And there it was:
The finest music experiences I’ve ever had, and I’ve had hundreds of thousands of them, were listening to the Greentown Jazz Band. Finding their first album on vinyl – in the most obscure, unlikely location, a novelties shop in Ashland, OR – was like winning the billion dollar powerball for me. Because it was inexplicable.
“90% of everything is crap,” but the Greentown Jazz Band are not just in the 10%, they are in the 1% of Dixieland Jazz Bands. Featuring Borut Bučar – the best clarinet player I’ve ever heard!
No one knows or talks about this band, they are my secret, and a major part of my life. I once made great effort to go to a show they were doing in Sacramento, at Cal Expo, just so I could purchase their 1st album on CD from the merch table. My cassette was wearing out, and I didn’t have turntables back then. I finally get to the table, breathless (I’m not kidding), and the guy tells me they sold the last one 15 minutes ago. Fuuuuuck.
My first time seeing the band was when I was 14 or 15, so it would have been 1982-83? It was at an Italian restaurant in Old Sacramento. I was typically angsty back then and not in a good mood that day. I recall having a bad headache as we got there and had dinner. Because we were there early, we got a great table in front of the band, and when dinner was over, they started to play.
Years later, when I fooled around with acid, e, and the like. I had many powerful and blissfully positive experiences. But nothing since then has matched what I felt that night, listening to this amazing music. My headache lifted, mood brightened and energy heightened, and all due to a couple woodwind instruments. A clarinet and sax. Oh how they wailed, loud and clear and beautiful, twisting and stretching, taking us up and then down and then higher.
And when we thought we had just heard the most amazing song ever (and by we I mean the entire crowded restaurant. It had filled up and the applause was deafening), they started up a new one. I don’t even know how to describe it ore.
I made sure to see them next time they came to the Sacramento Jazz Festival. They we on an outdoor stage in the early evening, and while not as intense an experience as the restaurant, it was still the best music I heard the entire festival. I went backstage after the show and shook Borut Bucar’s hand, telling him how impressed I was, and he quickly smiled and thanked me and moved on.
That was the last time I saw the Greentown Jazz Band or Bucar again. I had a cassette of their first and second albums. The 2nd album always seemed wrong to me, in some way I can’t define. I lost it long ago and never digitized it. The 1st album, on the other hand, is a priceless possession, one of the few cassettes I have kept. It was one of the first things I digitized and turned into CD and mp3, when that technology became available. But I never did have them on vinyl.
Fast forward many years, and I’m doing some crate digging while on vacation. Ashland has a really good record store, owned by a guy who has done it a long time and knows the biz well. I spent a lot of time there and thought I was done shopping for the day, but Sandy told me there were used records at a store down the street. So I walk over, and it’s a novelties place with t-shirts everywhere and tons of crippy-crap, but there were about ten crates of cheap used, just like Sandy said.
I hate crates on the bottoms of shelves, where I have to squat to go through them. My back and legs get tired quickly. I found a few things, but not much. I almost passed on going through the last few crates. Sandy was ready to go.
But I love crate digging, and the pleasure overrides the pain and nagging. So I dug through them, flip, flip, flip. flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip, flip…
And there it was… ask Sandy sometime how I reacted, she’ll laugh and tell you, and I’ll be embarrassed.