Search This Blog

40-03-27 Vic Fakes the Cornet

STARRING: ART VAN HARVEY, BERNARDINE FLYNN AND BILL IDELSON
L.W. Sloan is sick and can't play in the band concert. Vic volunteers to take his place...even though he doesn't know how to play the instrument. He decides he will fake it with the band.

Sade says this is "cheating."
MIS' CROWE SAYS:
Vic is going to pretend to play cornet in a local band concert. Sade is not a bit pleased about it.

I think this is one of the funniest episodes. The announcer, who is barely holding it together at the end of the episode, seems to agree with me! I love that Vic seems to think an elementary school music education must have bestowed the gift of perfect pitch upon his child (“What’s this note?” “B.” “What’s it sound like?”). It’s another case of Vic and Sade being mostly unaware of what goes on in Rush’s academic life. Rush seems to understand that no matter how much he explains that he remembers nothing about music, Vic won’t take no for an answer, so he just begins dispensing musical advice that is about as valuable as his wildflower facts.

Vic’s fraud, and Sade’s intense disapproval, remind me of Uncle Fletcher Gets a Job Offer, in which Uncle Fletcher is extremely disturbed to have been offered a job playing piano at the Five and Ten Cent Store, in which he is to sit at the piano with bandaged hands. Sade’s family is highly scrupulous in all matters musical.
SEE THE SCRIPT (transcribed by Lydia Crowe)
________________________
This is one of those nonsense episodes that really isn't important to the whole scheme of things but it's fun listening to Vic being exciting before his gig.

Trivia:

+ The cornet belongs to L.W. Sloan - this is his first time mentioned.

+ The cornet cost $100.

+ Ed Winnie is mentioned (for the first time) as being the leader of the band.

+ The tunes that Vic is going to fake:
  • The Green Gilded March
  • Hunkleman Academy Salute
  • Three Little Girls Trippin' to School
  • Bright Birds in the Forest
  • Clark Street Stomp
  • Rhapsody in F# Major
  • Dance of the Primroses

Rush "sings" out a few notes (edited): {{{HEAR}}}

Download the complete commercial-free, sound-improved episode!

2 comments:

  1. The Rhapsody in F# Major is kind of a musical joke. I've taken some piano lesson in the past, but would not qualify myself as an expert on music, so I may be off here, but I never remember anything being written in the key of F#. That's the key that uses all the black (or sharp/flat) keys that in some other episode Euncie was learning, so Rhymer used the joke more than once. I'm sure on some higher, more esoteric plane of music the F# key is used, but I don't think you'd find it in the concert of a small town cornet band. "Three Little Girls Trippin' To School" sounds like a spoof of popular but sappy, sentimental tunes about childhood from the turn of the (last) century like "Two Little Girls In Blue" and "I Don't Want To Play In Your Yard."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're right. And for a joke, I wrote a very difficult piece for piano in F# and it was for an Easter Cantata... I had fun. Anyway, I changed it to G... everyone had fun.

      Delete