ChopSaver Lip Balm

We have a look (and taste) of a nifty little product that will try and make you not look like a 13 stone brown trout (or Leslie Ash) after a hard nights playing or enjoying yourself too much. Sounds good eh?

ChopSaver Lip Balm
Produced by Good for the Goose Products, LLC
PO Box 20692
Indianapolis
IN 46220
www.chopsaver.com

Available from PJS Music Services
www.pjsmusicservices.co.uk

PJS Music Services
57 High Street
Dodworth
Barnsley
South Yorks
S75 3RG

email: info@pjsmusicservices.co.uk
Tel Freephone: 0800 035 1147   or 
Tel: 01226 200102
Fax : 01226 200163

Price: £2.95

This may seem to be a bit rude, but you do have to be pretty careful nowadays what you do with your lips.

For the everyday man or woman in the street, having chapped, swollen or sore chops is something they should only discuss with their partners or appropriate GP perhaps, but the pain and discomfort of having lips the size of two formula one tyres stuck on the front of your face can be quite an annoyance, both for your looks and your possible career.

There are of course remedies. Lip balms, witch hazel, herbal lipsticks: you name it, and your local dispensary will usually have something on hand to pop into your handbag (or pocket, for blokes who have not come to terms with their femininity to have matching accessories) to ease away the unsightly mess that looks like you are trying to impersonate Leslie Ash or a brown trout.

This is all well and good for the vast majority of the general public, but for your average brass player though, having a mouth that feels and looks like it has gone ten rounds with Mike Tyson is not the best way to maintain, let alone carve out a career, or maintain your position within your band for oneself.

As those very sensible and poignant adverts say: You need to take protection with you. 

This is where this nifty little product from ‘Good for the Goose Products' and the inventor Dan Gosling (nifty play on the surname, eh?) comes into play.

Dan has been a professional trumpet player for over 20 years and after going through the torment of trying to play with lips made of sandpaper for one too many a time, he decided to become an inventor and try and free brass (and wind players) from the torment that is the dreaded spectre of lips that do not work.  Thus, he came up with his ChopSaver, which is designed to do exactly what it says on the tin (or small tube in this case). It is not a method for would be chefs and lazy cooks of prolonging the life of small cuts of meat for your Sunday dinner.

4BR has been in possession of his ‘ChopSaver' lip balm for a few weeks now, courtesy of Phil Shaw, the importer of the product through his PJS Music Services, and he sent them to us to try out at the height of our Summer, safe in the knowledge that someone at 4BR will have a few problems either through playing (although that was a bit debatable nowadays) or by following a hedonistic lifestyle. We tried our best on both counts.

For those of you with worries about Green issues – there is a good worthy contingent of sandal wearing, save the whale, Guardian reading brass banders out there (including the 4BR team), you don't have to throw down your soya bean curd sandwiches. The ChopSaver is a 100% natural product.

It is in fact full of shea butter, aloe, vitamin E and herbs such as arnica, calendula, essential citrus oils and white willow. Not a single hint of petroleum, chemical or colouring additives - so you can use it safe in the knowledge that you are not harming either your lips, or the planet. 

And it does work very well indeed.

After a couple of days on the sun kissed beaches of Tenby in South Wales, 4BR's chops were indeed looking like the lips of Beau Gest and the rest of the Foreign Legion, but a liberal smear of the ChopSaver and our guinea pigs (including a couple of kids) reported that it was not greasy, made the lips feel smooth and even tasted great. You must though not store it in excessive heat (it will most probably melt), use externally only and keep out of reach of little hands and enquiring minds of those below the age of 3 – it does have a small top which could be swallowed.

Worn overnight and the same report came back from a couple of the adults (although there was no night time interference with its working, if you know what we mean).

Coming from the home of the free and the great – a huge number of oddly named people have endorsed the product as well including a chap called Arturo Sandoval, who by all accounts fancies himself as a bit of a trumpet player. "I think ChopSaver is a great product! I travel a lot and it protects my chops in all kinds of weather, hot and cold. I really like it!"

Now if Mr Sandoval likes it, then it is possibly worth a look at, especially as others such as the principal trumpeters of the Minnesota Orchestra, the Philadelphia Orchestra, Orchestra de la Suisse, quite a few professors, top freelance players on both trumpet and horn and even a few wind players think it is the business.  

It's cheap, clean and not greasy, whilst it comes in sterile packing and a nifty little dispenser the size of an old ‘up your nose' Vics synex, which allows you to turn the bottom of the tube like a lipstick. Worn overnight for best results, it can also give quick relief almost immediately as well. It can be rubbed off quickly and doesn't taste as if you have just licked the petrol cap on your car.  

Phil Shaw has seen it fly off the shelves, bought both by brass players and those with personal grooming firmly in mind. So it looks as if it is a winner.

All in all then, a nifty little product that could save the average brass player torment and discomfort whilst not stopping you from using your lips for what they were intended – personally or professionally if you know what we mean…

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