The Brass Band Forum

We used to have several funny tales on the old forum... Stories about what people said and what people did... What people wrote. The usual, "A fly landed on my music and I played it." and various other things. You know, only today I went to a local band contest - on a rare weekend off from working toward one contest or another - and I was reading the foreword in the programme from the Chairman of the Cornwall Brass Band Association (Mr Trevor Bedding, also Chairman of St Austell Band) and he spent an entire paragraph complaining about the top section bands not entering and how they should remember where the bread and butter comes from, the locals, and how supporting the local contests is the way to pay back people for their support etc etc etc... You know, he must have forgotten something... St Austell weren't there either... And although a lot of people, including myself, did find his comments ironically amusing (if completely out of line) considering his connections, one member of St Austell Band commented, "After that, I doubt if they'll see another top section band here EVER again." Hmm... Think that backfired...

There was an occasion once at Cornwall Youth Band a few years ago when my brother was a lot younger (his euphonium was nearly as big as he was) and Richard Evans was taking the band for their annual Christmas Course. There was a euphonium feature, but with there being about 9 euphoniums at the time it was completely impractical to move them all to the front of the stage, so he asked them to stand in their places. They started rehearsing the piece again and a few bars in, Mr Evans stopped conducting and looked over at my brother. He said, "Can't you play standing up, boy?" to which my brother looked up at him and said, "But I am standing." Many other Cornwall Youth stories could be told - for example Simon Dobson's underpants hanging from the rehearsal room ceiling one morning in the middle of December when we rolled out of our airbeds for rehearsal.

Other Cornwall Youth stories include the one of me on a computer chair kicking off from one end of the room and hitting a door at the other end leaving a large hole in it, and one course where one of the front row cornet players hadn't brought a white bra to wear for the concert (it wasn't so much the fact she'd forgotten one, but that she asked everyone including Derek Greenwood if he had a spare she could borrow), and of course there was the one where a euphonium player fell off the top of a telephone box (probably safer not to ask).

There must be some more funny stories out there.

I know this is not even remotely related to brass bands, but i have to tell you anyway:

My yr 10 science teacher was famous for wearing a tweed suit, so once, when he accidently left it behind (after being involved in a PE thing) over one half term, the head of science stapled it to the ceiling in his classroom. And to top it off, he printed out a photo of him and put it down the neck of the suit and gave it a shirt and a tie! i wish i'd seen it, but the look on his face must have been priceless!

If we're getting into school stories I have to mention a French teacher I had at school, Mademoiselle Merlet. She used to cry when she couldn't control us and would go and hide in the supplies cupboard at the back of the classroom. After a while you would see cigarette smoke creeping out through the keyhole and not long after she would reappear. Anyway, she was invigilating one of my GCSE exams and brought her knitting along. She perched herself on a table and for the first 20mins or so of the exam you could hear a continual clicking noise of her needles - it was worse than that Chinese water torture. All of a sudden there was a huge crash - probably seeming all the louder under silent exam conditions in a sports hall - and when we jumped and looked up, the table had collapsed and her legs were waving in the air with balls of wool rolling everywhere. Completely broke up the exam. Everyone was in stitches.

im not surprised! lol

I remember my old music teacher - no names mentioned, but we had a school band rehersal on a friday, and instead of being in the music reoom, we had to move out into the main hall. it was quite funny once when had to play a piece which invloved a lot of moving around, he was getting so frustrated with everyone not watching him, he let go of his baton, and it ended up in the floor, but stuck up in the air. - just like a post really, and it was funny, because although the floor was carpeted, he couldnt have done that again if he tried!

I have a photo somewhere, which if I ever get time will go up on my site. The chairman (now retured) of Ynishire Welfare Band standing at the front of a wheely bin with a glass of wine in his hand traveling down a street in swansea, like he was on the QE2.

Slighly less funny was me smashing a pint class on a bus from weston and being dropped off by the band on the way home at the Gwent royal. 15 stitches and two months of work, needless to say it was a good day out.

Glenn.

A few years ago I spent a few months playing with the Indian Queens Band. We were doing a concert one Saturday night and Tuba Smarties was a selected item for the programme. Everything was going great... Then we got to that bit in the middle where there's a bit of a pause... Denzil (the bass soloist) coughed and his false teeth flew out of his mouth. Not only did they land on the floor, but they bounced off the stage and under the first row of chairs in the audience, with him scrambling after them. After the hysterical laughter subsided (both audience and band), we continued, with great difficulty, to play to the end of the piece. It brought the house down. Subsequent attempts to recreate the comedy item with a spare set of dentures never worked as well, but the original was a classic!

I was in the audience at a concert by Bodmin Band a few years ago, and the next item on the programme was the finale from William Tell. The conductor turned to the audience to announce the piece and said, "It is said that a true musician is one who can play this piece without thinking of the Lone Ranger...Well, I can't be a very good musician because I can't play this piece without thinking of the Lone Ranger riding Tonto across the desert!" It took several moments with the audience in stitches before one of the players informed him that Tonto was in fact the indian, not the horse...

A couple years ago at the SWBBA contest at Torquay (ironically enough being held in the same hall as this weekend's South West area contest) our solo euphonium player managed to let his mute roll off the edge of the stage skittling all the trophies set up on the table below and spent several seconds waving frantically at a member of the audience, who had kindly started picking up the trophies, because he needed his mute within the next couple of bars. Today they were ready for him, setting up a flower display along the front of the stage so nothing could fall off... In theory. We walked onto the stage and started settling ourselves... There was a huge crash and our euphonium player had struck again. Having decided he wanted a little more space he had moved his chair back, hitting the flower display with such force that it sent a section of it flying off the stage. It performed a perfect 360 landing upright on the floor in front of the audience. Perhaps next year they'll consider something a little more solid... Imagine if it had been the conductor behind him walking on instead of a plant pot...

Our former rep player (now third corent due to work commitments, he's a doctor) was sitting on the end because we were down a soprano. He moved his chair a little to the right so he wasn't facing the audience. Unfortunally one of the rear chair legs was over the edge of the stage and he disapeared sideways from the stage. Needless to say sitting on second/third corent at the time I was giggling like a maniac, I don't remember what we came but I think we got the sympathy vote.

Glenn.

We once had a bass player who turned up at a gig on Fowey Quay pushing his bass in a squeaking, rusty, holey, tatty old wheelbarrow. We took the mick so much he stopped using the wheelbarrow on later occasions. He traded it for a baby's pram instead... I kid you not, he turned up at every concert pushing his bass in a pram.

The things children say....

I was once at a contest and overheard a conversation between the young daughter of a well known conductor and Richard Evans. The young lady was telling Mr Evans all about how she had started school and her mother added about how she was learning French. Mr Evans promptly asked if she could say something to him in French and the young lady obediantly responded, "Bonjour mademoiselle"...

Another conversation I overheard (making myself sound like a right eavesdropper here!!) concerned another young lady who was with her parents and a (I presume) friend of the family whom asked where her big brother was. The young lady confidently informed him that her brother was at a sexual, leaving her blushing parents to explain that she actually meant "sectional"...

Anyone else willing to contribute? I'm scraping the bottom of the barrel now...

How's another Cornwall Youth story sound?

We once clingfilmed the seats in the boys toilets (admittedly the toilets weren't well marked - if the outer doors were left open you couldn't read which was the ladies and which was the gents!) and one of the male tutors arrived as we were coming out giggling. He looked at us, shrugged and went into the girls toilets next door, causing a great deal of screaming followed by a hasty exit on his part.

A few years ago Indian Queens Band used to hold a talent contest (as well as the annual solo and quartet contest) each year. One year they asked Denzil (the bass player from my Tuba Smarties event mentioned above) as the oldest player in the contest and myself (as the youngest) to play a duet to entertain the audience while the judges were making their decisions. Obviously with it being a last minute thing we had no music and no time to rehearse.

We decided, or it was decided for me as I seem to remember, that we would just play off the same copy of one of my solos and with him being on Eb bass and myself on horn it would just sound like a form of harmony...

The pianist started the introduction and we counted away at the bars rest and I came in, then seconds later Denzil came in... It sounded absolutely horrendous! The pianist looked confused and I stopped playing, then Denzil looked confused and we leaned forward down to the pianist and Denzil was saying I came in too early, and the pianist said I was right...

When we discussed the matter further - by which time the audience were wetting themselves laughing - it came to light that Denzil was actually playing entirely the wrong piece of music.

Although we were playing off the same copy, there were 2 short solos on one page (I was 6 at the time, longer pieces were beyond me!). Although myself and Stephen Watts were playing Sweet And Low, Denzil was quite happily working his way through Golden Slumbers.

When we took part in the stage production of Brassed Off, the most interesting scene was the attempt to recreate Whit Friday. We sorted the choreography in the single rehearsal we had on the stage, we all knew exactly what order we were in and where we had to march, what we hadn't bargained for was our bass trombone player forgetting minor details such as just because were on stage, it didn't mean there weren't lamp posts...

I can't quite remember why, but Bryan Hurdley was playing euphonium that night (he was our resident at the time so maybe our euph couldn't make it that night or something). Anyway, we started the Whit Friday sequence, gradually attempting to appear more and more drunk as we wandered on and off between the wings and around the back of the stage etc. We were just appearing on stage for the final time when Paul (the bass trom) marched straight into a lamp post next to the wing. His slide got caught on it causing him to stop suddenly. Bryan marched straight into the back of him, causing a distressed noise to come out of the bell of the euphonium, and Derek nearly hit them both with the bass drum.

We must have looked well drunk as we marched through the pretend Diggle that night, as those of us at the back who witnessed the pile up were wetting ourselves laughing, unable to play or keep in step. So there you go, I admit it, I'm not as good an actress as those who saw it may have thought!!