“That’s why I wanted you in the band, so you’d stop mopin’ around and feelin’ sorry for yourself”
“What band?”
“I always think there’s a band, kid”
~ The Music Man
As some of you know few years ago my father’s dance orchestra folded. I wasn’t there when it happened, I don’t know the ins and outs of why it happened. I know that it wasn’t anticipated, and I know that my family was…broken up…about it. That’s putting it mildly. Since I was just over the age of 10 the band a constant presence in my life…they were not just a ‘hobby band’, they were our extended family. This was not just something that my father did on weekends, this was a crucial living part of who we were.
When the band folded, we lost a lot of that. There are a few that stayed around (Amras and I were really lucky to have three of them play our wedding), but most of them just…drifted away. There were a lot of burned bridges over that situation.
I haven’t given it a great deal of thought in the four years since it happened. Some things sting too much to think about too often. But then something sometimes happens to bring everything back.
This afternoon my folks took Amras and I to the local Jazz club (the oldest jazz club in Canada), to see an old friend of my Dad’s that was playing there. Now, I haven’t seen Clark in almost a decade for one thing, I was shocked even remembered me; but I haven’t heard this particular group (a quartet that often flexes to a quintet or shrinks to a trio that’s super well known in the trad-jazz circuits), since before my Dad’s band splintered; I was not entirely prepared for the amount of flashbacks that ended up being involved. There is a lot of cross over between the two sets of charts – different arrangements of course – but still the same songs, some of which were borrowed directly from the Broadcaster’s chart book.
There were times this afternoon when my Mum and I were crying, and had you pressed us to explain why, we probably wouldn’t have been able to.
The truth of it is? I miss my family. I grew up with eleven or so aunts and uncles, who were at every holiday, every occasion…they were just…always there. And then, suddenly, they…weren’t. Almost eleven people who just disappeared out of my life without a word, and I didn’t get to say goodbye.
And all of that is somehow tied up in novelty dance tunes and cold bar food in a place with brick walls and a too small dance floor that I thought…I would never set foot in again.
Sometimes memory lane catches you on a sideswipe…
This. I desperately wish that C had the chance to hear your father’s band- listening to them during our trips are some of my fondest memories.