The Moon Loungers are listed on these here Intertunnels as the “Finest wedding band in Bristol and the South West.” It doesn’t specify the southwest of what, exactly.
Playing at weddings is a tough gig. I’ve done it. I remember, distinctly, one wedding job in Newport, Rhode Island. It was held on the second floor of a converted building on a pier over the ocean. The groom and the best man were musicians, and they played as a duo around Newport at many of the same places we did. I still have a few happy bruises on my person from Salve Regina night down there.
There are always early indications of how any wedding job is going to go. Certain cues that are invisible to a newbie but a billboard for an old hand. In this case, a woman so old that she was inside-out shambled up to us with a walker, looked at me with a glass eye and the guitar player with a milky one, and asked, “What time does the orchestra start?”
The guitar player is a carpenter, and we used to work together building things from time to time. Whenever things were going really badly — if you’d just nailed your foot to the floor; if you’d just cut through a water pipe; if you’d just fallen off a ladder; if the check bounced; if the building inspector showed up and he turned out to be a guy you beat up every day in high school; no matter what — we’d turn to each other and ask in unison, “What time does the orchestra start?”
The groom jumped out the window halfway through our second set, by the way.
7 Responses
Very nice. After viewing it twice, my little ones decided it's time to bring out their toy guitars and play their own version, "Paper Bike Rider."
Sipp, I trust that Unorganized Hancock will not be subjected to such dire working conditions.
I have played in bands where one or another of the musicians would get loaded and fall off the stage. Sometimes unnoticed. Bands like that are not for the fainthearted or innocent.
I've a buddy across whom you may have run in a Chinese restaurant back in the day who has become quite successful in that depraved industry (music, not Chinese restaurants). In high school, I once helped him set up in a roadhouse somewhere in Northern California that, no joke, had the stage behind the bar and was covered with chicken wire. Apparently, it helped keep the glass fragments from the bottles thrown at the band down to a manageable size. I'm guessing, too, that the guy who checked ID's of the patrons and employees was off that night.
"The groom jumped out the window halfway through our second set, by the way." So he wasn't trying to kill himself because of the music, he just wanted to go swimming? I never understand what anyone is talking about here anyway.
Funny.
Larry: There are eight million stories in the naked city. Around these parts folks are clothed so that cuts it down to, oh, mebbe five-six million stories.
Try to think metaphysically, like this:
This is something
This is nothing
Something
Nothing
Got it?
Mr. Sippi, I read what you say you did in yer yute, and I wail my mournful wail and gnash what's left of my terrible teeth at the lack of opportunities I didn't find to have a yute of my own like yers. Sure, there was some gun-runnin' and livin' underground, but still uneventful compared to yers. I'm just a bum on the bum, bump onna log, little frog inna swamp.