Our gig at this blue-collar hotspot was quite a gravy job. We played four hours, with three twenty-minute breaks, every Friday and Saturday night, beer was free and we were paid $120 ($30 per man). That may sound laughable now (it does to me), but being a twenty-something still in college in 1977, this was one hell of a deal. And to make matters even better, the owner installed a Hammond B3 organ (with Leslie tone cabinet) in the club, or maybe it belonged to the Thursday musician but it was never clarified and was available for our (read: MY) use. Any keyboardist knows well the value of this perk, particularly in pre-digital-sample-lightweight-inexpensive-keyboard times. And yet in spite of all these wonderful things available to us during this period, we (can you believe it?) received an offer of a higher-paying gig (I believe it was $40 per man) at a club with a more convenient location to us all, and in a neighborhood where the probability of chairs being broken over patrons' heads was only slightly less. The owner of this bar actually hired us to 'discourage' the patronage of an 'undesirable' younger element that had begun frequenting the establishment and the owner thought he had found in our band/music, just the thing to accomplish this. Years after these events, other members of the group enjoy fondly recalling the job for which we were hired to 'drive customers away.' Poetic justice indeed!
We did take the job. Ten more dollars and much less mileage were certainly well worth it. Needless to say, it was back to playing my cheesy, or should I say sub-par instrument of economic necessity. If memory serves however, this arrangement did not last very long and we ended up with a long-running, relatively prestigious gig at the local American Legion hall for comparable pay and the only stringent requirement being to play God Bless America sometime during the last set of the evening. Being truly devoted veterans and family members thereof, everyone always stood respectfully as we played it in these pre-nine-eleven days. But the place seemed like home. It was cleaner than just about ANY other place we played, the staff was friendly and the clientele attentive and appreciative.
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