257 - A Farce

“Come play at our open mic!”

Looking for someplace to have our Wednesday night jazz trio rehearsal where there would be an audience, I fell for it.

This is a situation I’ve checked out before - walked in at 7PM and music was happening.

So we got there at 6:30 so we could go on first - ha ha!

They’ve decided to change the starting time to 7:30.

An hour of waiting around, just to watch the house band set up and play for an hour.

So now it’s 8:30, and another guy sits in with the band and plays a few tunes.

FINALLY at nearly 9PM we’re invited to the stage. We warm up the crowd with Cannonball Adderley’s Sack O’ Woe then launch into a nice version of Bechet’s Petite Fleur when we’re given the notice we have one more piece we can play - sheesh… had I known we would wait around for nearly three hours to play three pieces I wouldn’t even have done it, and, I would’ve selected two other pieces besides those for the first two pieces.

So we finished with Herbie Hancock’s Cantaloupe Island. Best part of that experience was the sax player from the previous band knew the piece so stepped up on stage and joined us.

It was fun enough, but I’m not making that mistake again.