But not just xylophones. There's the tintinnabulations of Edgar Alan Poetry and the melodious ribs of old-timey cartoon skeletons.
And you—yeah you—don't turn that dial! To paraphrase Bill Hicks, there's a purple vein Priapus ditty coming soon. ((As much as I hate Joe Rogan parroting, his errant, approaching-speech-impediment-levels-of-praise for Bill Hicks and Norm Macdonald isn’t without societal benefits.))
Greek dick jokes to larboard.
First, a confession: I'm musically illiterate. My fault, sure, but mnemonics did me no favors. (“Johnny Mnemonic” reference, something-something, drawing a blank.)
E. Start there, at the bottom, and ascend the alphabet a space and a line at a time until G, then it's back to A. Instead of that, back when I was in band, we deciphered upturned FACEs and mantra-ed “Every Good Boy Does Fine.” “Elvis's Guitar Broke Down Friday” would've stuck better, but our first director was a Beatles guy. Feel free to coin your own. ((“Engorged Gremlin Bondage Drips Fluids.”))
Don't blame me. That's the power of negation and Ironic Process Theory.
Cursed images, as the kids say.
But, anyway, staves don't apply to snare drums, bass drums, cymbals, triangles, and that ratchet thingy.
As long as you stick with easy instruments, you don't have to read a proper staff.
Granted, our elementary, middle, and high school band had its own staffing issues. A carousel of directors and ADs were spun off by sex crimes, ((“Well, she was just seventeen. You know what I mean.”)) a car wreck and resultant brain injury, transfers, maternity leave, a re-retiree, and transient student teachers who lent me their Bright Eyes and Division of Laura Lee CDs. The percussionists-cum-drummers flew under the radar so long as someone braved the bells—the bells!
Fortunately, both the twins could read music.
Everyone's hometown had multiple sets of identical twins, right? Ours just had two, but both were in band. One played percussion and the other played trumpet.
Ditto for the second set. We also had walking puns like Matt Tress and Justin Case. ^[Cue 90s voice, “Homophones are gay.”] And there were at least six Mikes. One guy, Black Mike, wasn't black, but liked rap. And there was Jew Bob, who may or may not have been Jewish.
Can you cancel an entire town or chapter of your life?
Back to peak twins. Part of the reason it never seemed odd was because of Mrs. Pallo, my fifth-grade teacher. Her identical twin taught at a neighboring school, but we'd all seen the pictures: same haircut, parts on opposite sides.
And, while I remember Mrs. Pallo's class fondly—rocking chair stories, the giant wooden caboose clubhouse, dictionary races, the cusp-of-puberty straight talk, the lateral thinking puzzles at Future Problem Solvers meetings—the Bear Cub Incident looms large.
Grizzly? No, probably black. One of the kids' dad was a hunter. Many kids' dads, actually. So many we got off school the first day of hunting season for father-son-or-daughter-but-who-are-we-kidding-it-was-all-sons outings. ((And, if that's not true, the classrooms were mostly bare.))
Frankly, elementary schools are already packed with dangerous wild animals. But Melissa's dad brought an “orphaned” bear in for show and tell. He bottle fed it. Smell of warm milk, warm fur. Look, but don't touch. No one bothered to tell the cub.
Exiting, pursued by a bear, Melissa's dad roared and barreled away, one hand cradling the cub, the other pawing at the knockoff-A.D.I.D.A.S. claw marks on his neck. Not strawberry jam.
Detour to YouTube.
Mrs. Pallo ran a Victorian Perambulator Museum with her sister in Jefferson, Ohio for more than three decades. Look, there they are. Lovely to see her again. ((My wife, however, has some notes about bucolic folk horror and creepy dolls.))
Can't find xylophone references, huh? My bad. My dad just died and I'm having trouble, ahem, focusing. Let's see… Coil's final album, The Ape of Naples, has some lovely marimbas, though those are, technically, metallophones. Same for the jingle-jangles on “Operator,” the closing track on Ulver's tour de hospital Blood Inside. I'm pretty sure Mr. Bungle's purgatory-adjacent California has some glittery glissandi, but those were probably keyboard patched. Oh, shit: “Gone Daddy Gone” by the Violent Femmes!
But back in parvónia (that's Portuguese for a podunk, bumfuck, one-horse town).
There was someone who could read music. My dad. He was the music teacher at Happy Hearts, a school for kids with developmental disabilities.
A version of the Orff Process worked wonders. You know, from Carl Orff of Carmina Burana/“O Fortuna” and Kidz Bop fame. (Cue Ignatius J. Reilly voice: “Fortuna, that vicious slut.” What a Toole.)
Got the wrong note? We're gonna swap out the wonky bars on that xylophone so it's only right notes. Now whack away like it's the black keys on the piano. It builds confidence and has the not-inconsiderable side effect of being easy on the ears. ((Unlike these essays, where I take Bukowski's “Play the Piano Drunk Like a Percussion Instrument Until the Fingers Begin to Bleed a Bit” approach and riff on references till it's twelve-tone jazz.))
For what it's worth, my old man helped lots of kids. Just not my sister and me. Now that he's dead, I refuse to go full apologist or Christopher Robin Milne. You have to find the wrong notes yourself. But it's nice when someone warns you. Or shows you how to read a map.
Evidently, I still have scaling issues.