Just one of the wonders of the town where I reside is having the ability to to simply walk down the street for a great free evening of fantastic music by our Municipal Band. This band has been around for 101 years, the longest on-going Municipal Band in the united states. The music director and conductor Larry has been doing his thing for the band for approximately eighteen years now, and I have seen pretty much every presentation he has been involved in during those years. So of course it is reasonable if I am feeling sad nowadays to learn that our city just cannot afford to continue on with the band and this year is the closing performance for our annual Summer Music Concert Series.
In our town we have all sorts of free music, free movies on the beach and a lot of little free rock concerts that occur all summer. But not one of these compare with the attendance at the Municipal Band Concerts. They are very popular, with overflow crowds’ at all four good sized city parks where they hold them. In fact, it is so swarmed that I have been doing what countless in our town do on concert day. I have been venturing out to the park initial thing in the early morning to stake out my place on the lawn with a blanket and chair to mark my spot until I come back in the evening. I guess it claims something good about our town that fifty people can abandon their chairs and blankets sitting on a lawn all day long and they are all still there when we come back to the park at 6Pm that night to sit and take pleasure in the concert.
By the time the concert starts each week, there are normally around 200 people sitting at the lawn, the majority of with picnic baskets of fantastic goodies and the very illegal wine to drink. I do find it interesting that they without exception announce at the start of each show that it is against the law to consume alcohol on park premises while everyone inside earshot of the announcement is uncorking their wine bottles and pouring them into wine glasses to pass around. But not a soul has ever gotten rowdy, we are a pretty sedate lot who sit and munch our cold chicken, drink our wine and listen to Star and Stripes Forever. The wildest anyone gets is when just about every Fourth of July show the band asks members of the assorted armed forces to stand when the band plays the theme for their particular branch of the military. Some get very teary-eyed and many sing along pretty loudly, even if they are tone deaf. But if is very small-town and nice to see.
My girlfriend and I have been attending these concerts with each other for about five years now, from the time we met and came to the realization we both treasured these concerts. She doesn’t always get out of work in time to be there at the outset, so I will put the food together in the afternoon while I am writing and take it to the park as she is closing up her store and venturing out our way. We meet in the park, with her little dog Susie tightly in check, and smile at the delight this performance brings to our lives.
So I am heartbroken to think that with next week’s performance this excellent ritual of summer in our town will be no more. The town proclaimed last year that they would be reducing because of tight finances and when the bucket went around for donations everybody ponied up big time. We raised twice the amount we usually do, but it still wasn’t good enough. High schools did car washes and little old ladies scheduled rummage sales, but it still wasn’t enough. They discussed it for three months at town hall meetings, but the musicians are all top performers, a lot of them are session artists in Hollywood studios when they aren’t at the Municipal Concert performances. Although they wanted to come down in their fees, they are all union and cannot bring it down further than they have. So this is the end of an era. And we will be all the poorer to be without it.
When Deni isn’t lamenting the loss of her Municipal Band, she is writing blogs about many diverse and enjoyable things. Some of those include a blog about how to use metal bandsaw blades correctly, the best way to build a brick retaining wall for your garden and what the real estate market is like in Monroe County in Southern Florida.
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