Manhasset. The name itself comes from primordial America. It’s like something chanted out of Whitman. I could attempt to provide a potted history of the Manhasset corporation, but you’ve got Wikipedia, and besides, that stuff is boring.
Suffice to say, if you’ve been in a school concert band program within the past 50 years, you have encountered the Manhasset. It is the black metal music stand of your dreams and/or nightmares, timeless, perfected, the music stand in its ideal form, the standard by which all others are measured. It’s the Nike of music stands. It’s so ubiquitous and quietly functional that you’ve probably not even noticed the name, an aboriginal utterance quietly embossed on its surface.
I have owned two Manhassets in my life. The first was somehow lifted from the school bandhall and followed me through life until shortly after the pandemic, when it lost its ability to maintain its rigor when telescoped out. It especially lost the ability to hold the thick three-ring binders I preferred at that point in my semi-pro, AA-ball type music side career. I rescued this ambiguously stolen object from my parents house when I moved back home and started to cart it around to gigs. Up until its failure due to age, it succeeded at its primary task, though it was a beast to transport. This mostly comes from its heavy metal construction. It’s not a single piece of molded metal but it presents that way. The tripartite base is particularly claw-like and dangerous to car interiors, unprotected ankles, and smaller petlife. It doesn’t collapse. It doesn’t have a case. It’s a belligerent metal sculpture. You have to adapt to it.
But because of its somewhat destructive presence in my car, I started down the consumerist road of collapsible or foldable or otherwise more easily transportable music stands. This is one of Satan’s rabbit holes. If the Manhasset is the music stand perfected, all of the more easily transportable music stands are essentially garbage, if we define garbage as that which fails at its primary task and also quickly breaks. One might actually be grateful for the quick and easy breakage of these stands given how terrible they are, but still, frustrating.
The worst offender here is the kind where the platform that ostensibly holds the sheet music itself folds up like a kind of fan. The construction is flimsy. What gives out before anything is the gripability of the various wing nuts. I have been told that I am a bit too aggressive with my bolt/nut/pickle jar tightening. This comes from being the child of a drummer, where the Grip of Death is the one true path. But even if I’m being rather gentle, they just don’t hold up to any serious tightening over time. And then there is the music platform itself, which somehow fails at holding single sheets of music as well as binders or anything with any kind of heft. Plus if you sneeze in their direction the whole thing comes crashing down. I’ve seen child-made Lego contraptions with more structural integrity than these things.
After going through more than one, each time getting more and more robust in my purchases, I have settled on a two-part music stand, where the music sheet platform itself is one solid piece of detachable metal. This allows the base itself to be a larger metal tube tripod to support that weight. It’s more robust all around, and so far I have not broken it. But it barely satisfies my transportation needs. True, since the base is a foldable tripod I’m not sending dachshunds to the pet ER anymore, but now it’s the metal platter, like an alien TV tray, lying in wait to maim. I’ve got a scar still on my ankle from a midnight tumble. Also, as the platter falls it doesn’t just dent but seems to sharpen, so I’m inadvertently creating a kind of postmodern, primitive weapon. The shield that cuts.
I got a second Manhasset to keep at the house. There’s nothing as satisfying as its quiet mastery of the simple act of holding sheet music where you can read it. It’s as good as the old one, though I do notice that the metal is not as heavy. It’s somehow less dense. I’ve heard people complain (okay, old dudes) that the metal used today in products is not the same quality as “old metal.” I usually disregard this. Obviously there is some metaphorical narcissism happening. Plus I don’t really care. If the metal has changed, there’s probably a reason. For instance, they don’t finish guitars with nitrocellulose lacquer anymore. The guitar companies use polyurethane. Of course all the old dudes like the old way, because it looks cooler, it ages in ways we like, and the wood sounds better. It — ahem — breathes better. Is this last part BS? Probably. Unverifiable nostalgia, the worst kind. I’m not trying to be that way with respect to Manhasset metal, but it does feel different, less grandfatherly strong, more like millennial strong. But it works. And nothing quite stays the same, despite our wishes. Perhaps this means it wouldn’t tear up the inside of my car as aggressively, but I’m not willing to try it out. I’ll keep my modern sculpture inside the house, thank you.