SAX APPEAL!
(and other musical factors!!)

I play the baritone sax, which I love with a passion!!! (Yes, and I have fallen in love with a Bass Sax that I wish to claim as my own..I have starting saving up..right now I am at about....$125.25...heh,  I have a LONG way to go....) I also play the tenor, alto, flute, a bit of clarinet, piano, and a ton of KAZOO and SLIDE WHISTLE! I am an avid fan of jazz, bigband, and all forms of swing. I much prefer such forms of music to much of today's  stuff, though I also enjoy R.E.M. , Counting Crows, Dave Matthews Band, and Morphine.

Music is a very important part of my life. I can express myself much better in a song than in a word. Hard to describe, but you lose yourself in the music when you are surrounded by it. It is a universal language, that more people must learn to understand in order to appreciate it. 

Jazz is the most fun to play. Funky, low beats, rhythms and pulses that make up this style intrigue me. With the bari sax, LOW means LOW. Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Benny Goodman, all classics. A lost era that lately (and luckily) has been coming back, with the cycling of musical tastes that continuously takes place.

I attended the R.E.M. concert in Sept. 1999, at Great Woods, MA. This was my first official concert (I saw Hootie and The Blowfish back in '95) This was really amazing. The set was awesome, and though Michael Stipe, Mike Mills, and Peter Buck looked like tiny dolls from where I was (lawn section. of course) it was worth every second! I had to ward off a drunken guy who decided to fall on my rather large feet towards the end of the night. I really wanted to simply kick him, but ... well.. I'll just let that story end there. I hope to see Counting Crows in concert, but now they are on tour in Europe (my pal John, however, saw them in November, and said they were awesome), and I'd love to see DMB live as well.

In February I saw Morphine in Somerville. After the death of Mark Sandman, the lead singer and 2-stringed bass player. bari sax player Dana Colley and drummer Billy Conway picked up some of Mark's friends to join them to form Orchestra Morphine. This concert was amazing, for since I play the bari sax personally, it took a much greater meaning for me. My friends say my mouth was hanging open the entire time, but I wouldn't take their word on it..I was frantically trying to memorize the fingerings to Dana's soloes. Always the musician, I guess. And Dana is quite the musician. I was so happy to discover that a bari sax player could make it so big..gives me inspiration, at least! I am now working on trying to play both the tenor and bari simultaneously...it is slightly awkward, but really fun!

Here we have my amazing munga bari sax... pretty cool, eh? (and if you must know, yes, in the background IS my Queen Amidala chair....a rabbit cage...and my showmanship coat.....and the hamburger pillow I made...but that is not the point! Behold the power of SAX!