The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble

I don’t have that many songs on my iPod as compared to what other people have on theirs. I have about 800 or so, a few videos to make me even more blind, podcasts and some pictures. Out of the 800 songs, I listen to maybe 200 of those now and again and maybe 50 on a regular basis. Today as I was flipping through the device and I came across an album by The Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. Who? And I remembered.

Last year around September or October I went to see my man, Paul Smith in NYC. For some people, their man is Armani or Dolce and his friend Gabbana, but my man has been Paul for at least the last 12 years. He’s always sexy and different and sometimes I can find something that I can actually afford. That day, I was going to replace the Gap wallet that I had lost previously with one with a purple lining and my friends’ name stamped on the front.

So like George Bush, once the mission was accomplished, I tried to figure out what else I could do with my friend Larry. That was Larry, not Curtis. Curtis said he would read my blog if I mentioned his name; so once again, Curtis.

Larry and I headed over to Union Square which is only a block away from the Paul Smith store and sat on one of the benches. Outside of the square on the sidewalk was this group. There was about 7 or 8 young men playing brass instruments. Trombones, trumpets and Sousaphone and I noticed they were drawing a big crowd around them. We walked over and listened to them for a while. Now brass bands are not my kind of thing, it is the type of music you listen to just as you are marching off to war, but these young brothers were starting to interest me and the people around.

A few minutes later they took a break and explained that they were from Chicago and they were on there way to London I think, but they needed to hawk their CD before they left. It was $20 and Larry and decided to split the cost and I would make a copy for myself. I’m all for supporting your own kind, but giving $20 to people I don’t know for a disc that I wasn’t even sure had anything on it wasn’t something that I was going to fall for by myself. So we purchased the disc and listened to their next set.

Afterwards we walked away as they were doing the sales pitch and one of the band said to the crowd, “Come on and buy a CD. Don’t look at us as if we were gold fish in bowl.”
And Larry turned and with that effeminate way of his said, “Hmm, and then what fish would you be?”
Oh God. Oh God I thought. It’s amazing how an agnostic or even an atheist can find religion in the strangest of places. The brother turned and said pointing accusingly at Larry,”You don’t want to find out what kind of fish I could be.”

At this point, I’m thinking that since I’m the bigger of the two, I would have to defend Larry when the young man lunged for him. I knew with my size that once I hit him, he would hit the ground hard and maybe it would over quickly. But since he also seemed like he was 20 years younger than I was, he would probably be 20 years quicker, and by the time I would be able to think about hitting him he would have already struck me 5 or 6 times. I decided to do the honorable thing. I turned and walked away.

Larry followed.

Since then I have only listened to their album once. They’re not bad, but they are still not my thing. They are just another reason to take up more of my memory space.