In the early 90s, I played trumpet with six other raggamuffins at our local amusement park, Valley Fair — a marching brass quintet with 2 marching percussionists, all wearing fish imprinted costumes (uniforms?). We played 6 shows a day for $54 total X 6 days a week, but it was fun. Part of our job was to flirt with and serenade the moms who were stuck — and bored — on chaperone duty with their squad of HS cheerleaders (or the track team, or the church group, or the science classes doing “physics research”). The definition of who the moms could be expanded to include nearly any female park goer, and I digress: None of us came out of that summer rich, but as nerds learning how to talk to the fairer sex, we were all glad we did the gig. Six caffeinated comrades singing terribly, “You’ve lost that loving feeling,” is a much easier way to break the ice than saying, “Hi, my name is Steve.” They were equally ineffective methods, though.
As a proper quintet, the 5 brass players in our Strolling Group of Dubious Musicianship also played some side gigs: Sitting in as ringers in high school musicals, playing at my dad’s church, or — and here’s where the convulsions started — playing at “that church that paid $25 for a Sunday service.”
That church that paid $25 for a Sunday service was on the way to the park, we negotiated our way out of rehearsals, and it was $25 we could spend on bowling or movies after the park closed. Why not? I don’t remember any of us being terribly professional about it, but we were on our way to put on fish uniforms and squeeze olden day honky horns attached to the drum set with a wing nut. The wing nut’s name was Kelly, BADUM CRASH. I blame the lightweight $25 fee for what was about to happen, but really, it was us.
The organist who hired The Gang of Five — after asking us why he could never seem to get brass players to play for him on Easter (“uhhhh…”) — fired up the Lutheran ELCA service with a rousing entrata arranged for brass and organ. All was going well enough. Then the actual order of operations started, i.e. The Liturgy.
Y’all remember the two pickup notes each organist would play to bring in the congregation for the “Amen,” and the “Hallelujah,” and several other spots every Sunday? It was going fine until precisely thirty seven of those two notes went horribly wrong, as if he was riding a motorcycle and both tires blew out and the motor blew up and his head exploded and a semi-truck ran him over all at the same time. I think his feet slipped down onto the footboard, and then he lost his balance and just played a bunch of nonsense. He may have been drunk. He may have had a heart attack, or thought a career in free jazz was going to be the bold move his marriage demanded. The choir and congregants all tried to come in, but disaster loomed large in the Summer of ’95. Our fearless fifteen-fingered organ-wielder suddenly slammed both arms from elbow to literal middle finger and all of his duck feet down onto every key he could hit. “Wommmmmppp!” went the organ. Everyone shat up and our man in the blue suit yelled out, “DO OVER!” cutting off the last remaining open-mouthed liturgical leaders.
And then he played those two little notes just as sweet as you please, like cotton candy you could taste with your ears.
Everything got going again…
Things were functionally ok…
For a moment…
…except for the giggling gang of raggamuffins he hired at $25 a head! Uh oh! We were an hour away from putting on fish-covered uniforms. It was our fault, for sure and no doubt, but was it really?
We got the giggles so bad…it was just sooo bad, like an elevator-encrusted fart or a first unrequited crush, two equally awful things … and they didn’t break for the entirety of the remaining service. If I remember right, we failed to play a proper note for 4o minutes straight, choking on our mouthpieces, trying not to notice the guy next to us shaking between verses. It was bad. We were not in a balcony, all eyes on us just like the circus that employed us the rest of the week. At times, two or three of us had it together, but only rarely, and at no time did we play well or with all 5 voices. It was too much. It was just too much. “DO OVER!!!” We just couldn’t get it together, like 12 year old cousins at a slumber party watching Monty Python’s “Holy Grail” for the first time, a complete disaster made from what scant remaining professionalism we had left at the time.
DO OVER!!!!
And that was the end of our gigs at “that church that paid $25 for a Sunday service.”
The lesson here is this: I don’t think there is a lesson, but consult the liturgy — it’s probably in there. I wasn’t exactly paying attention.
I can leave you with this, however: Life is short. Play gigs. Be nice to people. Make some memories with your friends so that when you’re 80 years old you’re not asking for a…
DO OVER!!!
Cheerfully,
Steve Kriesel