Awesome

I just got back from Seymore's and injested my full beer limit, which includes one pint of Hoegarten, one taster thingee of cask ale and a bottle of Liberty Ale for those of you who may wonder. There was a group outing after Anthony Braxton's concert. The concert started under a bit of uncertainty. A meeting between the school president and the student body had been set up and the last moment during the time we were supposed to have the hall. I showed up early for the new event, hoping to record it. I purchased DAT tapes at inflated prices and went over to find somebody else already setting up in my usual spot. I was trying to find out what he was planning on doping with the tapes afterwards or find out if I could set up next to him, when the head of the CFA staff for the event tols me I could not record anything anywhere under any circum stance.s I got frustrated and went home. Well, it turns out that veryone there had a recorder and the school radio station broadcast the event. She was just telling me I couldn't do it becuase she could. I work at CFA events. I frequently interact with this woman, asking questions about where I can set up to record. I want revenge. I think that I wil never ask permission for anything again and just set up to record wherever I want when I'm supposed to do it and if she doesn't like it, she can talk to my boss or suck my dick, whcih ever would make her happier.

I'm off topic. . . So we set up late for Braxton's concert. He said we all had to play standing up. I was joking about playing my lap tuba standing up and said I should have brought my sousaphone. His eyes lit up. I protested that my sousaphone is not a good horn and I don't play it well, etc. He persisted, so I went home and got it. In the middle part of the first half, I played a trio with Carl Testa on doublebass, me on sousaphone and Anthony Braxton on bass and contra bass saxaphone. Maybe you've never heard of the contrabass saxaphone? There's only nine of them in the world. Anthony says not all of those are operational. They were hult by patriotic frenchmen at the turn of the last century. The Nuclear Whales have one. Anthony's got another one. So we played. Carl is virtuosic. Anthony is virtuosic. I am not. But there was something just extremely awesome about playing between the contrabass sax and the tuba. They're both made of brass. They;re both ponderous. All the time, I trying to play along with instruments that are not like mine. I try to mimic what angela is playing on clarinet and I can't because they're entirely different instruments. I can only parody her lines. but when anthony started playing the contra, it wa sin my range. I could play his lines back at him. It was awesome. There was a real musical connection. Carl is also a fantastic player. I can't do on the tuba what he does on the bass though. He's a very fast player. I just can't play tuba that fast. There's a noticable gap between when I start playing a note and when the note sounds. I always have to be playing ahead of the beat or i sound behind it. It makes it hard to follow the person next to me, because i need to be in the lead or else i'm beihind. tuba + sax = awesome. I used to play a million duets with a guy in highschool named jeremy stafford on bariton sax and me on tuba. that was nice. brass instruments belong together, even if one of them is a reed.

In the second half of the concert, we played Ghost Trance musics for about 20 minutes and then anthony ended it. he thought we'd been going for an hour. We start playing a really virtuosic composition, but then play "outisde", forming sub groups within the ensemble and either play the aucillary pices includded with Ghost Trance or Language Musics or other Braxton compositions. Tailor Ho Bynum came back and was a very excellent section leader and he had us playing little groups of language music and some ghost trance and the music ends up being ever-shifting alliances of small ensembles forming and reforming and regrouping and moving and changing membership all playing at the same time on the same stage and sort of toegther but sort of apart. it's how anarchy would work as a political system. It;'s awesome

at the bar afterwards, anthony introduced his youngest son, who he hadn't seen in years. He was just so happy his son was around. it was so cool. i got in aq long politcal argument with a guy who was wearing an anti- un shirt. anthony kept telling me not to take the guy seriously. finally, i realized that anthony wasn;t joking. the guy just wore the UN shirt because he knew he was going to be aorund leftists. afterwards, the guy was trying to buy me burbon. i dunno if he just wanted to be freinds after arguing or what.

enjoy this post until i take down the scandolouos parts wheni sober up. if there are any scandolous parts aside from my drunked typos.