Anyway, my point is that every once in a while I come across someone even more uptight than I am, which makes me feel much better. This month's "Make Jennifer Look Like A Loose Cannon" Award goes to the teacher on the video I ordered called Saxophone Instruction For Beginners.
In my ongoing quest to actually be able to play a saxophone, I have been feeling more and more geeky as I deal with professional musicians. That's why, when I read on the video box that the instructor is a professional musician, I expected to see a wiry, grungy guy starting into the camera. He’d have a British accent, several misspelled tattoos and a cigarette hanging out of his mouth with about two inches of ash curled down from the end. He’d say in a just-had-his-morning-vodka voice, "As part of my plea-bargain, I gotta do public service work, so I’m gonna teach you blokes to play the sax. Which is exactly the line of work that led to my arrest in the first place. Hell, why didn't the judge just have me make a bloody video called How To Start a Brawl in a Jazz Club and Later Get Caught With Underage Groupies On The Tour Bus? I can't wait to see how he sentences me when those paternity suits come to trial."
Not this professional musician. This one is definitely uncomfortable in front of the camera. He's wearing a button-down plaid shirt and wire-rimmed glasses and looks nervous. I can tell he loves music, but when he says in a near monotone, "Ready? We’ll get you started on this wonderful journey of music," he says it like one would say, "Ready? It's time to watch me get a root canal!"
The video begins with the setup and assembly of the sax, and right away the instructor reminds me of a potential Phil Hartman character: The Anal Retentive Sax Player. He handles everything so delicately that any minute I expect him to take out a reed cozy. "Keep your instrument as close to the ground as possible when taking it out of the case," he says solemnly. "I try to handle my instrument like I would a small child." He seems to have forgotten that this is an instrument he's about to stick in his mouth.
He removes the instrument from its case. I have to admit, up until now a small part of me has been feeling bad about making fun of this poor guy. So what if he's a bit obsessive-compulsive? He just loves his sax. Then, as he's removing the corks from the keys, he says, "You can use a pencil to remove these corks. Or, if you're a man, you probably have a screwdriver you can use instead."
If you're a MAN?
Guilt deleted. He's toast.
A few seconds later, he drops one of the smaller corks on the floor. I expect to hear him say, "If you're a woman, you can just use a broom and dustpan to pick that up!"
On to the segment about assembling the mouthpiece. I won't go into detail here because this segment contains some of the most disturbing unintentional sexual imagery I have ever seen. Suffice it to say that when he talks about greasing the cork and having to force the mouthpiece onto it because the fit will be a little too tight the first time, I was curled up on the floor in the kind of pain men must experience when the see male athletes take a baseball to the groin.
We move on to reeds. The instructor looks a tad repulsed as he shows us that we should be putting the reed in our mouths for a while, using our saliva to moisten it. The look on his face clearly expresses his professional opinion on this assembly procedure: "Ewwwww!"
So he gives us a couple of options, like making substitute saliva in the microwave for soaking the reed. I paid ten bucks for an instructional sax video and am sitting here learning how to make fake spit. Or I can use the method that is clearly his favorite: take a jar and put a little bit of mouthwash in it and keep the reeds in that. I can even see a hint of joy in the instructor's eyes as he shows us his minty-fresh reed storage container.
I want to meet this guy someday. We'll jam together, and then I'll store my reeds by hurling up a great big loogie into a jar and tossing my reeds into it. Just to watch him have a coronary.
That's about as far as I got on the tape last night. Just before I turned off the TV, I heard the instructor tell me yet again how I should handle my saxophone delicately and guard it with my very life. "I don't even let my wife touch my saxophone," he says emphatically.
I don't care how good he is at greasing the cork. His wife is having an affair.
Copyright 1999 by Jennifer Layton
