In discussing Lovecraft’s boyhood pastimes it is impossible to pass over the Blackstone Military Band. Lovecraft’s violin lessons may have been a disaster, but this was something altogether different. Here’s how he tells it:
When, at the age of 11, I was a member of the Blackstone Military Band, (whose youthful members were all virtuosi on what was called the “zobo”—a brass horn with a membrane at one end, which would transform humming to a delightfully brassy impressiveness!) my almost unique ability to keep time was rewarded by my promotion to the post of drummer. That was a difficult thing, insomuch as I was also a star zobo soloist; but the obstacle was surmounted by the discovery of a small papier-mache zobo at the toy store, which I could grip with my teeth without using my hands. Thus my hands were free for drumming—whilst one foot worked a mechanical triangle-beater and the other worked the cymbals—or rather, a wire (adapted from a second triangle-beater) which crashed down on a single horizontal cymbal and made exactly the right cacophony . . . Had jazz-bands been known at that remote aera, I would certainly have qualified as an ideal general-utility-man—capable of working rattles, cow-bells, and everything that two hands, two feet, and one mouth could handle.[41]