bdbdbuck said:
Hey Ralph,
Thanks a lot for the gratuitous bump! *drops a few sheckles in the large brandy snifter sittin on the piano where his 14 fingered friend is knockin the ivory off the keys*
Mark,
You have no clue as to how I pissed my pants laughing @ this unbelievably coincidential comment.
Here goes....One of my gigs this past weekend was a house warming party at quite a nice home in Andover, MA . ( ahem... pooh, pooh). It was a two hour 'walk on', ( no equipment to lug) that paid me an obscene amount of dough, as I was to play on the owner's Henry F. Miller 6' grand. Mr. & Mrs Yuppie escorted me to thier 'prized' piano & proceeded to inform me as to the glorious history of the instrument and how much they spent on rebuilding it....to the penny...( d.i.n.k.s. [ Double Income No Kids] love to talk about what things cost them!) Mr. Yuppie made particular reference to the ivory keys. I didn't have the heart to tell him that they were veneered ivory imitation overlays superglued onto wood, so I just played 'the game' with 'em.
( Incidentally, a Miller is a decent instrument but not the 'cat's meow'.
Here's the kicker. As the room filled up towards the end of the gig, I turned on all four burners on one of my classical ditties and
commenced to rip the piano to shit once I had thier undivided attention........well... and this is the GOD'S Honest Truth....during the most technically demanding section which was alternating octave passages in both hands at fff running up and down all over the 88 at breakneck tempo, my left hand thumb caught one of thier 'precious' ivory keys on an upswing and flung it up 6 feet into the friggin air! I wish I could say that it landed in someone's drink, but alas, it fluttered down to my right foot where I nugded it & tried to conceal it under the damper pedal until the end of the piece! Truth is.. THEY ALL saw it!!!!Usually a piece of this nature brings down the house but there was an uncomfortable silence at the end and they all stared at me incredulously for a moment until Mr. & Mrs Yuppie exclaimed "BRAVO" and initiated the delayed applause..... no shit....this one's going in the books as one of my funniest gig stories.....
BTW...@ the end of the gig, I told Mr. Yuppie that he had one of two options.....call the piano tech and pay his wage or go get me some superglue.......he opted for the latter, fixed it in 30 seconds and then I played them an encore. (mostly to prove to them that I didn't cause any damage to there 'little baby') hehehehehe
Thanks for letting me share this on your thread, as your funny opening comment was to poignant and timely to ignore. Hope a few of you get a laugh outta this....I sure did, esp on the way home and with my wife later on!
Traps need a few more fills and kicks.
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