great playing, so what's wrong?

[bloke]

The tuba guy - per usual - is not guilty.

[Three Valves]

Brown shoes with black suit or tux = “Please pass the jelly!!”

[Rick Denney]

The brown shoes don’t bother me—that’s the current fashion.

But the tapping of that brown shoe drives me nuts.

A guy in our band is a terrible foot-tapper—always a bit behind the beat and not in time. I find it horribly distracting, and I have to position myself so it’s out of view, or it messes me up. I mentioned it once, which offended the guy, and he stopped for about ten minutes.

Thankfully, he’s on the back row so the audience is unlikely to be distracted by it.

I’ve complained formally when the toe-tapping was in any way audible. “The percussion section is already highly skilled at making impact noises out of time and beat—they don’t need your help.”

I’m usually a bit more diplomatic than that. Usually.

Rick “plays like an amateur but doesn’t have to look like one” Denney

[Doc]

I don’t even pat my foot in a hoedown where outright foot-stomping is allowed. And the foot-tapping in the video is damned near a stomp!

66A0D734-C766-4504-81B3-EBD0421C932B.jpeg (110.68 KiB) Viewed 488 times

For the record, I did not wear my brown wingtips for this photo, as those aren’t my dress bibs.

[Three Valves]

The brown shoes don’t bother me—that’s the current fashion.

With a light blue suit. During the daytime. Maybe.

NOT during a performance wearing black.

NEVER!!

[hrender]

Bucharest International Music Competition

Different clothing standards/conventions. No ties, either.

[bloke]

No ties is ok, as long as everyone’s the same (yes?)

More and more orchestras are migrating to black suit/long tie, and away from tails. Memphis supplies everyone - who wears a suit - with a nice silver long tie. I like the black suit thing, and like the fact that this results the musicians and the the patrons sporting more of the same type of appearance (as it’s been quite a few decades since orchestra concert patrons routinely wore tails “out about town” as their evening wear).

Personally, I’ve never particularly enjoyed wearing a penguin suit (layers, awkward to sit down quickly, etc.), but dislike a wearing a horse groom’s uniform (tux) even more.

I also like the black suit / black dress shirt / black long tie look.

[Rick Denney]

I was at an Allen Edmonds store in Houston last year, buying a pair of black dress shoes for a funeral (my father’s, as it happens). Sales guy: “the current fashion is black shoes for funerals only.” Me: “Yes. Bring me these in black.”

I just can’t wear brown shoes with black or gray suits, but I’m old. I can, however, avoid visibly keeping time with my foot.

Rick “who wears brown with dark blue, though” Denney

[bloke]

It’s pretty easy:
Brown – casual
Black – formal
Fashion people have pretty much successfully destroyed “formal“, in the same way that others have worked so hard to destroy “tradition“.

it may seem contradictory (as I defend formality and tradition) that I am embracing the black suit/long tie - as a needed replacement for tails, but tails have always been a goofy shortcut substitute for the “long coat”, and I think it’s long past time for that odd substitute type of coat to go by the wayside.

As both of my siblings were well over a decade older than me, I attended their high school graduations as a very small boy. The ladies wore hats and white gloves, and all the men wore suits and ties. There was no hooting and hollering, and no one even considered being so audacious as to get out of their seat to go up to the front to take a picture. That having been said, it was actually fairly difficult to pass high school courses, during that era – is this was prior to grade inflation, prior to almost everyone going into some “thirteenth grade“ type of college situation – repeating their high school courses over again in college, and only the beginning of the Dr. Spock/self-esteem-over-achievement era. At that point in their lives, most of them went to work and got married. That having been said, at that time America made most of the things that it consumed.

[Doc]

It’s pretty easy:
Brown – casual
Black – formal
Fashion people have pretty much successfully destroyed “formal“, in the same way that others have worked so hard to destroy “tradition“.

it may seem contradictory (as I defend formality and tradition) that I am embracing the black suit/long tie - as a needed replacement for tails, but tails have always been a goofy shortcut substitute for the “long coat”, and I think it’s long past time for that odd substitute type of coat to go by the wayside.

But, but, but Joe... you are, after all, the hired help. And don't forget to bow and take your leave after you present the musical hors d' oeuvres.

Champagne, sir?

Doc (whose servant uniform no longer fits )

[bloke]

I remember - during a portion of Elvis 1969 comeback show - that he wore an honest to goodness (albeit white) “long coat”, rather than tails. It was quite a look.

[Doc]

I remember - during a portion of Elvis 1969 comeback show - that he wore an honest to goodness (albeit white) “long coat”, rather than tails. It was quite a look.

If anyone could pull it off and make it look alright, it would be Elvis. Distinctive look, indeed.

I've noticed conductors in recent years going to different forms of long coats, different lengths, etc. I saw one that reminded me of an old-time box-back preacher's coat. Whatever floats your boat, I guess, or (more apropos) whatever blows your skirt up.

[Rick Denney]

It’s pretty easy:
Brown – casual
Black – formal
Fashion people have pretty much successfully destroyed “formal“, in the same way that others have worked so hard to destroy “tradition“.

it may seem contradictory (as I defend formality and tradition) that I am embracing the black suit/long tie - as a needed replacement for tails, but tails have always been a goofy shortcut substitute for the “long coat”, and I think it’s long past time for that odd substitute type of coat to go by the wayside.

As both of my siblings were well over a decade older than me, I attended their high school graduations as a very small boy. The ladies wore hats and white gloves, and all the men wore suits and ties. There was no hooting and hollering, and no one even considered being so audacious as to get out of their seat to go up to the front to take a picture. That having been said, it was actually fairly difficult to pass high school courses, during that era – is this was prior to grade inflation, prior to almost everyone going into some “thirteenth grade“ type of college situation – repeating their high school courses over again in college, and only the beginning of the Dr. Spock/self-esteem-over-achievement era. At that point in their lives, most of them went to work and got married. That having been said, at that time America made most of the things that it consumed.

It would be wrong to think of fashion as a long trend, and more correct to think of it like the weather--wheels within wheels. Sometimes, the rules of fashion recycle, and sometimes, the wheel is so big that it doesn't turn again in recorded history.

It would also be wrong to think of the time of our youth as being "correct" versus any other time. But there are certainly silly fashion trends that come and go during all decades. The current trend of skinny boys wearing clothes that are yet still too small for them will pass, and once again the fashionable will be wearing baggy clothes and double-breasted suits again. And formality will return as it has returned (comparatively) often in the past. Black will make a comeback, and even suits, but the suits won't be cut the way suits have been cut in the past.

There may be a time in our future when formal wear means gold brocade on the edges of our togas, and sandals instead of bare feet. (Oh, wait--it still means that in some parts of the world.)

I don't think I could sustain the notion that elbow-length white gloves on women in the south made any more sense than a black tuxedo on a musician today.

But people are vain and will always want to look good. And at times "good" will include a more tailored appearance than is common at this moment.

Rick "finding it difficult to find Blues Brothers clothing or even black dress shirts" Denney

[bloke]

What "works" and is "correct" about formal wear (whatever it happens to be, and in whatever culture), is that wearing it reminds people to step up their behavior to the types of behavior which are defined within that culture's "formal" manner(s).

As an example, in the 1930's - 1960's in America, "men wearing suits (and even hats)" and "women wearing hats and white gloves" reminded everyone that they we're hollering out "SH!T" while shoveling rotten garbage, telling off-color jokes, speaking in full voice, milling about, or farting out loud.

The 1970's men's "clown-wear" (clown shoes, clown pants, clown shirts, clown coats, clown ties, clown colors, clown hair) fashion trend was sort-of the end of there being any sort of male formal "uniform(s)", in America.

Something else:
There are so few "formal" occasions, that my (damn nice, fwiw) suits which are NOT
- tails
- black suit (with white or black dress shirt and long tie)
- tux
- white dinner jacket (parenthetical)
are NEVER pulled out of the closet, and I've NOT bought brown leather "street" shoes in quite a few years (with my those in my closet having become quite dry).

There is no more "casual Friday" at workplaces, because that's become moot, and "business casual" has just about come to mean "whatever".
Finally, people who believe they are expressing their individuality by wearing fill-in-the-blank (clothes with holes in them, clothes made of distracting colors of prints, clothes with strange ways they are sewn together - etc., etc.) are fooling themselves, in the same way that subdivisions (which are all seven or eight configurations of the same house - made out of the same grey brick) are completely conformist, while fooling potential buyers into not noticing that they are cookie-cutter.

[DonO.]

Does anyone else here remember comedian “Lonesome” George Gobel? One of his signature jokes was “Did you ever feel like the world was a tuxedo, and you were a pair of brown shoes?”.

[Doc]

Does anyone else here remember comedian “Lonesome” George Goebbel? One of his signature jokes was “Did you ever feel like the world was a tuxedo, and you were a pair of brown shoes?”.

Remember him well. I remember him saying it here, then at 1:57 Dean Martin steals the show: