A Cure for Gravity

    Tonight, we can't come up with a configuration that works. So the drums will go on the existing 'stage', and I'm going to have to set up my keyboards on the floor, which I hate. I've done 'floor gigs' before. Usually, to add insult to injury, the band has to play in front of a huge stage which has already been commandeered by a power-crazed DJ. People stand behind me while I'm playing and make sneering comments and breathe down my neck and flick fag-ends onto the keyboards. But the Pen and Parchment isn't a dance club, and most of the floor space tonight is taken up by formica-topped tables and chairs. With a bit of luck, the punters will keep a more or less respectful distance.
    I set up my keyboards: two electric pianos. The better of the two is a recently acquired Fender Rhodes, although it has a gammy leg and tilts at a slight angle. First I have to look inside it and check the tines, the metal bars which are struck by little hammers, like in a real piano, to produce the sound. These tines are temperamental. If they're not properly aligned, the hammer doesn't strike squarely, and instead of a pure tone you get a sound like a teaspoon on a milk bottle. Tines also break a lot, and then you get no sound at all. I seem to spend hours like a mechanic with the lid off the bloody thing, cursing and kicking one of its good legs.
    The Rhodes is behaving itself today, so on top of it goes a neatly folded, slightly rancid leopardskin blanket, and on top of that, an old, legless, Hohner Pianet. The Pianet has its own problems: several notes buzz and distort, but that's OK. I actually like the buzzes, and I've decided to let the instrument sink into a natural state of decrepitude.
    Next we need beer crates. Mark, the guitarist, and I both have speaker cabinets which we can hear better when they're raised slightly off the ground. And we're in luck, because the bar which runs along one whole side of the club is opening up. I go over to ask for a couple of empty beer crates, and get the fright of my life. First, two colossal Alsatians jump up on the bar, barking and snarling. Then the barman turns around. Not only is he a tattooed monster straight out of Hell's Angels Central Casting, but he has no hands--just two shiny steel hooks.
    And no, there are no empty beer crates.
    So we finish setting up, and then we ask the man from the Committee (these places always have a Committee) where our dressing room is. This is said as a joke, really, and taken as one, too. The closest thing to a dressing room (says the man, who's a nice enough bloke) is behind that door out there in the lobby, the one marked GENTS. But if we like, we can take a slight short cut to the 'stage' through the bar, under the hatch at the end. We thank the man from the Committee for his help. we're a gigging band, we're professionals. We’ll change in the van.
    Now we have an hour or two to kill, so what do we do? We go to the pub. What else? Sometimes we buy a bag of chips, or some egg fried rice from a Chinese takeaway. Usually we nurse a couple of pints and some crisps for as long as we can. We don’t like to drink too much before a show. It might make us sloppy, and cause lapses in the professionalism we're working so hard to cultivate these days. Besides, we can't afford it.
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