Top of the scam list is the bar that charges at the door and gives you a cut. They always lie, and for that reason [they] don’t want your person at the door. You can pack the house and the bar doorman will say only $500 came in. The rest went out through his pocket. Following closely is the “owner just left” scam. You walk up to the bar to get paid and the bartender says you’ll have to come back tomorrow because the owner left an hour ago and he doesn’t have enough [in the cash register] to pay the band. This gets tricky when you are on an island, don’t have ferry money and the bar doesn’t open till 4:00 PM next day. At that point, I automatically call the police; I’ve had to do that twice in my life, both times on the west coast islands.But the worst scumbag of all time has got to be the bartender who resents the band getting tips, as if it is cutting into his livelihood. It works like this (using actual numbers from my past). The deal is the band gets $400. The barkeep is watching your tip jar instead of minding his own business. At the end you go to get your money and he hands you $250, saying “you made up the rest in tips”. Or the perennial darling “You don’t think your gonna keep BOTH the $400 and the tips, do you?” Proving once again there are lower forms of simian life than monkeys who pick the undigested figs out of elephant sh*t.
Want good news? I forgot to mention when JP was out here last Friday, he went to the casino to wait for me. He only plays the penny slots but you have to walk past the dollar slots. Sure enough, he finds a twenty dollar bill hanging out of one. Scoop! He kept it and so would I have. I wouldn’t return any money I found in a place like a gambling house. We went out and spent the money chasing women, a noble endeavor.
Later, I can report a successful rehearsal. Eddie almost didn’t make it, arriving four hours late (his sister fell down some stairs). I think we are both just crazy enough to pull this thing off. As expected, my punchy bass playing makes his basic guitar sound quite incredible (I can prove it) and his squeaky voice is different enough to command attention, plus it has a trebly timbre that makes my melodic backups sound like harmonies. Which they are not.
We ran through a dozen old CCR tunes and have a list of the 32 pieces we need to get underway. Even better, he is highly adaptable to my methods of emphasizing that the music is live, mainly by doing things robots can’t do. Like pausing randomly in mid-beat and grinning. If things go as planned, we’ll do Jimbos on the 24th. I’m trying to recall who’ll be working that night, as it makes a difference in tips and I need to get money in Eddie’s pocket as early as possible. I know this business. I think it is that lady who’s name I never remember, I keep confusing her with “non-stick cooking spray” when her real name is Pam.
[ Author's note 2015-07-12: this activity of the bartender to watch my tip jar became a bit of a problem. If you make more than they do, they adopt the attitude that you are "stealing" their tips. I learned quickly to empty the tip jar if there is ever more than eight or ten bucks in there. The Pam lady mentioned above thinks I made more than her once or twice, but it was quite regularly a lot more than I said when she asked.]
I spent the first ten minutes of rehearsal laying down the law, basically stating that I am the boss under all circumstances, but everyone gets a say. Except for a few three chord specials, I can already play all of the tunes he chose. That is doubleplusgood, because follow this roundabout logic: there’ll be no Hippie-brand time wasting, since I’ve never learned anything but truly popular music, that is, never the flip sides or “Zydeco” versions, and thus it is not wise to pursue the matter if I never heard of it.
Want to hear a Florida band joke? No? Here it is anyway. “Can you sing that song in a different key?” When he asks which one, you say, “Key West, Key Largo… etc.”
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