cruise ship
it was the end of my third year of college and i needed some work for the summer. you couldn’t really call it my junior year because i was kind of making it up as i went along. the second i left high school in st. louis i moved to cleveland to play bass in my brother’s trio six nites a week at a holiday inn in eastlake. i went half a semester at john carroll that fall and might’ve continued but my parents pulled the plug on the tuition when i wouldn’t drop the music thing. there was a lost year teaching tennis by day in bourgie beechwood (i gave some lessons to conductor, yoel levi) and playing bass on the weekend in a neil diamond cover band at the sherwood lounge in northfield. by the time i had myself enrolled in a proper music school i was nearly 21. i thought i might study both the piano and the bass until i realized that meant acoustic bass and so at the time of this story i hadn’t really picked up my bass in a couple of years, dedicating all my time to the study of the piano. then the phone rang.
‘hello?’
a guy that sounded like cheech but meaner was on the other end.
‘hey this is al esquivel. is wilbur there?’
‘no. he moved out.’
‘oh man. i need a bass player right away down here in miami for this cruise ship gig. do you have his new number?’
‘uh…no….i don’t. but…….i play bass.’
‘you do? oh man. can you do the gig?’
‘when is it?’
‘next week. you need to meet the ship in miami next tuesday.’
‘yeah. i have a car. i can drive down.’
‘ok. one thing. you have to be able to read. can you read, man?’
‘oh yeah. sure. no problem.’
‘great. i’ll have the cruise line contact you with the details.’
and he hung up.
‘WHAT THE FUCK!! YOU TOLD ME ON THE PHONE YOU COULD FUCKING READ!!!’
al had ducked behind his fender rhodes to yell at me and his face was completely red. it was dark in the pit except for our stand lites, but i could see veins bulging out of his forehead and neck. and i was afraid.
‘oh man…….oh man!!!’ he was now shaking his head back and forth in disbelief.
the act was still going on. the song we were playing was still going on. smooth operator. it was the first nite of the gig. bass in the show band aboard the dolphin. a ship that went out of miami to the bahamas and back once a week. we were in the middle of the ocean (which to me at the time meant you couldn’t see land) and the act on the first nite was a magician. a smooth operator. so that’s his theme song and we’re playing it and i’ve never heard it, though it has been on the radio for the last couple of years non-stop. i don’t listen to the radio. all i do is practice the piano. i had looked ahead on the chart and was shocked to see a section marked ‘solo’ with all these notes way above the printed staff paper. in g flat. there were so many extra ledger lines on the staff i had no idea what the first note was so when we got there i just kind of played something in g flat and al went ballistic.
‘what the fuck am i gonna do?’ he continued to mutter as we all flipped our music to the next number. some kind of funky number with a syncopated bass line. the kind of line the second you hear it you got it but looks much harder on paper. i was so nervous i was fucking up all over the place and al would not let up.
‘what the fuck did you think? you could just come down here and play this gig without being able to read??!’ he is keeping his voice down but he’s still yelling somehow. more like growling at me.
‘oh man….oh man.’ he keeps shaking his head.
we come to a spot where there is writing all over the music and i can’t tell whether we are cutting that section or what but i keep playing right through this tacit section where the magician finishes some trick with an unaccompanied cymbal crash. people are clapping.
‘what the fuck are you doing?’ al hisses back at me.
‘there’s writing all over the chart.’ i protest.
‘then don’t fucking play it!! what are you stupid?’
a couple of songs later i make a mistake because al has ‘corrected’ the chart. later i learn he does this a lot and it pisses off the acts who pay good money for the arrangements al will just rewrite parts of on occasion, ‘fixing them,’ he would say. so there are other magic marker bass notes next to the printed chart bass notes. and they sometimes take up a line and a space so you have to pick which one it is. i pick wrong. al just turns around and glares.
‘man, it looked like a b,’ i say.
al very quiet and measured,
‘how could it be a b when we…are….in….the key of g minor……..’ then shouting, ‘USE YOUR FUCKING EAR!!! oh man…oh man….’
after the gig, al just gets up and walks off without saying anything. i look over at the drummer who will become a friend i still keep in touch with and he says,
‘don’t worry, man. he does this to everybody. he can’t put you off till we get back to miami so…’ the trumpet player has butted into our conversation. the rest of the band has a nickname for him – brain damage, or b.d. he interrupts,
‘except for that time he got into a fist fight with that one bass player, remember? that guy got off and flew back from nassau.’
‘man, shut up, b.d.’ the drummer says and turns back to me.
‘you just have to get your reading up. just spend the days shedding the music. let’s go get a drink.’ and we do and i feel better. nicky gimigliano is a tough italian guy from pittsburgh. he’s older than me and he’s going to take me under his wing. sometimes he and i will get together and jam during the day and he will teach me how to play a funky bass line simply by not playing half the shit that i first come up with.
‘take a couple notes out.’ he would say all the time.
so i stay in my cabin. 26 feet below the water line. all day for the first week. turning the metronome on and turning the page. al has this other book of arrangements that is about 400 tunes thick from which in the four months i will do the gig we will play about 20 of. but i just keep turning the pages and sight-reading the charts. taking a break to smoke some weed or go up on the deck and look at the girls. the rest of the week doesn’t go too badly, i think. but al still isn’t talking to me. he just shows up right before each show and we do the gig. twice a night. i don’t fuck up as bad as the first nite again and al isn’t screaming at me, but he is not so much as looking at me either. he doesn’t hang out with the band much so i learn this is not unusual behavior.
a couple of weeks go by and i start having some fun. a lot of fun. the photographers are these three brits and they are hilarious. not that throwing deck chairs into the sea at 4 in the morning is all that funny. but i have never met brits really and these guys are my kind of irreverent. the ship’s officers are all greek and they hate the photographers. they hate the musicians, too, but they really hate the photographers.
‘yes sir. right away sir. aye, aye cap’n and all that.’ they say while saluting and bowing. they call all the officers ‘cap’n’ no matter what their job is. and then when they get just out of earshot mutter something like,
‘cunt.’
we sit out on the deck smoking cigarettes and drinking orangeboom. exchanging ship gossip and stories. what passengers we would like to get with. and so on.
about three weeks into the gig the saxophone player who is my roommate on the ship gets my roommate back at school who also plays sax to come down and sub for him for a week while he takes some time off to go to a friend’s wedding. the cruises start on tuesday and there are shows each nite but every wednesday the show band plays a nite in the lounge to give the lounge band a nite off. it’s a regular gig. the kind of gig i had already done hundreds of. playing tunes. whatever. the nite before this particular wednesday my friend had arrived and we were out till all hours running around the ship and just got completely wrecked. so when the time came for the gig at 8pm the next nite, we were napping. now the thing about sleeping in a cabin is it’s dark. pitch black. all the time. unless you turn on a light. so time can be a strange thing down there. there is a loud banging on the door. it’s b.d.
‘you guys, it’s 8 o’clock and al’s pissed! you better get up there right now!’
and i get up and see the digital clock flashing 00:23 and realize the clock has reset itself.
shit. i’m really fucked now. the gig is exactly six decks above where i live and i’m late for it.
al doesn’t look at me. he’s pissed i can tell. his face is red. he’s trying to remain calm. but i think any minute he is going to unload on me. we play the set. my buddy from school is a great player and we actually have fun playing the set. nicky and i are starting to find our groove and having my friend in the band makes me feel comfortable and for the first time since i’ve been on, this ship band makes a little music. al sings his sinatra songs and we are actually swinging. i can see he digs it. but after the set he comes up to us at the bar points his finger at both of us and sternly says,
‘you two in my office. right now.’ and he walks out and we follow. down and down.
another hallway. another staircase. he storms ahead and we follow exchanging we-are-so-fucked glances. we arrive finally at his cabin and he puts the key in and shoves open the door motioning for us to go in ahead of him. we do. he closes the door behind him and pauses for dramatic effect.
‘allright you guys. a couple of things. first of all. you need to get a wind-up alarm clock. because those digital alarm clocks go back to zero when there is a power surge in the ship’s electrical system. secondly…’ and he stands back and eyes me up and down.
‘YOU’RE GOOD, MAN!!! you just need to relax and play. you are swinging. that shit sounds good. and you play good solos, too!!’ and he puts his arm around me and gives me a sideways hug. laughing. the he suddenly gets serious and stern again.
‘and the third thing……….YOU GUYS NEED TO WAKE UP!!!’ and with that he reaches into a recessed lighting fixture where there is no bulb and pulls out the biggest bag of blow i have ever seen (before or since) plopping it down on to a table where it lets out a ‘poof.’
and al and i were friends. he was a good ping-pong player and we had many late nite drunken battles on the deck of the dolphin. he had this thing where if he bought you a drink and you tried to get the next round he would say,
‘hey man. don’t by me a drink. if you buy me a drink it’s not like i bought you a drink.’
so we determined that 24 hours had to elapse before you could buy al a drink after he bought you a drink. we were on a cruise ship after all. with nowhere else to go.
