Career

As you know yesterday I sat in with Dr Dolittle. What a great laugh!!

I met Graham Justin (who was deping on 1st) and Chris. It was a bit of a squeeze in the pit of the Grand Theatre but it was great to hear the musicians play up close.

The trumpets are really sound chaps and have quite a CV between them. Graham is touring with Beaty and the Beast, and Chris … well you name it, he’s done it. Working in Hamburg and the West End, he’s done a whole host of different shows. If I’d had longer to chat to them both I know I would have much more to write about  : ) .

The MD (Stuart Pedlar) was great to watch; clear, simple and knows the show inside out. Why can’t all MD’s be like that?! : )

I exchanged numbers with Chris after the show so all in all it was a pretty good day.

Always great to meet experienced professional trumpeters.

I’m afraid I’ll have to leave you with a short post today as I’m traveling to Blackpool to sit in with the Doctor DoLittle guys.

It should be a great experience if nothing else and it’s thanks to the friends I made through playing My Favorite Year at LIPA; James Newton and Matt Loughran.

I’ll post about it tomorrow.

Like yesterdays post this too came from chatting with Mark about previous shows.

It was actually less than a year ago that we were playing Sweet Charity. We were just starting to play The Rhythm Of Life when the fire alarm went off. Mark and I played for as long as the MD wagged thinking that the sound engineer had hit the wrong sound effect but in the end everything stopped and we had to evacuate.

We just got outside when three fire engines turned up and inspected the building. The cause was a discarded cigarette under a sensor.

After this we all went back in and carried on with the show which was soon brought to stop again as someone had arrived late and blocked the fire engines in the car park… clever.

We eventually carried on and finished the show at about 11 o’clock. Having said that the audience were the most responsive we’d heard all week and they loved the whole thing!!

I’ve spoken with a friend and great contact that I’ve made since being in Liverpool; Matt Loughran, who is currently playing keys on the show Dr DoLittile. (From the people I’ve spoken to he’s apparently a bit of an MD legend at LIPA as well.)

The plan is that hopefully I will be able to sit in on the show at the end of February. I’m really looking forward to it as I will also get to meet Chris who’s the trumpet player on the gig and has a CV of incredible work a mile long.

Hopefully there won’t be any complications and I’ll be grabbing a drink with the DoLittle crowd by the end of the month. - Fingers Crossed.

This is the name of the group I’m going along to play with for the first time tonight.

It’s an 11-member eclectic dance band playing show stuff, pop and soul. It sounds like a laugh and they’ve got a few gigs in the diary including a set at the Liverpool Fringe festival and a possible appearance at Glastonbury.

I’ll be winging it tonight but I’m sure It’ll be a laugh.

Continuing…

6) When the guys eventually turned up we headed back to the gig venue – their reason for leaving us was that they had bumped into someone from Eastenders and gone with them for an autograph?!?  Weird!

7) So we finally did the gig. Neil and I went back to the car ready to leave. We waited for 40 mins for the 2 losers to get back to the car when they turned up with bin bags full of vodka and whisky that they said the groom had given them.

8 ) Obviously later it turned out that they had stolen them.

9) On the way back to Brum there was more “DJ Storm” but this time it was accompanied by speeding down the motorway at 100mph.

10) Here it is!! The best moment of the day! Obviously idiots are like magnets – a car pulled up by the side of ours with a guy who had a beer in his hand AT THE WHEEL.

Our driver then decided to race. Great!! Neil and I where yelling at this fool to slow down (with no response) and when your overtaking and undertaking at 109 mph there is a definite fear of death!!

It didn’t last long but felt like an age!!

Needless to say Neil and I lived through it – just.

But it was a big learning experience and something neither of us will forget.

Continuing…

3) Once we got to London these clowns would actually stop halfway across zebra crossings to stop girls walking across and heckle them – most likely because they were sleazy creeps!

4) When we did get to where we were going we had time to kill. So these guys said they wanted to go grab some food. Neil and I followed them to a restaurant by the docks (we weren’t eating). Here they proceeded to tell the waiter that they needed more time to chose what they wanted – they did this for 40 minutes and it was very embarrassing. Especially when they got up and left after ordering nothing at the end of it!!

5) So we got up and left. Neil and I walked ahead of the other 2 around the docks and talked about how bad this gig was. But when we turned round the 2 lads had gone!!

We doubled back to find them, asking strangers around the docks if they’d seen them. Then we went back to where the car was parked. WAS being the important word here.

The car had gone!!

Luckily I always take my trumpet with me and had my wallet and mobile phone (as did Neil). So we called the guy who booked us to sort this out and while we waited we sat by the docks and laughed – that’s the only thing you can really do!!

Driven hundreds of miles by a maniac who has abandoned us in the middle of London.

See tomorrows post for the 3^rd and final instalment for my no.1 worst gig in my career (so far).

The worst gig that I’ve had so far in my career!!!

I was on this one off gig with my friend Neil when I was 19.

It started off in Birmingham where we were picked up by 2 guys we were to play the gig with (and who we’d never met before). This is where it started to go wrong and in order to help show how bad this gig was I’ve numbered the painful moments:

1) We were driven to Peterborough with terrible music played at a ridiculous level brought to us courtesy of “DJ Storm”. (To get a full picture of this imagine the inside of a pounding boy racers car – this was where we were).

Luckily for Neil, he had earplugs in his case. Unluckily for me I didn’t. So I had to wrap a jumper around my head!!

And yes we did ask this idiot to turn it down repeatedly but as well as him being on his mobile phone, driving with one hand (on a sort of  knob that bus’s and large vehicles use on his wheel) and his music we didn’t want to give him any more distractions!!

- Let me make this point now, I would never be in this situation ever again but that’s because of the experience I have now and didn’t have then. So if you read this and are then put in a similar situation; get out the car! -

2) We went to Peterborough and played a half an hour set. Then we were told that the next set was in London! More driving with the maniac. Brilliant!!

Tomorrows post continues with Part 2 – It gets worse, much worse

I used to play with a fantastic big band that I will not name. It was lead by a brilliant trumpet player and lovely bloke (when not standing in front of the band).

I was playing second trumpet for this big band at the time. Everything was going in the gig until 8 bars before the lead trumpet solo in String Of Pearls the lead player says; “Quick can you play this solo (as he pointed at my part.)”

I nodded and went for this solo (which was written and I knew as it’s a standard thing you pick up as you grow up). However it didn’t sounding anything like how I knew it and to my horror I realised that the line that the lead player had pointed to was the optional harmony and the tune was on his part (that for some reason he’d decided not to play on the spur of the moment).

There was nothing I could really do.

But the band leader decided to shout and scream at me whilst I was playing in front of the audience and when we got to the end he continued to rant a scream.

Surprise, surprise the lead trumpet player kept quiet (until he apologised in a whisper to me).

I‘ve never walked out on a gig before and I’ve never taken so much crap before. In front of peers and the audience I look back and can’t believe that I managed to suck it up and stay to the end of the gig.

To his partial credit the leader called me up later after the gig had finished and I’d gone home, to say how sorry he was. But he didn’t do it in front of the band or face to face with me so I feel sorry for him.

I stayed with the band another month as to leave straight after that would have tarnished my reputation and that’s what I would have been remembered for. But that was a really terrible gig!!