Capt. Mondo's World o' Mondo-ness

Enjoying the Sheer Awfulness of It
Yup, tonight was the Spring Concert performance for the East York Concert Band, which my wife is in. A dutiful husband, I submitted myself and our children to an evening of musical torture.

I've recounted my experiences attending this show before, so I won't go on again at length here. They're probably slightly better than an average high school band, but then high school bands don't take on the challenging material of arrangements this band does. The performance as a whole left me wondering if there is a Latin phrase for saying "you can only appreciate the good by experiencing the bad". I also keep wondering if one day, one of the audience members will crack under the strain, stand up and say "You're bloody awful". No such luck this time.

I followed through on the "threat" I made the last time I was at a show – I decided to record it. Using a portable DAT recorder and a nice stereo microphone set relatively close to the stage, I set the recording levels to something I hoped would work and walked away. The performance is now digitally captured for posterity. ;-)

I found I was actually looking forward to terrible performance, looking forward to the new and novels ways in which the EYCB could murder perfectly good orchestral pieces, and in part because I realized that if I had to go to this anyways, I might as well figure out how to enjoy it. So I learned to smile at each crushing honk of the trombones, inadvertently off-peak piccolos, and drum rhythms which wondered all over the place, in the process wreaking further music havoc as the rest of the band tried to figure out which beat to land their bleat, blurt or blat.

Little Annie had a lot of fun at the performance, but the combination of the excitement and it being way past her bedtime made her over-tired, and so I ended up spending a good chunk of the performance trying to keep her occupied outside of the concert area. In the end, we only stayed for the first half of the show, much to the relief of Dave B.'s wife and daughter, who kindly ferried us to the performance and had to endure their umpteenth show. Poor Vanessa kept falling asleep during the car ride home.

When we got home I listened to some of the tape. I was pleased to find that I had chosen the levels just right, and that the recording is crystal clear. I now have proof. ;-) Turns out that there's just enough of the performance captured to nicely fit onto a single CD, so I have a new project. I'm not going to post anything here unless I get permission though, so stay tuned.