Stolen tubas and sousaphones in L.A.

[Bandmaster]

I remember a posting a few weeks ago about the rise of tuba players in Southern California. The bandas were making for good money to be earned by tuba players. Well, there seems to be an unintended side effect of this rage..... sadly.

The L.A. Times has run a story about the rash of tuba thefts from the local schools over the last year or so.

http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me ... 0587.story

[imperialbari]

Wouldn’t it take some nerve to play the stolen tubas publicly in the affected area? From my country bikes, cars, trucks, cosmetics, and razor equipment end up in very distinct areas across the Baltic.

One approach would be about personalizing the tubas. Not wanting to jinx certain instruments so just telling that one well known soloist has a partially blue upright. And two frequent TN posters each have uniquely decorated instruments.

Klaus

[Lew]

Notice the photo in the beginning of the story. How do band directors learn the wrong way to assemble sousaphones, with the body across the front of the player's body and the bell almost perpendicular to the body? Does someone actually teach these people that this is the right way to assemble a sousaphone instead of having the body along the player's right side? Manufacturers need to go back to including the alignment marks that are on my Conn 28K on the bell and body that show where they should be relative to each other when assembled and include instructions explaining what they mean. Then these maybe poor kids wouldn't have to deal with marching in this idiotic way.

[Dan Schultz]

Notice the photo in the beginning of the story. How do band directors learn the wrong way to assemble sousaphones, with the body across the front of the player's body and the bell almost perpendicular to the body? Does someone actually teach these people that this is the right way to assemble a sousaphone instead of having the body along the player's right side? Manufacturers need to go back to including the alignment marks that are on my Conn 28K on the bell and body that show where they should be relative to each other when assembled and include instructions explaining what they mean. Then these maybe poor kids wouldn't have to deal with marching in this idiotic way.

I actually had a sort-of local (Kentucky) band director pay me money to relocate the transitions on his sousaphones so the bell would be directly over the head of his players! Duh!

[Donn]

Since we weren't going much of anywhere with this anyway ... more on the `wherefore art thou' thing.

O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Romeo?
Deny thy father and refuse thy name;
Or, if thou wilt not, be but sworn my love,
And I'll no longer be a Capulet.

Juliet's problem is that she's into Romeo, but as a member of the Capulet family it's going to be trouble that he's a Montague. Her point here would have been a little clearer today if she'd said "O Romeo, Romeo! wherefore art thou Montague?" "Wherefore" means "why." Romeo's whereabouts at this moment are of interest to the audience, who knows he's lurking in the bushes, but not to Juliet, who has no reason to think he isn't back at the Montague ranch where he belongs.

And she goes on for a second famous line:

'Tis but thy name that is my enemy;
Thou art thyself, though not a Montague.
What's Montague? it is nor hand, nor foot,
Nor arm, nor face, nor any other part
Belonging to a man. O, be some other name!
What's in a name? that which we call a rose
By any other name would smell as sweet;
So Romeo would, were he not Romeo call'd,
Retain that dear perfection which he owes
Without that title. Romeo, doff thy name,
And for that name which is no part of thee
Take all myself.

As far as we know, however, this doesn't imply that Shakespeare supported the use of sousaphones in performing his works.

[ralphbsz]

They are probably on craigs list, ebay, or south of the border by now.

Rumor among local band directors (up here in the bay area, 300 miles north of LA) is that they either went to the sheet metal recycler ($60 apiece, no questions asked), or they were spray painted, decorated with rhine stones, and can be found regularly at locals restaurants and bars.

The article also claims that you can make $100 for an evening of playing sousaphone in a banda group in local Mexican restaurants. Which would mean that the investment into a really good Sousaphone would pay for itself in half a year (if you play two evenings a week). I somewhat doubt that this is reality; I bet the musicians get paid a lot less.