Are you ready for an action-packed edition of Wise Madness? As the weather has turned cooler I head south, all the way to Ditmas Park in Brooklyn. I went for the last Sundays on Dorchester porch concert, featuring Tucci Swing. I was unfamiliar with them, Katherine told me about it. Katie Martucci is also in the Ladles. I discovered them a few months ago and went nuts over them. That was enough to get me to migrate south.
The show started at 3 and I got there at 2:50. Across the street there was another porch concert going on, this one by a string band. They were excellent. Why aren’t I living in Ditmas Park? There are musicians giving shows all over the place, my kinds of music. I decided that it was only an hour show, so I didn’t need to bring a chair. I was right but for the wrong reason. They put out chairs. I grabbed two, one for Katherine.
The house is Nate Sabat’s, a bass player for several bands I know. He organizes it and is the emcee. The series was done in conjunction with Jalopy. If you weren’t there you can see the show on the Jalopy Facebook Page, Jalopy Theater and School of Music. Now you don’t have to take my word for it. You can see how great Tucci Swing is for yourself. Tucci Swing is a Harmony Trio that sings standards from the 20s, 30s, and 40s. That’s well before I was born but it was music I was brought up with. Alexander’s Ragtime Band was one of my favorite songs as a kid. It was on children’s music records. Don’t ask me why, but I sang it all the time. I knew almost all the songs they sang. That’s what makes a song a classic, it’s not tied to one time, it’s for the ages.
I wasn’t just joined by Katherine, she brought Bella, her dog. I have not played with a dog in ages. Bella was as happy to see me as I was to see her.
A little later we were joined by Dottie, who also lives in the area. What’s better than a day with music, friends, and a dog? Sounds perfect right? But remember that I told you this was an action-packed? Here is where the action comes in. As a preview this is how I looked when I got home.
Ditmas Park is filled with music. Usually things go very smoothly, the string band across the street finished shortly before Tucci Swing started playing. Folkies believe in peace, love, and understanding. But all music is not folk. This weekend was Honk! The marching band extravaganza. That’s usually held in big meetups throughout the country, but we can’t do that in the age of COVID-19. So here we are having a peaceful afternoon of beautiful music when a rogue marching band comes by spoiling for a fight. It was just like mods versus rockers in on the streets of Brighton in the 60s. I politely asked them to be quiet as we were there for Tucci Swing. The marching band bravos were having none of it. I should have known there would be trouble from the Hawaiian shirts and Proud Boy jackets. In no time we had a street fight. I was more than holding my own when I saw that the heavy artillery of a marching band, the sousaphone, coming out me from the right. I dodged my head left and blocked the bell with my right hand which took some damage, but that wasn’t the worst of it. Under the cover of the sousaphone attack the redheaded trombonist assailed me with her slide. Little known fact, trombones were designed as weapons, they were originally called sackbuts. Sousaphones are bigger but trombonists are sneakier and more vicious. She played an A and hit me in my eye. The entire time this was going on, Tucci Swing kept on playing; they are stone cold musicians. When the blow was struck they were singing a C Major, I don’t have to tell you what a low A does to that, I turns it into A minor. Vanisha Gould, Caroline Kuhn, and Katie were true pros and simply modulated to the new key. It did make the song a downer. That was enough to bring me and the rest of the crowd back to our feet and we soon cleared the street of the marching band hooligans. Don’t mess with folkies and swingsters.
I was the only one hurt and attracted lots of unwanted attention. Everyone swarmed over me trying to help. They were afraid of a concussion. They cleaned my wound with peroxide and provided an ice pack to hold down the swelling. The Katherine applied a band-aid. Everyone that was helping was a woman and Dottie saw right through me, “You just did this, so you’d be surrounded by beautiful women.” It’s how I live my life.
People said that I should make up a story to explain my wound, but I just went with the truth. Here’s the story I considered. I was sitting on uneven ground and my chair fell over backwards. Somehow in twisting to save myself I hit the front of my head not the back. The weirdest thing is that when my skull hit the concrete sidewalk it rang like a bell. It didn’t hurt that much but that A was a bit unnerving. I know an idiot story like that is far more entertaining than what really happened, but I felt obliged to tell you the truth.
I then went back to Katherine to give my wounds a proper cleaning with soap and water. I just realized that’s when she must have applied the band-aid. So, did I sit down and rest up after that? No. Did I head home to get some rest? No. I’m hardcore. We went to another porch concert that Katherine knew about. This was a modern jazz retelling of the story of Job. We were joined by Dottie and Glenn. The music was a bit too discordant and dissonant for me, but I enjoyed it. It was a complex intellectual work with a sense of humor. Satan provided the narration. The composer’s take on the theology was thought provoking. Job is such a weird story. God afflicts Job just to win a bet with Satan. The part that really gets me is that his wife and children are killed as collateral damage, but the story is considered to having a happy ending as Job gets a new wife and children. What about the original wife and kids? They are killed and yet Job is considered to be the one that suffers. It’s very unfair. I almost forgot the most important part. When we were waiting to be admitted to the yard for the show Katherine and I went to get ice cream! I had peanut butter confetti. The confetti were flecks of chocolate.
I thought I recognized the lead singer as Aubrey Johnson. I have not seen her in years. She used to be in the Guy Mendilow Band. I have wanted to catch her play for years and always miss it. Turns out it was Aubrey. I finally saw her by pure chance, a show she didn’t even publicize. I just looked at her Facebook page, we’re FB friends, and noticed, or was reminded that out lives have intersected out of time. She now teaches voice and my alma mater, Queens College, and she studied at Western Michigan University when I spent a summer studying psychology. I love how tiny the world is.
Katherine had a lot of work to do so she couldn’t have dinner with me. I headed home and grabbed dinner from Popeye’s by the subway station near me. So sure, I got in a street fight and hurt my head, but I also heard two great concerts, saw four friends, played with a dog, and had ice cream. That makes the day a winner.
Wise Madness 