Scott Meyer
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How to Talk a Friend Through a Crisis
🕑 Added 2023-10-30 08:00:01 +0000 UTCAsk people to name a cool jazz trombonist, and 99.99999% of them will only come up with one name: “William Riker.” A fictional character, from Star Trek: the Next Generation. That series featured a lifelike superhuman robot, a space alien, a telepath, a blind man given sight by a futuristic banana-clip, and a cool guy who played jazz trombone.
It was not realistic.
I do get it though. The idea that nobody wants to hear what you’re playing is sort of baked into the jazz-man aesthetic in a way that a former stand-up comic like me can easily understand. Read the lyrics to the Steely Dan song Deacon Blues for a pretty good description of the vibe. It’s the realization that you’re going to be a tortured loser, so you might as well pick what kind of tortured loser you’ll be, and find something you love to be tortured by, and eventually lose at.
Comments
Dolores
Are you Ric's bother? (apologies, I really need to get a life...)
Eric Schrader
I have a music degree with my primary instrument being the tuba. So, take "jazz" out of this entire comic and that's pretty much what my prospects were.
Scott Meyer
I wonder if they were part of the act. The idea of tuba and trombone in rock doesn't strike me as odd as you might think. When I was a kid, my father's fondest wish was that one of his boys would show an interest in the instrument he loved, the accordion. None of us did, partly because it was always presented to us as the least hip instrument on the planet. It was nothing but old guys playing polkas. Then, we hit ourtwenties around the time alternative music took root, and every band, including my beloved They Might Be Giants, featured accordion.
Zihuatanejo
I went to a concert 14ish years ago where the opening act was a trio featuring not only a rock trombonist, but also a rock ... tubist? Tuba player? It was -- for the literal lack of a better word -- an experience to watch them play. That concert also featured an extraordinarily ugly person who was in the very front row who would periodically turn around and stare at the gathered masses, and every time they did it became apparent from whence the myth of Medusa arose.
