Shattinger Music, the first place to sell my scores besides, you know, me, just placed their pre-Midwest Clinic order. I’m not completely sure what Jim Cochran was thinking (Jim runs the company), but he placed a massive order. The order was so big that I had to have a print run done just for him, and I took the rare step of having my copy shop bind the scores for me. (Normally, I bring my own custom covers and bind the scores myself from the copies that they make for me. I’m always afraid they’ll screw something up and, you know, bind the scores along the top or something. Seriously. They’ve done it before. Come on, people, it’s not a calendar.) Jim’s order was too large to imagine standing at the binding machine in Glendale for the number of hours it would have taken to do this right.

He ordered more than 60 scores. 60! Can you imagine? To give an idea of how much music that is, it took two large boxes and weighed 71 pounds.

Want a “Kingfishers Catch Fire” score? No problem. He has twenty copies. What about a score for the hot-off-the-press “Concerto for Soprano Sax and Wind Ensemble?” Check. He has 15 — and he’s the only one selling it right now. What about a large-format “Strange Humors” score? I mean, if you buy the regular set, you only get a 9×12 score. Bigger is better, right? Well, Shattinger has 11×17 scores. Not to mention scores for “Turbine,” “Turning,” “Sasparilla,” and the ol’ standby, “Redline Tango.” All of the cool band kids have a “Redline Tango” score. If you don’t, you’re a loser, but Shattinger will set you up and save you from future bandmate ridicule.

So, if you’re going to Midwest and want a Mackey score, come to the Shattinger Music booth.  I’ll be hanging out at there when I’m not drunk at the bar, so please say hi. I mean, only if you want to be really, really cool.