Tuning Slide 4.51- Bloom Where (and Who) You Are (from Year 1)

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

(I'm taking four weeks off from new posts while I do a number of things, not all related to this blog. On these four weeks I will be posting some from the very first year of The Tuning Slide. Some of it will be to refresh my thoughts, and some of it will just ground what I am doing in the purposes of the blog. This one was post #1.7 on 10/14/2015. It was posted right after I had met Herb Alpert after a local concert.)

---

Blow your life through your horn.

Arturo Sandoval

One could ask, who else's life could you blow through the horn? Well, sadly, many times we try to be something or someone we are not. We can have role models, but we can't be them. We can wish for other times or places, but we only have what we have in front of us. Here's my "back story" for this post.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Almost 50 years ago I attended my first professional, big-time concert. It was August 1966 and I had just graduated from high school. I had been playing trumpet for almost four years, had achieved first chair status the previous year, and played in a local "garage band" that covered Tijuana Brass music.

That first concert I ever went to was at the Allentown Fair in Allentown, PA, and featured my hero- Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass. (Sergio Mendez and Brazil '66 opened for them with their lead singer, Lani Hall.) I was in heaven.

A few months later the TJB came out with their seventh album, S.R.O. and there, on the back was a picture taken at that concert!

Jump ahead by these past 49 years and 2 months. (Now almost 53 years) That 18-year old trumpeter (me) is now a
67- [70] year old trumpeter, probably better than I ever was. The trumpet player on-stage is now an 80-year old trumpet player with a new album just released and in the middle of a concert tour.

Both of us are still playing, Lani Hall, now his wife, is still singing... and I had the pleasure and exciting honor of attending their concert and meeting him two weeks ago at Rochester's Riverside Live! Concert series.

Herb Alpert is also better than ever.

While this is not a review of the show, I will say that it was amazing and far more than would be expected. His ability at the trumpet is outstanding and his sense of music-making is better than ever. He plays jazz in a number of different styles, engages the audience in questions and answers, and is having a great time. He is doing this, I am sure, because he likes it. Music is his life and he needs to share it, on-stage, with others. He doesn't need to do this- he likes doing it.

That's part of the "who" of Herb Alpert. He tips his hat to the music that made him famous with a medley of TJB music, but that's not the highlight of the show. The Tijuana Brass is who he WAS. Many other artists would capitalize on that old music. Alpert is not interested in that. He wants to entertain with who he IS.

He capitalizes on his skill and the ability to do what he does with style and professionalism. He is not a "screaming" trumpet player. He takes the horn and makes the music that he knows he can make with presence and quality. Within that he uses all the notes of the horn in his solid range. At age 80 he utilizes the wisdom he has acquired over decades of making music to enhance his style and move it forward.

Within the solid range of the trumpet he advances the music as both confident soloist and self-assured leader of the quartet. He plays standards then improvises and innovates. He trades fours with the drummer who moves into an extended solo that Alpert returns to as it falls into place.

That is the "where" of Herb Alpert- the here and now. Someone from the audience asked him who he wished he had played with and he commented that he had the opportunity to play with Miles Davis. But he added that he didn't feel it was right. That wasn't who he was. (I would disagree, but then I am a fan of both of them.)

One can listen to Maynard Ferguson and try to be a "screamer." But without the skill and "chops," doing that will become a disaster. One can try to continually repeat what used to be. That, too, wouldn't work.

Being real- being oneself- is what life is really all about. It shows up on the trumpet, but it also shows up at home in our families and at work with colleagues as well as in whatever we try to do on a daily basis. If I try to be someone I cannot be- or someone I once was- it will not be real.

Who am I?

Where am I in my life's growth?

How can I use my here and now skills and resources to keep moving forward into whatever comes next?

Answer those questions- every day. Seek to build on where you were yesterday, moving into where you want to be tomorrow, by doing what you can do today!

I sat in humility watching and listening to Alpert, but he also encouraged me by still doing what he does better than ever.

We do not stop innovating because we have gotten older. We do not stop improving what we can do because we don't have the same skills as someone else. We can each find our place regardless of age, skill, or time.

If you are young, take heart that youhaven't reach the pinnacle of what you can be. Keep at it. What does Herb Alpert do when he is not on a concert tour or on days he performs? He does scales. The simple, basic building blogs of all that we do. Scales. (I am sure he does a lot of other things, too, but he builds that on the basics.)

So, Herb Alpert, thank you for growing and still performing, clearly enjoying life and taking time to greet me and remind me what life is all about.

Tuning Slide 4.44- How to Lose Your Direction

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Every leader will hit a series of plateaus in their lives. The key is not to stay there, because settling on a plateau can easily lead to an elongated season of comfort. Being comfortable is one of the leader's worst enemies.
― Gary Rohrmayer

Every year on Memorial Day I am taken back fifty plus years to a cool May morning along the Susquehanna River in north central Pennsylvania. I wrote about it the first year of the Tuning Slide and repeated it since. It was the year I hit a plateau that has taken YEARS to move away from. That moment colored everything that came after it- and became the distorting lens that changed how I saw what had been before it.

There was a time somewhere about half a century ago when I was your typical high school trumpet player. I no doubt believed I was invincible, the top of the band's musical food chain. My sight-reading ability was somewhat lacking, but one evening of working on it at home usually fixed that and I was able to exhibit the skill that my first chair position would expect.

I don't remember any hints of uncertainty or doubts about what I could do as a trumpet player. I was lead trumpet in our stage musical. I organized a small combo to play at our school talent show and even made an arrangement of the Beatles' Help! as our number. I was lead in a trumpet quartet that played at many local churches. I was also lead in a Tijuana Brass-style group that played at both the local pool and at our town's annual Fourth of July fest. I knew I would never be a professional musician- that wasn't in my plans. I did know that I loved being a trumpet player.

I had what I might later have called "mojo."

For fifty years, I have considered Memorial Day as the day I lost it. True or not, what we believe is often "truth" if not "fact." If we believe it, it is real.

It was a mostly clear, cool morning. I remember a misty fog along the river, not unusual on a spring morning like that. The sun was breaking through as I joined a group of veterans at the corner of Main and Allegheny Streets on the bank of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River.

Memorial Day always began at the river. This was a time to remember the sailors who had died in service. Since we were only a couple decades past the end of World War II the memories were personal, real- not yet part of history. They were still at the edge of current events.

It was a simple ceremony. I don't know what was said. I remember what was done. A reading and a prayer, and then a wreath was tossed solemnly into the river. The honor guard rifles faced up-river and proceeded with the traditional salute. The volley comes from the battlefield tradition of three-volleys to indicate that the dead had been removed from the battlefield and properly cared for.

The sounds echoed from the mountains and it was my turn.

Taps.

My notes felt right. They flowed as I wanted them to. They moved up-river following the smoke from the volleys. It was an honor to be called to do this. My friend Steve, the second chair, was stationed a short distance away to play the echo. It was all moving and appropriate. It was finished.

Steve and I then joined the rest of our high school marching band for the parade. It would be our last official parade having just graduated. The parade moved up the main east-west street through town. We marched past what had been my Dad's pharmacy and then our house. We went by the junior high school where a Winged Victory statue remembered World War 1 sacrifices. Just past my grandfather's house a small curve in the street took us to the left-turn that led into the cemetery.

The band took its "parade rest"-style position for the ceremony.

My memory of that day is fixed with what happened next. The three-volley honor salute was repeated. It was not the first time I had been in this cemetery and heard that. My dad, a veteran of WW II, had died about 18 months earlier. That volley had echoed from the hilltop cemetery on that cold December day. Now I was standing but twenty yards or so from his and my mother's graves. I was focused and ready to go.

Taps is not difficult to play. It is ingrained in every trumpet player's mind. Its haunting sound is as familiar as our own names. Steve had gone to the hilltop behind us for his echo response to my call.

Perhaps I was nervous, or, at the other extreme, over-confident. I don't remember any performance anxiety at that time. This was not my first public solo performance. Most likely I was just careless.

Three notes in I choked. Everything I knew about performing disappeared. I had forgotten to let the water out of the horn. The sound started to gurgle, the notes lost their clear intensity. My mind went into auto-pilot, which 50 years ago did not include the simple act of letting the water out in one of the pauses at the end of a phrase.

I finished with the gurgles mocking me even more intensely when Steve's echo sounded so perfect to my ear. I was upset at myself. I had let the veterans down. I had let my father down.

I was ashamed.

I had one more opportunity. There was one more short parade that afternoon in nearby Salladasburg. There was one more cemetery with Taps.

That, too, became an embarrassment. I flubbed a note at the beginning and, yes, I again forgot to let the water out. That, I am sure, was more nerves and, even more likely, inexperience.

But it became my experience. It became, for me, a defining moment in my musical life. It made me, in my mind, a sloppy trumpet player.

One day in May 1966 set a standard of self-understanding that I have spent over half a century trying to change. I added my low sight-reading skills to it three months later when I did not get into the marching band at college. I never thought until recently that they simply didn't need another freshman trumpet player at that point and it had nothing to do with my ability. The Memorial Day experience was already coloring my personal lowering expectations and was undermining my self-understanding as a musician.

This story encompasses so much of what I have written about in these now four years of The Tuning Slide. Part of it has been to exorcise those ghosts and discover the musician I am. It has worked- and continues to work. I am playing today at a level I would never have thought possible. Musically, with the trumpet, I have found my voice. It is not impossible. You are never too old to take new directions and find the truth that will set you free to sing your song.

Next week we will look at how to move beyond these plateaus, real or imagined. Until then, let's go practice.

The Tuning Slide: Losing My Mojo

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Many of our deepest motives come,
not from an adult logic of how things work in the world,
but out of something that is frozen from childhood.
-Kazuo Ishiguro

There was a time somewhere about half a century ago when I was your typical high school trumpet player. I no doubt believed I was invincible, the top of the band's musical food chain. My sight-reading ability was somewhat lacking, but one evening of working on it at home usually fixed that and I was able to exhibit the skill that my first chair position would expect.

I don't remember any hints of uncertainty or doubts about what I could do as a trumpet player. I was lead trumpet in our stage musical. I organized a small combo to play at our school talent show and even made an arrangement of the Beatles' Help! as our number. I was lead in a trumpet quartet that played at many local churches. I was also lead in a Tijuana Brass-style group that played at both the local pool and at our town's annual Fourth of July fest. I knew I would never be a professional musician- that wasn't in my plans. I did know that I loved being a trumpet player.

I had what I might later have called "mojo."

For fifty years, I have considered Memorial Day as the day I lost it. True or not, what we believe is often "truth" if not "fact." If we believe it, it is real. Since today is the 50th Anniversary of that day, I will tell the story in full, something I have wanted to do for years.

The "Monday Holiday" bill had not yet been enacted. In 1966 Memorial Day, the day to remember those who died in battle, always celebrated on May 30, happened to fall on a Monday. It was a mostly clear, cool morning. I remember a misty fog along the river, not unusual on a spring morning like that. The sun was breaking through as I joined the group of veterans at the corner of Main and Allegheny Streets on the bank of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River.

Memorial Day always began at the river. This was a time to remember the sailors who had died in service. Since we were only a couple decades past the end of World War II the memories were personal, real and not yet part of history. They were still at the edge of current events.

(Susquehanna River Bridge, Jersey Shore, PA)

It was a simple ceremony. I don't know what was said. I remember what was done. A reading and a prayer, and a wreath tossed solemnly into the river. The honor guard rifles faced up-river, to the right in the above picture, and proceeded with the traditional three-volley salute. The volley comes from the battlefield tradition of three-volleys to indicate that the dead had been removed from the battlefield and properly cared for.

The sounds echoed from the mountains and it was my turn.

Taps.

My notes felt right. They flowed as I wanted them to. They moved up-river following the smoke from the volleys. It was an honor to be called to do this. My friend Steve, the second chair, was stationed a short distance away to play the echo. It was all moving and appropriate. It was finished.

Next Steve and I joined the rest of our high school marching band for the parade. It would be our last official parade having just graduated. The parade moved up the main east-west street through town.

(Allegheny St., Jersey Shore, PA)

We marched past what had been my Dad's pharmacy and then our house. We went by the junior high school where a Winged Victory statue remembered World War 1 sacrifices. Just past my grandfather's house a small curve in the street took us to the left-turn that led into the cemetery. The band took its "parade rest"-style position for the ceremony.

(Jersey Shore, PA, cemetery)

Speeches and honors were now given for all who had died in the service of the country. For a small-town in Central Pennsylvania, we had our share of names on the veterans' memorials downtown next to the Post Office. There were 45 who died from World War II, and another 9 from Korea. Many hundreds served.

But that's another story.

My memory of that day is fixed with what happened next. The three-volley honor salute was finished. It was not the first time I had been in this cemetery and heard that. This was my fourth or fifth Memorial Day parade. Beyond that, my dad, a veteran of WW II, had died about 18 months earlier. The volley had echoed from the hilltop cemetery on that cold December day. Now I was standing but twenty yards or so from his and my mother's graves,

Again, time to play Taps. I was focused and ready to go. Taps is not difficult to play. It is ingrained in every trumpet player's mind. Its haunting sound is as familiar as our own name. Steve had gone to the hilltop behind us for his echo response to my call.

Perhaps I was nervous, or, at the other extreme, over-confident. I don't remember any performance anxiety at that time. This was not my first public solo performance. Most likely I was just careless.

Three notes in I choked. Everything I knew about performing disappeared. I had forgotten to let the water out of the horn. The sound started to gurgle, the notes lost their clear intensity. My mind went into auto-pilot, which 50 years ago did not include the simple act of letting the water out in one of the pauses at the end of a phrase.

I finished with the gurgles seeming to mock me even more intensely when Steve's echo sounded so perfect to my ear. I was upset at myself. I had let the veterans down. I had let my father down.

I was ashamed.

I had one more opportunity. There was one more short parade that afternoon in nearby Salladasburg. There was one more cemetery with Taps.

(Salladasburg, PA, cemetery from Stacy on Find a Grave)

That, too, became an embarrassment. I flubbed a note at the beginning and, yes, I again forgot to let the water out. That, I am sure, was more nerves and, even more likely, inexperience.

But it became my experience. It became, for me, a defining moment in my musical life. It made me, in my mind, a sloppy trumpet player. One day in May 1966 set a standard of self-understanding that I have spent half a century trying to change. My low sight-reading skills added to it three months later when I did not pass the audition to get into the marching band at college. I never thought until recently that they simply didn't need another freshman trumpet player at that point and it had nothing to do with my ability. The Memorial Day experience was already coloring my personal lowering expectations.

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post on how logic and emotions interact. My now ancient story is as good an example as I can imagine. In the great scheme of things, even the past 50 years of my own life, that Memorial Day series of flubs isn't even a drop in the bucket. If anyone noticed then, or remembers it today, I would be shocked. I did what I could and I did it well. My logical brain knows all that. It knows that the gurgling sound of a trumpet is not the end of the world- and that very few people even heard it.

But there was a sense of failure and shame connected to that moment in my memory. It had more to do with standing mere yards from my parents' graves than it did about the hundred or so people who were there. It was connected with my own needs to live up to perfection for my deceased parents. In that moment I failed.

Here's how that all works in us. We start with:

• Principles:
  
  • Values
  • What you stand for
  • Your personal foundation

These don't change much over our lives. They are reaffirmed or adjusted, but we mostly maintain our personal principles.

We add to our lives with:

• Experiences:
  
  • What happens to you
  • Interactions with the world beyond you

In and of themselves, these experiences are simply there. We give them meaning, positive or negative, healthy or unhealthy, based on our personal values, that foundation through which we judge the world and ourselves. This then produces:

• Emotions:
  
  • Feelings at a given moment.
  • Reactions to experiences

Let's put it together:

• Experiences produce emotions.
  
  • These emotions may be based on our principles and values, or on a physical reaction to what is happening. If it makes us feel good, happy, fulfilled or whatever, it is a positive emotion. If we are hurt, sad, lost, etc. it can be a negative emotion.
• Experiences and emotions are stored together in our memory.
  
  • That's how memories work. They are not stored as a single event- A Memory in A Location. They are stored in some interconnected way in our brain. When a memory comes back it easily comes back with the emotions. This is Proust's famous experience with the madeline cake.
• The emotions connected with experiences can then interact with our principles.
  
  • Good emotions can produce a positive "value" response; negative feeling emotions can produce a "value" response that says that this does not fit my values.
• Together these guide how we do what we do in our lives.

To design the future effectively,

you must first let go of your past.

-Charles J. Givens

There's the rub. Back again to the letting go I talked about last week. Back to logic and emotion and principles and mindfulness.

After a previous post on developing experiences my friend Terry commented:

Experience counts more than theory, because experience works on the heart

But when that work on the heart is an ongoing emotional "shame" it will color what we do every time we are faced with a similar situation.

Finally, today, 50 years later, I am discovering new ways to rewrite that emotional experience of Memorial Day 1966. I have been able over the past few years specifically, to present alternative realities. I have also been willing to take risks such as doing a solo, attending jazz, big band, and trumpet camps where I couldn't hide and playing in a quintet. New experiences rewrite the "heart story" and put things into a better perspective. Even this Tuning Slide blog on trumpet playing is part of it.

I have been controlled by that previous day for 50 years. Maybe I will finally let it go.

In working on the previous post and this one I came across lyrics from singer-songwriter James Bay in his song Let It Go. The song is about breaking up with a girlfriend, but some of the words are perfect for what I have been talking about...

Trying to push this problem up the hill
When it's just too heavy to hold
Think now's the time to let it slide

So come on let it go
Just let it be
Why don't you be you
And I'll be me

Everything's that's broke
Leave it to the breeze
Let the ashes fall
Forget about me

Come on let it go
Just let it be
Why don't you be you
And I'll be me

Another 50-year Music Memory

For one week in December 1966 what may be one of the greatest all-time songs sat at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It is an excellent reminder that what tickles our fancy at one point, may not last into future excellence. It was only #1 for that one week.

The week of December 10 found the beach Boys with their 3rd #1 hit. It would become their first million seller. The Beach Boys joined the Beatles as the only groups to chart a "psychedelic"  song up to that point.

According to Wikipedia:

Its success earned the Beach Boys a Grammy nomination for Best Vocal Group performance in 1966; the song was eventually inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 1994. "Good Vibrations" was voted number one in the Mojo's "Top 100 Records of All Time" number six on Rolling Stone's "500 Greatest Songs of All Time", and was included in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame's "500 Songs that Shaped Rock and Roll".

To show the insanity, though of awards like the Grammy awards- there were five songs nominated for Best Performance by a vocal group:

• Beach Boys- Good Vibrations
• Association- Cherish
• Mamas and Papas- Monday, Monday
• Sandpipers- Gunatanamera
• Anita Kerr Singers- A Man and a Woman

The winner?
Anita Kerr Singers- for the second year in a row.

A 50-Year Memory: Video for December

For three weeks in December 1966 a novelty group dominated the # 1 spot on the American charts. In a variation on Rudy Vallee and the dance bands of the 1920s. A very surprise hit, it went on to win a Grammy in 1967. So, straight from the memory banks, here's Winchester Cathedral.

A 50-Year Memory: Video for November

Three songs were #1 in November 1966. The month started with what may be a very historic record, the debut single of the made-for-TV pop group, The Monkees. Last Train to Clarksville was released in August and was #1 on November 5, 1966. It had that jingly pop-feel that attracted airplay. It had a general Beatle-esque style to it that also helped. It was featured seven times on the Monkees TV show, the most of any of their songs.

By the way, the other two #1 songs that November were:

• Poor Side of Town by Johnny Rivers and
• You Keep Me Hangin' On, 8th #1 song for The Supremes.

A 50-Year Memory: Video for October

One month into my freshman year in college in 1966 and I was finding my way to the college radio station which, along with band, would take up a great deal of my college time. (Sure, grades suffered, but none of it was wasted!)

The last week of September and the first two weeks of October a group called The Association
took over the airwaves with Cherish, their first #1 hit, but not as good, in my opinion as the earlier Along Comes Mary. They would perform at my college in another year or so when I had an opportunity to interview them for the radio station.

But the song of the month on campus took #1 nationally for two weeks in the month. It was our top song since they would be the headliner at the Houseparty concert. THAT was a big deal. No, as a poor, shy naive frosh I didn't go to the concert. But the first chords of this song transport me back those 50 years like few songs do.

The Four Tops-

Reach Out, I'll Be There.

Motown at its very best!

A 50-Year Memory: Video for September

The summer of 1966 came to an end. I was a college freshman.

On the Billboard Top 10, September began with a week of Scottish psychedelic- arguably the first of the "psychedelic" style.
Donovan was the star, but on the recording, two who would be BIG with Led Zeppelin- Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones along with jazz drummer, Bobby Orr.

Sunshine Superman

The rest of the month belonged to Motown! The Supremes were #1 for three weeks.

You Can't Hurry Love

A 50-Year Memory: Video for August

(Sorry for the delay. See yesterday's post for my "excuse.")

August 1966.

I turned 18-years old, but in those ancient days I was still not old enough to vote.

August 1966.

My last month at home before heading off to college.

August 1966.

Probably for me one of those pivot points between what was and what would one day be.

August 1966:

"Wild Thing" by the Troggs topped the charts for the first week of August, but then the Lovin' Spoonful took over with Summer in the City.

(One of the few John Sebastian songs where his voice doesn't sound like it's smiling all the way through.)

A 50-Year Memory: Video of the Month

Continuing to look at 1966's popular music. I was halfway through my last summer before college. The first week of July Frank Sinatra made a big comeback with a great song. It went on to win Record of the Year at the Grammy Awards for 1966.

Doobie, Doobie, Do...

But let's not forget the younger generation. The last week of June and the 2nd week of July found this quartet at the top.

Unfortunately, these classics were followed by two weeks of Tommy James. From my point of view, that's enough to say.

A 50-Year Memory: Video for June

As June began, I was no longer a high school student. A summer of freedom was ahead. I was working as a cashier at the local swimming pool, learning to swim in private lessons with one of the lifeguards, and probably getting nervous about heading off to college in the fall.

On the radio as I graduated and moved into June:

Two weeks in May/June at #1:
When A Man Loves A Woman- Percy Sledge

Trivia: this was the first number 1 hit recorded in Muscle Shoals. It is also one of seven number 1 hits to debut on the Billboard Hot 100 at number 100.

Then the Stones came roaring into town:

Two weeks in June at #1:
Paint It, Black- The Rolling Stones

Trivia: the third number one hit single for he Stones in the US and sixth in the UK. Since its initial release, the song has remained influential as the first number one hit featuring a sitar.


I'll save these guys until next month. They took top spot on the last week of June.
One week in June at #1:
Paperback Writer- The Beatles

A 50-Year Memory: Losing My Mojo

A Tuning Slide Extra

Weekly Reflections on Life and Music

Many of our deepest motives come, 

not from an adult logic of how things work in the world, 

but out of something that is frozen from childhood.

-Kazuo Ishiguro

There was a time somewhere about half a century ago when I was your typical high school trumpet player. I no doubt believed I was invincible, the top of the band's musical food chain. My sight-reading ability was somewhat lacking, but one evening of working on it at home usually fixed that and I was able to exhibit the skill that my first chair position would expect.

I don't remember any hints of uncertainty or doubts about what I could do as a trumpet player. I was lead trumpet in our stage musical. I organized a small combo to play at our school talent show and even made an arrangement of the Beatles' Help! as our number. I was lead in a trumpet quartet that played at many local churches. I was also lead in a Tijuana Brass-style group that played at both the local pool and at our town's annual Fourth of July fest. I knew I would never be a professional musician- that wasn't in my plans. I did know that I loved being a trumpet player.

I had what I might later have called "mojo."

For fifty years, I have considered Memorial Day as the day I lost it. True or not, what we believe is often "truth" if not "fact." If we believe it, it is real. Since today is the 50th Anniversary of that day, I will tell the story in full, something I have wanted to do for years.

The "Monday Holiday" bill had not yet been enacted. In 1966 Memorial Day, the day to remember those who died in battle, always celebrated on May 30, happened to fall on a Monday. It was a mostly clear, cool morning. I remember a misty fog along the river, not unusual on a spring morning like that. The sun was breaking through as I joined the group of veterans at the corner of Main and Allegheny Streets on the bank of the West Branch of the Susquehanna River.

Memorial Day always began at the river. This was a time to remember the sailors who had died in service. Since we were only a couple decades past the end of World War II the memories were personal, real and not yet part of history. They were still at the edge of current events.

(Susquehanna River Bridge, Jersey Shore, PA)

It was a simple ceremony. I don't know what was said. I remember what was done. A reading and a prayer, and a wreath tossed solemnly into the river. The honor guard rifles faced up-river, to the right in the above picture, and proceeded with the traditional three-volley salute. The volley comes from the battlefield tradition of three-volleys to indicate that the dead had been removed from the battlefield and properly cared for.

The sounds echoed from the mountains and it was my turn.

Taps.

My notes felt right. They flowed as I wanted them to. They moved up-river following the smoke from the volleys. It was an honor to be called to do this. My friend Steve, the second chair, was stationed a short distance away to play the echo. It was all moving and appropriate. It was finished.

Next Steve and I joined the rest of our high school marching band for the parade. It would be our last official parade having just graduated. The parade moved up the main east-west street through town.

(Allegheny St., Jersey Shore, PA)

We marched past what had been my Dad's pharmacy and then our house. We went by the junior high school where a Winged Victory statue remembered World War 1 sacrifices. Just past my grandfather's house a small curve in the street took us to the left-turn that led into the cemetery. The band took its "parade rest"-style position for the ceremony.

(Jersey Shore, PA, cemetery)

Speeches and honors were now given for all who had died in the service of the country. For a small-town in Central Pennsylvania, we had our share of names on the veterans' memorials downtown next to the Post Office. There were 45 who died from World War II, and another 9 from Korea. Many hundreds served.

But that's another story.

My memory of that day is fixed with what happened next. The three-volley honor salute was finished. It was not the first time I had been in this cemetery and heard that. This was my fourth or fifth Memorial Day parade. Beyond that, my dad, a veteran of WW II, had died about 18 months earlier. The volley had echoed from the hilltop cemetery on that cold December day. Now I was standing but twenty yards or so from his and my mother's graves,

Again, time to play Taps. I was focused and ready to go. Taps is not difficult to play. It is ingrained in every trumpet player's mind. Its haunting sound is as familiar as our own name. Steve had gone to the hilltop behind us for his echo response to my call.

Perhaps I was nervous, or, at the other extreme, over-confident. I don't remember any performance anxiety at that time. This was not my first public solo performance. Most likely I was just careless.

Three notes in I choked. Everything I knew about performing disappeared. I had forgotten to let the water out of the horn. The sound started to gurgle, the notes lost their clear intensity. My mind went into auto-pilot, which 50 years ago did not include the simple act of letting the water out in one of the pauses at the end of a phrase.

I finished with the gurgles seeming to mock me even more intensely when Steve's echo sounded so perfect to my ear. I was upset at myself. I had let the veterans down. I had let my father down.

I was ashamed.

I had one more opportunity. There was one more short parade that afternoon in nearby Salladasburg. There was one more cemetery with Taps.

(Salladasburg, PA, cemetery from Stacy on Find a Grave)

That, too, became an embarrassment. I flubbed a note at the beginning and, yes, I again forgot to let the water out. That, I am sure, was more nerves and, even more likely, inexperience.

But it became my experience. It became, for me, a defining moment in my musical life. It made me, in my mind, a sloppy trumpet player. One day in May 1966 set a standard of self-understanding that I have spent half a century trying to change. My low sight-reading skills added to it three months later when I did not pass the audition to get into the marching band at college. I never thought until recently that they simply didn't need another freshman trumpet player at that point and it had nothing to do with my ability. The Memorial Day experience was already coloring my personal lowering expectations.

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post on how logic and emotions interact. My now ancient story is as good an example as I can imagine. In the great scheme of things, even the past 50 years of my own life, that Memorial Day series of flubs isn't even a drop in the bucket. If anyone noticed then, or remembers it today, I would be shocked. I did what I could and I did it well. My logical brain knows all that. It knows that the gurgling sound of a trumpet is not the end of the world- and that very few people even heard it.

But there was a sense of failure and shame connected to that moment in my memory. It had more to do with standing mere yards from my parents' graves than it did about the hundred or so people who were there. It was connected with my own needs to live up to perfection for my deceased parents. In that moment I failed.

Here's how that all works in us. We start with:

• Principles:
• Values
• What you stand for
• Your personal foundation

These don't change much over our lives. They are reaffirmed or adjusted, but we mostly maintain our personal principles.

We add to our lives with:

• Experiences:
• What happens to you
• Interactions with the world beyond you

In and of themselves, these experiences are simply there. We give them meaning, positive or negative, healthy or unhealthy, based on our personal values, that foundation through which we judge the world and ourselves. This then produces:

• Emotions:
• Feelings at a given moment.
• Reactions to experiences

Let's put it together:

• Experiences produce emotions.
• These emotions may be based on our principles and values, or on a physical reaction to what is happening. If it makes us feel good, happy, fulfilled or whatever, it is a positive emotion. If we are hurt, sad, lost, etc. it can be a negative emotion.
• Experiences and emotions are stored together in our memory.
• That's how memories work. They are not stored as a single event- A Memory in A Location. They are stored in some interconnected way in our brain. When a memory comes back it easily comes back with the emotions. This is Proust's famous experience with the madeline cake.
• The emotions connected with experiences can then interact with our principles.
• Good emotions can produce a positive "value" response; negative feeling emotions can produce a "value" response that says that this does not fit my values.
• Together these guide how we do what we do in our lives.

To design the future effectively, 

you must first let go of your past.

-Charles J. Givens

There's the rub. Back again to the letting go I talked about last week. Back to logic and emotion and principles and mindfulness.

After a previous post on developing experiences my friend Terry commented:

Experience counts more than theory, because experience works on the heart

But when that work on the heart is an ongoing emotional "shame" it will color what we do every time we are faced with a similar situation.

Finally, today, 50 years later, I am discovering new ways to rewrite that emotional experience of Memorial Day 1966. I have been able over the past few years specifically, to present alternative realities. I have also been willing to take risks such as doing a solo, attending jazz, big band, and trumpet camps where I couldn't hide and playing in a quintet. New experiences rewrite the "heart story" and put things into a better perspective. Even this Tuning Slide blog on trumpet playing is part of it.

I have been controlled by that previous day for 50 years. Maybe I will finally let it go.

In working on the previous post and this one I came across lyrics from singer-songwriter James Bay in his song Let It Go. The song is about breaking up with a girlfriend, but some of the words are perfect for what I have been talking about...

Trying to push this problem up the hill
When it's just too heavy to hold
Think now's the time to let it slide

So come on let it go
Just let it be
Why don't you be you
And I'll be me

Everything's that's broke
Leave it to the breeze
Let the ashes fall
Forget about me

Come on let it go
Just let it be
Why don't you be you
And I'll be me

Who Would Have Believed It?

As I mentioned in May's first of the month video post yesterday, I will be "celebrating" or perhaps remembering my high school graduation later this month. It has been 50 years. Half a century!

Where has the time gone?

More to the point, for this post anyway, is the way things are happening today that we would have never thought possible in 1966. There are the obvious things.. the incredibly powerful computer I call my iPhone that I don't have to remember Fortran to get to work. The many technological advancements that have impacted our lives. There is no Soviet Union anymore. We have had our first African-American president and may have our first woman president.

But what is striking me most today is that on Wednesday of this week I am going to a concert up in the Twin Cities. My first concert was 50 years ago this summer. In these intervening years I have been to almost 100 other professional concerts of many different performers from Herb Alpert to Rosanne Cash; the Tremeloes (who?) and Lionel Hampton to Janis Joplin and Old Crow Medicine Show.

Just going to the concert is not the BIG thought about Wednesday. It is that the concert is Sir Paul McCartney.

Yes, him. The former Beatle. This summer will be 50 years (notice all the synchronicity!) since the last paid Beatles concert in San Francisco. (They did that rooftop thing in 1969, but that doesn't count.)

So, if you had told me, that dorky, high school senior in 1966 that 50 years later he would be going to a concert in Minneapolis with Paul McCartney, I wouldn't have believed you. I would have laughed and done some quick arithmetic  and said, that such an event in 2016 would be as likely as say the top acts of 1916 - Enrico Caruso or Al Jolson - being a headline concert in 1966. Go ahead. Laugh with that teenage me. Even Sinatra would have been seen as old- and he was more contemporary in 1966 than early McCartney is today!

But the music world has changed in these 50 years. Old people like Mick Jagger and Keith Richards; Bruce Springsteen and Paul McCartney are still out on the road drawing crowds of all ages.

"Rock music" is no longer just for kids. It has become a staple of American (and world) popular music. Music has also splintered into many types and styles, some of which some of us just don't get. But then we aren't supposed to get it anymore than we our parents "got" the Beatles and Stones.

It is a music world that would have seemed insane. No adult would ever like the Beatles. (Like "silly wabbit- Trix are for kids! Remember that?) How could adults "dig" the Stones?

Until we became adults and took the Beatles and Stones along with us. Not just on the Boomer-oriented classic rock stations but into the mainstream and in school classes. My daughter did a history project on the music of the Beatles, one of her favorite groups. This music is more than just another bit of nostalgia, although admittedly there is some of that. But McCartney is still making music. He is still one of the great talents of the music world- or any genre.

Crazy? Yep, it would have seemed that way in May 1966.

I'm glad it isn't so crazy in 2016.

P.S. I just went to a web site that posts set lists for McCartney's concerts, as well as videos of the performances. Now I am really psyched! More to come later this week.

A 50-Year Memory: Video for May

My last month of high school. May 1966.

From the truly ridiculous:

• It's a Small World opens at Disneyland.

To the wonderfully sublime:

• The legendary album Pet Sounds by The Beach Boys is released.
• Bob Dylan's seminal album, Blonde on Blonde is released in the U.S.

And omens of things to come:

• Tens of thousands of anti-war demonstrators again picket the White House, then rally at the Washington Monument.

The Mamas and Papas spent three weeks of May at the top of the Billboard Top 100. A wonderful song by a group  of talented individuals.

Monday, Monday

John Phillips (1935–2001),
Denny Doherty (1940–2007),
Mama Cass Elliot (1941–1974),
Michelle Phillips née Gilliam (b. 1944)

A 50-year Memory: Video for April

At the beginning of April 1966 The Ballad of the Green Berets was still holding down #1. But for the rest of the month what we then called "blue-eyed soul" took over.

Blue-eyed soul (also known as white soul) is a term sometimes used for rhythm and blues and soul music performed by white artists. The term was coined in the mid-1960s, to describe white artists who performed soul and R&B that was similar to the music of the Motown and Stax record labels. -Wikipedia

First it was the original "blue-eyed soul" group, the Righteous Brothers. They took over #1 for three weeks with (You're My) Soul and Inspiration.

But for the last week in April one of the new, younger groups came on the scene. The Young Rascals from Garfield, NJ, took an earlier song they had heard, added it to the shows, then recorded it. It was their first hit.

The song is one of the Rolling Stone magazine Top 500. The group is in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and they are all now in their 70s. Which in my book is still young!

Another 50-year Memory: Vietnam

Earlier, when I got ready to post the video for the month from 50 years ago, my senior year in high school, I discovered that the song that dominated the American airwaves for five solid weeks in March and April of 1966 was the Vietnam War song, Ballad of the Green Berets. It is one of those songs that brings back deep and powerful emotions.

In 1966 the anti-war movement was hardly more than a relatively few people. Most of us were still living in the World War II vision of victory and the unbeatable power of the American military. Barry Sadler's song conjured all those positive emotions. It was, after all, only 20 years after World War II and many of us were the GI's children.

On the other hand it was a song of praise to and even worship of war. Wrapped in  the honor of the "brave men of the Green Berets" was, unfortunately, words that glorified war and death. My Dad had died about 18 months earlier, but I wonder if he, a veteran of the Battle of the Bulge, would have felt that way?

Those two conflicting emotions were- and still are- real in the American psyche. They may even be basic emotional responses in the human psyche.

Underlying the conflicting emotions was also the uncertain political leadership, a deep and fatal misunderstanding of the root causes underlying the war, and a reliance on a style of war that was becoming outdated. Even Defense Secretary McNamara many years too late acknowledged the "fog" of the Vietnam War. The result, as we well know, was a disaster. We turned on ourselves and the men and women in the service. We vilified returning servicemen as if they were to blame for the problem when all they did was answer the call to military service.

Even if we did not participate directly in that vilification, as a nation it may have been among our darkest hours.

Times have changed in many ways. More people now understand that disagreement with war policy does not mean disagreement or hatred of those sent to serve. More people are recognizing the devastating effects of any war and seeking ways to help and support those who are adversely impacted by it. We are welcoming veterans home and thanking them for their service.

I also believe our Vietnam veterans are hopefully getting their long-deserved due. I have noticed that Vietnam vets are more willing to talk publicly today about their service without wondering who is going to condemn them for something that wasn't their fault.

Yesterday we were having lunch in an out-of-the-way restaurant. There was only one other couple present. The gentleman was a Vietnam-era Navy veteran. He was talking to the young server about his experiences and what he did in the war. He was not on the ground in Vietnam, but served aboard an aircraft carrier off the Vietnamese coast. As I listened to his story, we were only a couple tables apart, I was glad he now felt able to talk openly about it.

This is a far cry from some of my vet friends between 1969 and 1972. Even those who were involved in groups like Vietnam Veterans Against the War, as vocal as they were, would often be cautious about who they talked to about their experiences. Over these 40 years I have sat with a number who wanted to talk more about it and make their own amends to themselves.

Even given all that, I cannot post Barry Sadler's song. There are on You Tube videos that honor vets of other wars with pictures set to Sadler's song. While I applaud the support of these troops, Sadler's words are still too divisive and difficult, describing a time that is now past.

Plus we need to do something more positive as the vets of my generation are aging.

• My heart still sinks every time I see a Vietnam Veteran.
• For what we as a nation put them through,
• For the way they were treated,
• For the loss of so many young men!

To all Vietnam veterans, and troops from all the wars, I thank you for your willingness to do what you have done. May the day come when we (or someone) can look back and be glad when no one has to fight in war.

A 50-year Memory: Video for March

Mixed emotions about posting this month's # song from 1966. For the four weeks of March and the first week of April one song dominated the pop charts, "The Ballad of the Green Berets," by SSG Barry Sadler. I will write on that later today.

For this post, though, here's the song that later in the month dislodged Nancy Sinatra's walkin' boots from #2.

(Plus you get a look at American Bandstand!)

A 50-year Memory: Video for February

Three songs for four weeks in February 1966.
Pop and rock and sexy.

February 5 and 12 My Love - Petula Clark
February 19 Lightnin' Strikes - Lou Christie
February 26 These Boots Are Made For Walkin' - Nancy Sinatra

So let's go with Nancy....

A 50-Year Memory: Video for January

The first month of 1966 was dominated by six musicians...
Simon and Garfunkle started the month and had the #1 song on January 1 and 22:

John, Paul, George, and Ringo (The Beatles) held the top on January 8, 15, and 29:

Forty-Nine Years Apart

This is the back of the album cover for Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass's 1966 recording, SRO. The picture was taken at the Allentown (PA) Fair the summer of 1966.

I am a tiny dot in that picture; an 18-year old, about-to-be-student at a college across the valley from the fair. It was my first real, big-time concert. I ahd been playing in a Tijuana Brass-style group for a couple years and had been a BIG fan of Alpert since he came out with that first hit- The Lonely Bull. It was a great experience.

Alpert's now 78 and I'm 67. Both of us are still playing trumpet. Without the TJB, has been making music for all these intervening 49 years; and I am still a big fan. He won a Grammy two years ago for his album, Steppin' Out. This October he will be in concert here in Rochester, MN, and I got my tickets this past week. He is playing some nice jazz along with his singer-wife Lani Hall.

Here's the official video of his recording, Chattanooga Choo-Choo from his most recent album




I'm psyched and I still have a couple months to go.