Three Decades of the Freak Jury

[Rick Denney]

Who remembers Waldo's Tuba World? That predated TubeNet, going live in 1995, I think.

I don’t remember that one, but I do remember one around the same time that a man named Carl Webster ran. I don’t remember the title.
He does something very “higher up there” with computers, Cisco and/or Citrix, I forget which, certifications out the wazoo, and was an amateur tuba player.

The professional (at least in the incident I’m thinking about) that that jerk know-it-all kid took to task was
Roger Bobo(!)
After that, he, and several other “big names” in the tuba/euphonium world, never posted again. And what a shame, because that was truly a wealth of collective knowledge they had, and it was cool that they interacted with everybody else.

Carl owned and ran the Tuba-Euph mail list, which was a typical listserve mail list that was therefore difficult to anonymize. I don’t know when it started, though I suppose I could ask Carl or Jim. The moderators of that list were called List Moms, and I remember Carl, Dan Masi, Steve Hoog, and Jim McIntyre. Glenn Call was the Official List Curmudgeon, and there were other such honorifics. Ken Sloan was active on that list and would print name tags for those of us attending the Army Conference. He printed one for Roger Bobo when he was the headliner (in 2000), and presented it to him in the men’s room at Brucker Hall. Roger proudly wore that name tag for the whole weekend.

My first posts on TN were in December of ‘99, a year after Sean established the bulletin board forum. Many here go back further than that. Everybody was on Tubenet in those years—many orchestra pros from Gene on down, college professors, all the best repair guys posted regularly, famous soloists like Pat Sheridan, military pros, jazz pros, and on and on. Fewer college kids in those days, though Aubrey Foard and Andy Smith were among them. Mary Ann showed up around 2001, I think. dp was A Guy in California on the old BBS, though he used several names. That started a whole “A Guy in ___” thing for when people wanted to say something anonymously (at least to outside searches).

The online tuba community was a lot more egalitarian in those days. Everyone was equal as a person no matter their status as tuba players. I recall (how could I forget?) when Gene Pokorny showed up to be the headliner at the Army Conference, and told Sean his weekend would not be complete until he met me, of all people. He had already met me years before when a bunch of us went out to dinner in Austin after a Summit Brass concert, but that was a lot less memorable (for him) than extended conversations on the internet.

That’s not to say there were no disagreements. I still remember a post (topic forgotten) by Mike Sanders that started out “where’s your humanity, man?” I remember mixing it up with Carl Kleinstuber when I impudently thought an assertion he was making (about Berlioz, I think) wasn’t sufficiently evidenced. And Joe S. was as willing to speak TRVTH then as now. A certain someone called me on the phone to vigorously upbraid me for offending him in a post or maybe a TubaEuph email, though we have been good friends ever since. But it was all interesting and serious and most were committed to discussions in good faith and good humor.

It was all so new to us at the time. Lots of people were able, for the first time, to enjoy an arcane topic together on a continuous basis.

Then trolls started appearing, and it wasn’t the same after that. Tubenet ultimately fell to the trolls, and Tubaforum became the refuge. Now it’s mostly old friends who hardly need to even say anything out loud to know what each other is thinking, and to appreciate the long friendships. Those just coming up will never experience what the internet was like in the late 90’s and early aughts.

Rick “real friendships” Denney

[bloke]

Don't get me wrong, I value the views and opinions of you professionals who play better than I ever will. The variety of views and experiences make this forum great.

All I was really saying was that the physical sensation of the perfectly aligned tones is more alluring than the music itself.

[iiipopes]

I have been a member of the other forum since 2005, right after it went from bulletin board format to then-current (now conventional) forum format. I was informally inducted into the TNFJ not long after that, and came over here as soon as I found out it was up and running, with a private message from a fellow forumite. Yes, similar to bloke's post above, I found out as a freshman in marching band in August of 1976, volunteering for marching sousaphone, that lead guitar players are a dime-a-dozen, as are trumpet players and rock-and-roll band lead singers. But if I could play a bass instrument and set the foundation for the rest of the band to sound good, I would always have a gig.

I rarely, if ever, "drop the octave," as so many community players are want to do to show off low range. All that really does is cause mud, and deprives blending with the rest of the band, especially the low brass and low woodwinds. But on one occasion, a chorale piece in a large concert hall at the regional university, I could feel that this one time on the cadential chord that dropping to the low D fingered 234, was indicated. As bloke mentioned, it absolutely set off the acoustics of the hall. Not loud, but all the overtones lined up; everyone locked their pitch, and the entire hall resonated with a @50 piece community band.The other tuba players stayed on right below the staff D; I was the only one who dropped the octave. But it worked. Even the conductor could feel it, and so held that chord a little longer to really sink in. (pun intended)

[tubanh84]

I rarely, if ever, "drop the octave," as so many community players are want to do to show off low range. All that really does is cause mud, and deprives blending with the rest of the band, especially the low brass and low woodwinds. But on one occasion, a chorale piece in a large concert hall at the regional university, I could feel that this one time on the cadential chord that dropping to the low D fingered 234, was indicated. As bloke mentioned, it absolutely set off the acoustics of the hall. Not loud, but all the overtones lined up; everyone locked their pitch, and the entire hall resonated with a @50 piece community band.The other tuba players stayed on right below the staff D; I was the only one who dropped the octave. But it worked. Even the conductor could feel it, and so held that chord a little longer to really sink in. (pun intended)

I do it as a rule if there is an unjustified octave skip in a descending or ascending line. Playing a movement from Pomp and Circumstance a couple months ago, I did it in an orchestra.

The one time I did it in a band outside of that was playing Elsa's Procession at Carnegie Hall in college. One of our low woodwind players was a brilliant instrument tech and built an extension for his contrabass clarinet to allow it to play the Eb below the piano (he called it a sub-contra-alto clarinet). I filled in the gap with the 4-ledger-line Eb, while our other tuba player played the last note as written. Sounded and felt amazing.

[bloke]

last chord of a piece (if soft), others are playing my written pitch, and if the lowest fifth of the chord (played by another instrument) is WITHIN the bass clef...and (for freakin' pity's sake) in tune

[graybach]

…Ken Sloan was active on that list and would print name tags for those of us attending the Army Conference. He printed one for Roger Bobo when he was the headliner (in 2000), and presented it to him in the men’s room at Brucker Hall. Roger proudly wore that name tag for the whole weekend...

That year 2000 Army Band Tuba/Euphonium Conference (as it was called back then) Grand Concert was my favorite of the ones I attended.
It was Col. L. Bryan Shelburne, Jr.’s last time conducting the Tuba/Euphonium Conference Grand Concert before he retired, and he wanted his favorite soloists from over the years to perform on the concert, (he said it in his speech), and the soloists that night were Roger Behrend, John Griffiths, Steven Mead, and Roger Bobo, and then, for the finale, Col. Shelburne handed the baton to the new Commander, Col. Gary F Lamb, and the band played
Mussorgsky’s “Coronation Scene from ‘Boris Godunov,’” with the US Army Chorus, of which Colonel Lamb was the conductor before he took over for Col. Shelburne as Commander and Conductor of the US Army Band.
What a great concert!
That was also the year that Roger Bobo did the conference masterclass, (as Rick Denny has already stated in this thread), and one of the players for his masterclass was Nat McIntosh, then a college student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who played the living daylights out of the John Williams Tuba Concerto. Nat was a freak on the tuba every time I heard him play.
At the very end of Nat’s time with Roger Bobo, Mr. Bobo shook his hand and thanked him, and then Mr. Bobo looked at the audience, and said, “Oh, by the way, that’s a CC tuba, ladies and gentlemen!” Nat got a standing ovation.
Then Roger Bobo told him to get an F tuba, and he would soar even higher than he was already flying.
Lots of great stuff at that conference that year.

[prodigal]

…Ken Sloan was active on that list and would print name tags for those of us attending the Army Conference. He printed one for Roger Bobo when he was the headliner (in 2000), and presented it to him in the men’s room at Brucker Hall. Roger proudly wore that name tag for the whole weekend...

That year 2000 Army Band Tuba/Euphonium Conference (as it was called back then) Grand Concert was my favorite of the ones I attended.
It was Col. L. Bryan Shelburne, Jr.’s last time conducting the Tuba/Euphonium Conference Grand Concert before he retired, and he wanted his favorite soloists from over the years to perform on the concert, (he said it in his speech), and the soloists that night were Roger Behrend, John Griffiths, Steven Mead, and Roger Bobo, and then, for the finale, Col. Shelburne handed the baton to the new Commander, Col. Gary F Lamb, and the band played
Mussorgsky’s “Coronation Scene from ‘Boris Godunov,’” with the US Army Chorus, of which Colonel Lamb was the conductor before he took over for Col. Shelburne as Commander and Conductor of the US Army Band.
What a great concert!
That was also the year that Roger Bobo did the conference masterclass, (as Rick Denny has already stated in this thread), and one of the players for his masterclass was Nat McIntosh, then a college student at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, who played the living daylights out of the John Williams Tuba Concerto. Nat was a freak on the tuba every time I heard him play.
At the very end of Nat’s time with Roger Bobo, Mr. Bobo shook his hand and thanked him, and then Mr. Bobo looked at the audience, and said, “Oh, by the way, that’s a CC tuba, ladies and gentlemen!” Nat got a standing ovation.
Then Roger Bobo told him to get an F tuba, and he would soar even higher than he was already flying.
Lots of great stuff at that conference that year.

I was there and remember that!

[bort2.0]

The earliest one I went to was around that time, maybe 2001/2002? Pat Sheridan played at the last concert, and as a friend of a son of a friend, I ended up at the after-party at some bar. I remember meeting a bunch of tuba guys who had zero clue who I was (and kinda/sorta, I didn't know them either).

That may have been the only time I went with a friend. Typically, I just kind of showed up alone to check out the elephant room and the main concert.

[tubanh84]

Those just coming up will never experience what the internet was like in the late 90’s and early aughts.

I tell this to my daughter all the time.

Similarly, every time she asks what it was like being a kid in the 80s and 90s, I tell her "better." We didn't default to the internet. We were outside doing things. Why am I so good on a bike still in my 40s? Why can I not only play tuba, but also guitar, bass, and keyboard? Why can I play baseball, soccer, basketball, and football at least decently? Our default was doing things, and occasionally we would spent 30 minutes on the internet reading emails and posting on bulletin boards, and that was it. It wasn't yet designed to suck our souls from us and give us an addiction. It was still human, to an extent.

[humBell]

I have enjoyed the past decade on the forums. (and a decade and a half on tuba?)

I hope i make up for my comparative youth somehow. Or plan to when i'm not so lazy.

I don't think i've ever been formally impanelled, but i do strive to consider alternative view points, given an opportunity.

[Rick Denney]

Like the Sousaphone Artists Preservation Society, the Freak Jury never had an official membership. It was always taken to be the ad hoc collection of loudmouths that would pile on to any thread, with or without actual knowledge on the topic under discussion.

Rick “whose first dial-up bulletin board activity predates the public internet” Denney

[hrender]

Usenet was "the internet" for me around 1985-6 (now sadly gone): https://info.cern.ch/hypertext/DataSour ... s/rec.html

[graybach]

The earliest one I went to was around that time, maybe 2001/2002? Pat Sheridan played at the last concert, and as a friend of a son of a friend, I ended up at the after-party at some bar. I remember meeting a bunch of tuba guys who had zero clue who I was (and kinda/sorta, I didn't know them either).

That may have been the only time I went with a friend. Typically, I just kind of showed up alone to check out the elephant room and the main concert.

If this is the same place as after-parties at conferences that I went to around that time when the Grand Concert was over, it was at the VFW in Arlington, Virginia, not that far from
Ft. Myer, as it was then called. I think it’s
Joint Base Myer-Henderson now.

[bort2.0]

That sounds incredibly vaguely familiar. I can't imagine it would have been anything else.

[Rick Denney]

The earliest one I went to was around that time, maybe 2001/2002? Pat Sheridan played at the last concert, and as a friend of a son of a friend, I ended up at the after-party at some bar. I remember meeting a bunch of tuba guys who had zero clue who I was (and kinda/sorta, I didn't know them either).

That may have been the only time I went with a friend. Typically, I just kind of showed up alone to check out the elephant room and the main concert.

If this is the same place as after-parties at conferences that I went to around that time when the Grand Concert was over, it was at the VFW in Arlington, Virginia, not that far from
Ft. Myer, as it was then called. I think it’s
Joint Base Myer-Henderson now.

Yes, that's where they were in the Tilbury/Morgan era of the conference. They moved to other venues sometime after Jack retired, or maybe it was after Ross Morgan retired in 2007. That doesn't quite seem recent enough, though. Did Bob Powers run the conference for another several years after Ross retired? I have completely lost track of the years things happened prior to Covid. Now, it's pizza in the lobby of the concert venue.

The after-party was never announced in those days, but those in the know didn't need the announcement. Jack always made sure to invite the forum crowd individually.

Rick "ended up back at the house enjoying Scotch this year" Denney

[prodigal]

Those just coming up will never experience what the internet was like in the late 90’s and early aughts.

I tell this to my daughter all the time.

Similarly, every time she asks what it was like being a kid in the 80s and 90s, I tell her "better." We didn't default to the internet. We were outside doing things. Why am I so good on a bike still in my 40s? Why can I not only play tuba, but also guitar, bass, and keyboard? Why can I play baseball, soccer, basketball, and football at least decently? Our default was doing things, and occasionally we would spent 30 minutes on the internet reading emails and posting on bulletin boards, and that was it. It wasn't yet designed to suck our souls from us and give us an addiction. It was still human, to an extent.

Amen! We had jobs, did school stuff, hung out, and just spent time outside.

Nobody made a stink about a bunch of teenagers bailing out of a truck with guns, they'd only ask what are you hunting?

Progress sucks!

[prodigal]

The earliest one I went to was around that time, maybe 2001/2002? Pat Sheridan played at the last concert, and as a friend of a son of a friend, I ended up at the after-party at some bar. I remember meeting a bunch of tuba guys who had zero clue who I was (and kinda/sorta, I didn't know them either).

That may have been the only time I went with a friend. Typically, I just kind of showed up alone to check out the elephant room and the main concert.

If this is the same place as after-parties at conferences that I went to around that time when the Grand Concert was over, it was at the VFW in Arlington, Virginia, not that far from
Ft. Myer, as it was then called. I think it’s
Joint Base Myer-Henderson now.

Yeah, it was at the VFW.

[catgrowlB]

I discovered the original Tubenet BBS in 1999. I was attending my first college at the time, and I remember the computer lab with desktop computers. I think they were Gateway or Dell computers. Anyway I was just a lurker on Tubenet at the time, but anyone could post freely on any threads on the BBS. Then Sean changed the format and we had to create accounts, like on here.

This site is one of my favorites and is more like the old Tubenet than Tubenet itself is now. That place is a shell of itself now....

The earliest conference I attended was the 1998 one in Minneapolis. I was the only high schooler with my tuba teacher and a few of his college tuba/euph students.
I also attended the 2002 conference in Greensboro. In between those times, me and my dad drove up to the Army/DC tuba conference. I want to say we attended a couple of them. Those were some very good, fun memories

I miss being able to try out a ton of new tubas and going to concerts and masterclasses

[Heavy_Metal]

This is gonna make some of you feel OLD......... I came back to the tuba in 2012, and heard about TubeNet from @Mark E. Chachich so I joined up. Since the Great Schism, I mostly post here since all the "characters" are here, but still check the old board from time to time.

[Søren]

This is fun!

I found the old forum around 2004 when I started studying at university. For some reason, I thought that you had to approach it like a textbook, so I spent the first year reading through almost all of the old BBS posts (that just to be linked on the front page) before I really started following the forum.

While I have never been super active here, I have met a number of good people that I got in contact here. I also had a period where I talked frequently with Klaus Bjerre (yorkmaster - another danish member) who also relayed some stories around the old tubenet community that did not show up in forum posts.....

In summary, this (and the other) forum has been with me for more than two decades, and I have learned a lot from mostly just reading. Thank you all!