RANDOM REMINDER

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31255, 30 December 1966, Page 16

RANDOM REMINDER

SOLOIST

Among the better-known of New Zealand’s rich natural assets are mud pools, All Blacks, sheep, and bands. Not everyone gets to see the mud pools, there are a few dissidents who stay away from Rugby matches, the sheep have only a limited appeal, except to those who own them—but bandsmen command ready audiences every time they puff their cheeks.

There is certainly a strong appeal in pipe music, except when it is being played in enclosed premises. But in the main, the brass bands get the following, and the support, and the world-wide acclaim. New Zealand’s national brass band has performed magnificently overseas, and there is hardly a hamlet In the country which does not produce a brass band to go with the volunteer fire brigade. New Zealand enjoys, then.

something of a reputation ia brass band music, But it must be confessed that there are occasions when a rather modest standard of achievement can be noted. We have in mind, particularly, a country race meeting of some years ago, at which a brass band had been asked to play. Its entry to the racecourse was strongly reminiscent of a delightful passage in Evelyn Waugh’s “Decline and Fall” in which the Welsh village band arrives at the school sports meeting.

This New Zealand counterpart lacked lustre, so far as its appearance was concerned. It was easy enough to determine what constituted its uniform, because five or six of them looked the same. The rest tended to reveal their vocations: the railway jacket, the fireman’s coat and what looked suspiciously like a pair of police trousers. There was a lack of uniformity, too, in the players’ approach to

their task: It was, largely, rugged individualism. This performance took place at a time when the most popular melody of the day was “The Harry Lime Theme." The band began its programme with that melody. Its second number. If memory serves, was “Greensleevea.” Then it played “The Harry Lime Theme.” Three numbers L'ter, Harry was the-a again, and he made astonishingly regular return ▼isita right through the day. It was not a masterly performance by the band. The technical errors were obvious, even to the uninitiated. But one had to sympathise with the conductor. Much of his trouble sprang from the trombone player, who insisted—even after repeated requests—on playing with hia back tn the conductor and the rest of the band. It was only when he was so seated that he could watch the totalisator.