tape took me back to a blustery winter day in Newport, RI, and a bunch of Navy musicians tracking a live demo of a few charts for a sax player/vocalist who was to audition for the Jazz Commodores in DC. The other, a spring jazz band concert on which I had the privilege of playing bass with the Edison Community (now State) College jazz ensemble backing Clark Terry.
What’s important to me is that I can now do more than just think back to these two distinct seasons in my life, instead I can hear what was happening and be very proud of what I was accomplishing. Not that the musicianship was necessarily anything to write home about (except for Clark’s and a couple of the outstanding Navy players I was holed up with at that time), but that I was venturing beyond my roots of rock and roll, funk and pop. Actually, the college gig was my last at school about three weeks before I actually joined the Navy.
Guess I should look at these two cassettes as early Christmas presents. They won’t go under the tree, but they are now in the cabinet with some of the other tapes from days gone by… hmm, maybe I should ask for one of the converter ‘thing-ies’ for Christmas so I can pop this stuff to CD/DVD. What do you think?
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