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At my very first concert festival as a participating director in 1970, a buddy and I were standing in the hall crying in our beer after our bands had stunk up the place, when up walked one of the "golden boys". This guy had posted straight 1's for years and was highly regarded by us youngsters. He said, "I heard the band. Now that's a memorable perfomance if I ever heard one." I'm sure our excitement was showing as we both said "which one". He relplied, "Flip a coin, laughed and walked off." A couple of years later the overweight jerk had a heart attack and I sent him a sympathy card.

I played my sousaphone at a church variety show for 'Saints. As we were leaving the stage, a youngster looked at me and said "That's a very big trumpet!"

As said to me in November of 1984 in the Pikes Peak Great Hall, home of the Colorado Springs Symphony Orchestra, by then conductor Charles Ansbacher after a particularly robust passage in the Nutcracker:

"Tuba, softer, you are covering up the dancers"

Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.

Chuck

P.S.- Charlie Ansbacher was a good guy. Looked just like Mahler. Exactly like Mahler.

"Honesty is the most important thing in making music.
If you can fake that, you have come far."

I was once accused of sounding like a pterodactyl. Given the particular source of this comment and the musical situation which elicited it, it remains, in my mind, the highest compliment I've ever received.

My favorite quote is from Mark Gould. After playing Till in wind rep class I went down to talk to him. He looked at me and said "are you the tuba player" I replied "yes I am." He then said "You played your **** balls off man." I dont think I will forget that one.
Zach

I too, got the "Gee, that's a big trumpet!" at a parade the other day.
Twice I was involved in a Moravian Brass Festival with Jeff Reynolds [retired Bass Trombone LAPO]as guest conductor.
The last time, he allowed me to borrow his Conn dependant 62H Bass Trombone, with a bullet hole sticker on the bell,
When we were practicing outside for the concert, he heard me belting out a rousing Moravian chorale,
and said "Man, that's loud". I was much humbled by the comment, and played softer after that, remembering to be a
musician and not a "Noisemaker".

the elephant wrote:I am sure he retired by the middle 1990s. He was a funny one and a pleasure to play for. Many there are not so funny. You will learn a lot. Or you will re-learn a lot.

(Do not piss off SEAL Team 2. Your next door neighbors are some scary guys. They have a beer machine next to the soda and candy machines in their barracks. Do not use it or you might die in great pain. Oh, and have fun, Bob!)

Bob, listen to Wade VERY closely. Do not piss off or make fun of the guys who walk around in the real short shorts at Little Creek. These are the guys who would love nothing more than to rip you up, and then for fun, put you back together in an odd and somehow unappealing way. They are called SEALS Bob, and they don't take kindly to asking them if they can balance balls on their noses. The only balls they will be playing with are yours after they have seperated them from your body.

The school is a highly regimented place now with Drill Sargeants and a little thing called field night. If you were a slob going in, you won't be going out. The first deck guys are the cream of the crop. A couple of words of advice: 1. Don't salute a Navy Guy with an Anchor on his collar. He is either an E-7, E-8, or E-9 depending on the number of stars. They hate this and take great joy in telling you just how much of an idiot you are and that the Army deserved you, and 2. Army Warrant Officers take a dim view of being called Chief. That is a Navy rank. They take great joy in telling you how dumb you are and maybe you should have done the Army a favor and joined the Navy. I think it is a great institution, but not as great as when "Jimmy Units" ruled on the weekends.

Wade, Dave Johnson was the best. He is retired and living in Pensecola. Lives down the street from Dave Durrough. Odd how time marches on. Thanks for teaching me to double tounge. Wonder what ever happened to Dutch Perry, Earl "I comb my hair with a firecracker"Kuburski, and Forris Fulford. Good times.

Chuck

Andre Williams (The Black Godfather/Mr. Rhythm) said to me, "There's nothin' like having a fat Jewish tuba player backin' up 'Bacon Fat' on a bass the size of a silver Cadillac."

I played tuba in a rock band all through high school, so we'd play shows mostly with generic high school garage bands. At our last show, I was playing my big solo in one of our reggae tunes, and somebody in the front row turned to his friend and said, "What the hell is that thing? This is the weirdest band I've ever heard." I almost cracked up.

My favorite is actually about a tuba-playing friend of mine.

Our marching band was doing a recording in a concert hall, and I was behind the board (we had 13 others, so my sousaphone was not missed). After playing Maleguena, the director asked for it again, this time with less tuba.

My friend to me: "Can't you EQ that?"

Director to my friend: "You can't EQ shred"

I had to cover my mouth for the next 10 minutes so my laughing would not be on the recording.

"You must have been pretty good at one time."

I dropped by the First Infantry Division Band at Ft. Riley, Kansas, eight years out of high school, and had not picked up a horn at all since high school. The section leader gave me a tuba and asked me to sight read some passages.

Many years ago I auditioned for a college trombone professor. When I finished playing, he said, "Kid, you've got tone out the wazoo; I should sound like that."

My nervousness turned into a massive swelling of the ego for about five seconds, until he added, "But you can't play music for s**t."

After another short pause, during which I searched the floor for some small remaining shred of self esteem, he concluded, "We'll work on that."

There began a very productive four years. The phrase I heard most often during lessons was, "If you're not making me want to get up and dance, you're wasting my time."

This wasn't even directed at a tuba player, but ranks as one of the funniest questionable musical quotes I've ever heard....

A Russian conductor was conducting some Russian romantic piece and the violins were having a tough time in one spot. He says to them, "Strings, you sound just like beautiful Russian countryside.....with broken nuclear reactor."

"It takes a great drummer to be better than no drummer." Chet Baker

Here's one of the bevy attributed to a college band director emeritus from my home state: "that sounds like an abortion. But to have an abortion, you've got to have conception...You have no conception"

Another from a conductor in wisconsin: "That sounds like you tried to push a banana through a screen door... You put forth very little effort and there's not much clarity on the other side"

1965 - Football game at Wake Forest High School in the sunken bowl stadium. Maybe 250 people watching the game in a stadium seating 10,000 if all the seats had been there. Me on sousaphone in the stands in the pep band.

The ref stops the game, comes over to the bottom row, calls up to me, "Could you not play that thing so loud? The quarterback says the team can't hear his signals."

And this one time, at band camp, ...

lgb&dtuba wrote:And this one time, at band camp, ...

That quote was used by a fellow tubist when we were sitting for a band photo. It was hot, and taking to long, and our smiles were fading. In a moment of stark silence this was uttered and the whole section just lost it.

J.c.

Don't bother to look, I've composed that already.
-- - Gustav Mahler to Bruno Walter, who had stopped to admire mountain scenery in rural Austria.

Already too loud!
- - - Bruno Walter at his first rehearsal with an American orchestra, as the players reached for their instruments

Never look at the trombones, it only encourages them.
- - - Richard Strauss

If a young man at the age of 23 can write a symphony like that, in five years he
will be ready to commit murder.
- - - Walter Damrosch on Aaron Copland

There are still so many beautiful things to be said in C major.
- - - Sergei Prokofiev

God tells me how the music should sound, but you stand in the way.
- - - Arturo Toscanini to a trumpet player

Oh how wonderful, really wonderful, opera would be if there were no singers!
- - - Gioacchino Rossini

Flint must be an extremely wealthy town: I see that each of you bought two or three seats.
- - - Victor Borge, playing to a half-filled house in Flint, Mich.

I love Beethoven, especially the poems.
- - - Ringo Starr