TRIVIAL TALES for Ravenous Readers

by Ric Carter

TRAVELING WITH A SOUSAPHONE
  Overcoming the Obstacles

OK, it's fairly easy to travel with a guitar. Now a mandolin or fiddle or ukelele would be lighter and smaller but they don't have the range. With a guitar you can just strap it over your back while you're moving and whip it out whenever you want, and play and sing and play. Leave the case open for people to throw money into. Nobody even has to be able to hear how bad you play, as long as they can hear you sing.

It's even pretty easy to travel with a funky saxaphone, except a baritone or bass. Those are big boogers. Stop somewhere and position yourself where the reverberations are good, like at the mouth of an alley or a courtyard, and play counterpoint with your echoes. I always weanted to travel with a sax but the only instrument my folks bought me was a clarinet. It's hard to rock or be soulful with a clarinet, especially if you haven't heard any klezmer music yet.

You can't sing along if you're playing sax so you gotta make it sing for you. Harmonicas are a lot smaller and you can be funky with'em and even sing along with yourself between riffs, but of course a sax is louder and your facial hairs don't get ripped out like with harmonicas. You rarely see moustache'd or bearded harmonica blowers. But you can't have just one harmonica, you need a whole boxload to play in all keys. If you're cheap, just travel with a kazoo.

It's really lots of trouble, traveling with a sousaphone. It's big, it's clumsy, it's hard to really cook and swing with one, and it keeps filling up with your saliva. There's the constant fiddling with it: lube the valves, adjust the mouthpiece, tip and drain, etc. And when you sit yourself down in some public place to play, like maybe a subway or big lobby, people yell at you to SHUT UP!!

You think that's trouble? It's even worse if you've got a parrot or two. People who might be curious and inquisitive about the friend(s) on your shoulder(s) get downright hostile when you play your sousaphone and a parrot or two sings along. Sometimes they throw things, all too accurately. This hurts you, and the horn, and the parrot(s).

Still, when you've found your way to an after-hours club in some unknown place, and there's a jam session going hot and heavy, and you pull out your sousaphone and lay down some licks with the parrot(s) doing counterpoint, and the bass line and piano wind around you like smoky anacondaqs, and everything just WORKS — why, then it's all worth it. All the backaches and gutaches and heartaches, and the dirty names and rotten fruit that's been slung at you — none of that matters. You've gone somewhere, you've blown and cooked, and everything is just right. Yeah.

THE HITCHHIKER'S GUIDE TO YOUR BACKYARD
  The Answer is 85

THE UNIVERSE is a big place and it's not safe any more to hitchhike on streets and highways, so let's take a nice thumb ride around your backyard. If you've not got one you could try this in your front yard or a park, but people would laugh at you for being a moron. Thumbing around your kitchen or parlor or basement would at least keep you out of public view, but there's so little there. Too bad.

So, out the back door with you, and stick out your thumb with a positive attitude. You won't get a real ride unless your cat is driving a golf cart, so just pretend that you got lucky. Here's one now. Get in, thank the driver, and shoot over across what used to be a lawn, out to the far wall with the pit bulls on the other side. Along the way you bum a smoke and a sandwich (cheeze and lettuce on white bread), share a jug of wine, agree on politics but split on music, and exit in a huff.

Now you stand there for a half hour (you take the opportunity to squat on the petunias) but it's worth the wait — a real hot number. Some more wine, some dreamy talk, a lingering kiss as you get out by the rubbish bins after swapping cell numbers. So you stand there in a happy daze for a few minutes until a cop screeches up and tells you to get your sorry ass outa his town, dammit!

Brought down, but happy you're not busted, you trudge over to the property line and try again. And now it's some weird punk who won't talk and drives too fast and gives you really creepy looks and vibes. You bail out as soon as possible.

Now there's nothing but homeward commuter traffic and you're stuck until it's late and dark and cold. Finally a trucker stops and he's going your way. It's OK till he puts his hand on your knee. You jump out at the next light — luckily it's your back door light and you're on your cracked concrete slab again. You head inside for a nice shower and a session on the XBox, swearing you'll never thumb around your backyard again. Till next week, anyway.

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Ric Carter, ric@sonic.net, www.sonic.net/~ric, copyright © by OTRSS