My first band @3QD [I’m a musician]

I’ve got a new article up at 3 Quarks Daily: White Light and Basement Joy: Into The Saint Matthew Passion and Beyond.

I think of the The Saint Matthew Passion is the first I played in. Strictly speaking, no, it’s not the first. I played in marching band, concert band, and “stage” band in middle school and high school – which I discuss briefly in the article. But they weren’t MY bands in the sense that I was a founding member of the band, which was thus the creation and “property” of us founders. No, those were institutional bands, established by the school. They were good bands. I enjoyed playing in them. I learned a lot.

But they weren’t mine. The Saint Matthew Passion was. To be sure, I didn’t start the band. I was recruited to it by Jon Siskind, who started it along with some of his friends. They recruited others as well. There were seven us, four in the rhythm section and three horns. I was one of the horns.

The band was modeled after Blood, Sweat, and Tears, and Chicago (then Chicago Transit Authority). The idea was to blend jazz with rock by adding a small horn section to a standard rock rhythm section. Just what I was looking for.

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This was back in 1969-71, when I was at Johns Hopkins. I’ve written quite a number of articles about that period in my life, which you can find by clicking this link: Baltimore_Years. One of these days I’ll write a post where I say a bit about each one of those articles and perhaps add a thing or two to place them in context among one another.

But I would like to say one more thing. Though I’d been playing music since I was ten, and had been serious about it since I was 13, I didn’t think about myself as a musician. Rather, I was a guy who played music, a lot. “Musician” wasn’t an identity I assumed.

That changed during my Baltimore period. One evening I was talking with Gren Whitman, a friend maybe 10 years older. He’s Mr. Alpha in my recent post, Breaking down monogamy in Baltimore in the early 1970s. I don’t know quite how it came about, but he told me, “No, William” – didn’t normally call me that, no one did or does, but in that situation, he did, I can even hear the faint echo of his voice in my mind’s ear – “no, William, you ARE a musician.” Just like that: “You are a musician.” I don’t think he explained – though he may have said something, nor did I ask him to, the declaration was enough. Ever since then I’ve thought of myself as a musician.

It was a simple gift, but powerful: Thanks, Gren.