New Players and New Adventures
Our drummer and Band Master/Pianist completed their contracts and signed off the ship last week. The overall vibe of the band had been great, so we all felt a little sad to see them go. Needless to say, we celebrated their return to homeward freedom by way of festivities in the crew bar. The following day, they were gone, and their replacements had arrived. Because of the commotion caused by sign-on procedures, they were unable to attend a tech rehearsal for the welcome aboard show. Rather than risk any funny business, the production manager cancelled the performance, and the show band got the night off! So, we went to the dining room and feasted on lobster tail and steak!
One week later, the new drummer signed off. He had been hired only for one week because of complications. Another drummer took his place, and as luck would have it, he will be the drummer on the Celebrity Millennium, the ship to which I’ll be assigned later this year. I’m happy to be meeting a member of the Millennium band in advance.
The last four weeks have offered me new opportunities to expand my horizons both musically and personally through meeting lots of new players. On several occasions, I’ve been playing the melodies for specific songs rather than just serving as accompaniment. Today for example, our rhythm section(piano, bass, drums, guitar) played for the weekly “Latitudes”, a VIP party for returning NCL cruisers. As the Captain and his officers were introduced to the stage, we played the famous “Anchors Away” song, and I received the honor of playing the melody to this sea faring masterpiece. I might be over exaggerating the cool factor of this song. On our jazz night, I played the melody to a song called “Black Orpheus” mainly because I knew that the saxophone player hates this song. He sort of reminds me of grumpy smurf, so I have to pull his chain as much as possible.
The Rock production show also poses some unnerving challenges. Much of it has to do with the click track present in our headphones throughout the show. The click lets each musician hear the tempo of the music. The trouble arises when the connecting jack between my headphones and click track cable becomes loose. The loose connection causes the click to disappear and, subsequently, for interesting things to happen. To make matters more complicated, I have to take off the headphones two times during the show in order to run to the middle of the stage to play guitar solos. Not having the click track does not make playing the show impossible for the most part except for one specific song which starts with nobody except me! The count off for the song can be heard only by the click track, so if I have no click, I wont know when to play. This of course would throw off the singer and cause mayhem and musical