New Year Honours: Tooting own horn brings deserved award

Max Page has entertained the community for almost 80 years. Photo / Hawkes Bay Today

After 75 years of playing in the same band Max Page is winding down on tooting his own horn.

The 86-year-old reckons his knees are giving out, the dodgy kickers making life interesting as he climbed on and off the back of a truck with the rest of the Takaka Citizen Band during carolling season this year.

"The hardest thing in the world was to get up there and then the next hardest thing was to get back down," he laughed.

Eight decades into playing the cornet, tenor horn and flat bass Mr Page's New Year's honour drums a decidedly different beat than all others. In a sea of citations for areas including business, academia, and community work, Mr Page's Queen's Service Medal recognises services to brass bands.

The love of music has been an enduring thing simply because it got into his bones, he said.

"That's why I stuck with it, it just gets in to you and you enjoy it."

He likes old favourites such as Invercargill March and Colonel Bogey, the first because of the ease that younger band members are able to pick up the tune.

Mr Page reckoned he would have dearly loved to see some of the world's bigger band celebrations like the Edinburgh Tattoo, however, the furthest Takaka Citizen took him was to Wellington in the 1930s, for a competition that saw him march down Cuba Street.

But that doesn't bother the retired farmer too much, band life was fit in around milking the cows and his hometown had more than enough gigs over the years to keep him going, he said.

"Anything that was going in Takaka, we'd be at. Show days, ANZAC parades, we used to play a lot of flower shows, axemen, any big rep rugby games. During Christmas people come up and chat, joke with me that I'm still going."

A band sergeant for 20 years he's served as patron since 1996.