One of my first gigs as a musician when I was 16 was in the dog track band – yeah, didn’t even know that existed. But, it was money and I was broke. The band consisted of some of the oldest musicians known to planet earth (this was in Florida), and they were all grouchy, cantankerous, fat, old bastards (not really, once I got to know them, I learned that they were some of the funniest cats I’ve ever worked with).
The good part about the gig was that all they did was , old marches, and all sight-read. All of the woodwind players took turns on the sax, clarinet, piccolo, and flute parts. If you’ve ever played those old marches, they’re hard! There was a spot on the back wall of the band shell that was full of tick-marks. I thought it was the number of shows played or something, but after some time with the band, I started noticing that in every gap in the music, someone would fart, loudly. These guys were marking only successful, in-time farts. If they were not right on the beat, they didn’t count. Needless to say, the pit wreaked at the end of the races every day – I mean, you have about 24 70+ guys pushing out farts. One of the most prolific gas-bags on the gig was particularly stinky one evening. Amongst the gagging and laughter, one of the guys said, “Jesus, John, what did you eat?” He said, “Well, after the matinée show, I had a couple of boiled eggs I brought from home, then went to [a bar] and had the darndest hot bowl of chili I’ve ever had in my life; then I had a couple beer and played a couple sets of tennis and came back to the gig.”
I learned to read “fly shit” on that gig, learned a TON about playing my woodwinds well, and learned how to fart on queue. Most importantly, I learned that playing a gig was serious business, but that didn’t mean you couldn’t have fun. These guys would only let you have fun if you weren’t playing bad notes. After all the notes got played, anything was fair play.
ON THAT SAME GIG: For all the newcomers, they had stored in the back room a few crushed horns that they bought at various yard sales and pawn shops over the years. At some point, when they decided the “newbee” was an okay player – if you sucked, they were awful to you until you quit – they would let you turn your back on the break when everyone was leaving the band shell, take your horn aside and throw the crushed replacement on the floor acting like they had just tripped over it. After my own, “initiation.” There was nothing funnier than seeing someone’s face who thinks that their precious Selmer MK VI just got turned into a $3000 repair job on a gig that pays like $25 a show. Priceless, and an endless source of entertainment!