A Friday Sidebar: The Vinyl Straw

I’ve had more than a few wacky jobs in my life.

In particular, I remember how much fun I had being a hack, fill-in musician.

Doing fill-in gigs was the audible version of being a utility infielder:

But in an impulsive act of betrayal and disloyalty to one’s own tribe: a call from a friend caused me to move over to the dark side.

My work phone rang on a Friday, and without a proper “hello,” the aforementioned friend frantically launched into an urgent plea. “I have a big problem. I’ve double booked myself. I have two things tomorrow night! You gotta bail me out!”

I was not proficient in any way, shape or form on my friend’s instrument of choice. So it was a little odd that he would call me. “I’m not sure how I can help. I’m not even remotely equipped… I don’t know how to… I’ve never even…”

Completely ignoring my sputtering, he said, “OK, it will be great! Just play anything you like – they won’t care.”

Accelerating his already frenetic pace, he inhaled and finished:

“Job runs four hours it’s sort of a dance party and it will be easy and thank you and you’ll love it and you’ll be great and if they ask about me tell’ em that I was sick or something and thank you again and ask for Chad and he will have your $300 ready… click.“

My three hundrawhaaaaat?

The problem was that I would not be wielding a guitar, bass, keyboard, or torturing people with my pitchy countertenor. Instead:

I would be spinning the wax.
Driving the wheels of steel.
Dropping the beat – via:

Oddly, my immediate worry was not that I had no idea how to be a proper disc jockey. I was more concerned about what I would call myself. DJ Hoodie, or something like that?

The pseudonym was not for reasons of vanity – it was about self-protection.

In those days, the worst thing that you could do as a gigging musician was to enable – in any way – our mortal enemy of the day:

It was a perhaps an exaggerated, “they are taking food off the table and putting us out of business” kind of a stance. We wanted to promote live music, not some dude with a wobbly record player.

Aligning with Team Vinyl? Say it ain’t so!

But at the time, money was tight, and a future with three Benjamins in my left pocket was just too enticing.

On Saturday, I drove 55 miles north of home and arrived at a tired looking American Legion hall, arriving promptly at seven PM.

The place was dark and seemed deserted, and I wondered if I had the wrong address. A woman’s voice called out from around a corner. “You the entertainment? Big room, upstairs. Elevator’s out.”

It turned out that “big room upstairs” was on the third floor.

I was already dreading the post-gig teardown. But I slogged through and made fast work of getting things set up. It was a surprise to see how easy it went.

I was ready and decided to kick off the night with a record that I brought from my own collection.

A completely empty room.

Save for a lone bartender, stationed way across the opposite side of the cavernous venue, there was not another single soul in sight. Again, I wondered if there was some sort of mixup.

As the night progressed and I played record after record, not more than a dozen people came in. It was a slow and interminably boring evening.

And that’s when things started to get interesting.

As if someone had flipped a switch, people started to pour through the doors of the hall. Lots of people, carrying lots of brown-bagged liquid refreshment. Many were getting, as we used to say, “herbed up.” Within 15 minutes, the place had transformed into a loud, smoky illegal pop-up club, packed with folks who definitely came to party.

By 11:30, there had to be 500 people in the room. And I can say this with a fair degree of certainty, because that’s when Solo Bartender came up to me – right smack-dab in the middle of “Rebel Yell” – to scream in my ear that WE ARE OVER CAPACITY. THIS IS A FIRE TRAP. YOU NEED TO CUT THE MUSIC RIGHT NOW. Well, she had me at “fire trap,” and I complied. I pulled the mixer’s faders down to zero.

The crowd looked at me, let out a collective snarly “HEYYY…” that let me know they were not happy about having their festivities interrupted. As I tried to think of how to explain the situation, Solo Bartender grabbed the microphone.

What came next could not exactly be described as a masterclass in crowd control management.

Now people are looking at me, like I’m the President of the American Legion or something, and telling me to turn the music back on now. The natives are restless, and of course: right on cue, two guys start fighting in the corner.

Things are rapidly getting out of control. As a few of the revelers start to converge on my table-top setup, demanding that I get this party re-started, all I can think about is: how in the world am I going to break down the equipment, get across this impossibility huge room, descend down 52 steps, load up, and get out of there in one piece?

Somehow during the evening, I’d not noticed the set of double doors directly behind where I had set up.

I took a quick peek. While not optimal, it was the only practical solution. By this time, the police had arrived, so I had a small window of opportunity. I unplugged, packed up like a madman, and somehow moved all of the gear to the other side of the double doors.

Into the night air. Outside. Three stories up:

No turning back now – I managed to descend, schlep everything to the parking lot below, and get on my way.

Driving off into the evening, I tried to find “the lesson” in all of this.

And the takeaway was simple: there wasn’t one.

It wasn’t a case of “selling out.” I told myself that this was what everyone does: you try something new, and if it doesn’t quite work out, so what? Maybe I would even give it another go. And as I turned on the radio, magically: there was Billy Idol, finishing the very song that had been interrupted not 45 minutes earlier.

I then decided that it was all OK – there was not some kind of a Grand Karmic Message to decipher. I was still laughing to myself as I pulled into my driveway.

Until I remembered that I never met up with Chad, and forgot to get paid.

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