Friday, October 14, 2011

Ah, back when we were. . .

. . . all young and relatively carefree, and more frequently than was wise, a gig would turn into a party. . . for the band. Jay remarked more than thirty years later that the band consisted entirely of alcoholics, with the exception of me. In truth I had my moments, but never drank beyond reason during a paying gig, at least that's MY story. One such gig ended badly and practically in fisticuffs. A four-hour was broken-down into time increments as follows. We performed for about one hour, took a twenty-minute break, performed forty minutes repeating the last scheme for the remaining two hours. During this particular job we somehow, and I'm not sure if it began with the first break or later, we simply extended the breaks so that they exceeded, or practically exceeded the actual performance time. At the end, the gentleman with whom we contracted (our contracting was exclusively verbal) did not let our lapse of professionalism go unnoticed. In fact, he wanted to withhold our payment in its entirety. A first, and fortunately for us and future paying customers, a last. We somehow escaped the situation unharmed and if I'm not mistaken, still compensated. Another engagement involved continuous bickering between Greg (sax/vocals) and Jeff (drums) and numerous threats to resign from the organization, all due to excessive imbibing.

NIGHT TRAIN (written by Jimmy Forrest/performed by Ful Treatment circa 1976)



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