I hate primary school band concerts

First of all, more work = less blogging. Man, this bullshit is beginning to get me down a bit. It's nice and pretty outside, and I was hoping to get some free time because the last few weeks have been brutal at work. No luck.

That being said, I did get to see my nieces' gym video and band concert video. You know what, I think music teachers need to be a little less tolerant with young beginners. If the little kid doesn't know a C from a F within a couple months, cut him/her from the team. Don't make them do solos at the end of the year. This might be news to you, but not everyone has the ability, nor even wants to be, the next Chris Botti. So why put them, us, and indeed, yourself through all this torture, I don't get. Trust me, we'll ALL be glad if they didn't lay their dainty little fingers on an instrument ever again.

I got to see a bunch of kids play instruments half as big as their bodies and managing to sound like the terminal wing of an asthma clinic having sex with an unwilling horse. My niece was great (honest), and so were a couple kids, but that was about it. They could have just had a nice quartet and been done with it. But no, being cut from a team makes you a psycho killer or a misfit in society for life apparently, so we had forty fucking seven solos, most of which SUCKED BALLS.

There was the kid who tried to play the trombone, and had clearly not figured out the relationship between slide and pitch. There were the drums duo who managed to be out of sync for EVERY SECOND of their (mercifully) short piece. There was the piano duo that, not satisfied with sucking while playing solo, played together, with one girl handling the low notes with her left hand and the other handling the highs with her right. Disaster.

But none was worse than the self-important little kid who came out and played two lines from the the Titanic song over and over AND OVER. 6 FREAKING TIMES. And all the while, her mom (from where the self-importance gene was clearly passed down) sat down in the front row and played conductor while managing to both beam with pride and be in a trance from the apparently captivating cacophony. This was the only piece when I both wanted to puncture my eardrums AND stab my eyeballs to lessen the pain of the experience.

So, music teachers, for everyone's sakes, when a kid sucks, cut them from the group, ok? Please. Thanks.