Late-Night Adventures of Fast-Food Musicians

I gigged last night with the salsa band, enjoying the sensation of being part of a well-oiled machine, thanks to recent vocal rehearsals and gigs. I floated along on a rollercoaster of emotions, doing my job as best I could while dealing with the sundry band and fan dramas that unfolded around me. The sound, unfortunately for the struggling singers, was capriciously run by a corpulent curmudgeon (when we asked for more in the monitors he grumbled and wondered why we couldn't sing louder, then actually turned us down). My best ass-kissing diplomacy had little effect. "It really sounded great the way you had it," I desperately lied. "Could you put it back to how you had it?" "Stop complaining -- you're making it worse!" someone hissed at me -- someone who'd asked me to smile at and talk to the sound man. Afterwards I thanked the man for the great sound, of course.

Dancing was fun, especially with two partners for a few songs (they would switch off partnering with me back and forth, like double-dutch jump rope -- what a blast!). After the show I had planned to jump in the car and race home to get as much sleep as possible before this morning's first run with my Oakland marathon training group. However, the timbalero, a sweet guy who is blind, asked me to give him a ride to Denny's, so that plan went out the window.

On the way, I picked his brain about how he learns tunes by ear. He shared some very interesting insights. You can easily burn yourself out listening to tunes over and over to learn them, he said, and then you stop hearing them. He said he learns a tune in about four listens.

First, he just lets it play, making no effort or commentary. The second time, he listens carefully to ALL the parts, the lyrics, the melody and the form, making mental notes. At this point (or maybe after one more listen -- I can't remember), he leaves it to get a coffee, run errands, whatever. When he comes back to it later or the next day, he focuses on sections of the form, maybe just playing the parts of the song he feels he doesn't know yet. He said he can learn a new tune in 24 hours, and can learn a band's entire book in a week.

Further, many salsa tunes are very similar, so once you know the form, he said, you're most of the way there -- the breaks may be different, among other things. This is similar advice to that in an Aebersold book I once bought on learning tunes, which classified jazz standards according to many criteria into a mental database of related songs. Great stuff that I will put to use!

We pulled into Emeryville Denny's only to discover that it was closed. "Where is a 24-hour restaurant in Oakland?" I asked the security guard. "I have to leave my friend to wait for someone, and I can't just leave him in the cold!" He directed me to the Denny's near the Oakland airport, off Hegenberger. Traffic on 880 was slow due to construction. At 3 am we finally pulled into Hegenberger Denny's. "Damn, these people are scary," I said, pulling into the only available parking space, which faced a gang of white, black and brown guys with low-hanging pants and aggressive body language. Their heads were mostly obscured by the cloud of smoke they were sharing. If you were casting a prison movie, these guys would have been a windfall.

"Don't worry, I have a blade," my resourceful percussionist said. Hmmm. In the pros column, we had the fact that my friend is a big guy, he's Puerto Rican, and he's got a switchblade. In the cons, he's blind. Worse than that, he's a musician, a breed not generally known for its fighting capabilities. "Well, there's no where else to park. Guess we'll make a run for it," I joked, wondering how I would make it back to my car alone.

We went inside just as a gargantuan woman blasted through the doors, having a tantrum about her cell phone. At this point I was hungry -- and not too proud to hit up my companion for a $3.99 meal. We waited for his friend to arrive. I looked around, then said in Spanish, "This is about the worst-looking crowd I've ever seen inside a Denny's." I don't know if it was because I was blurry-eyed and wondering how I was going to wake up in a couple of hours for a long run, but glancing around the restaurant revealed patrons who looked like they were from that famous Star Wars alien bar scene. Yep. Pretty much The People of Walmart (hey, I shop there too).

His friend arrived from his own far-off gig. We wolfed down the usual fare -- burgers, pancakes, fried eggs, french fries, bacon (though I asked for sausage) and had fun chatting in Spanglish about gigs, love and exercise. I checked my watch. We were homing in on 4 AM, so I excused myself. "Can you walk her out to her car?" the timbalero asked. The gentlemanly behavior touched me. It wasn't in vain. Exiting the doors, we nearly collided with a hometown version of Marlon Wayans in Scary Movie 2. He managed to take up the entire walk way while standing, immobile, again in a cloud of his own smoke. "Hablando del diablo," I laughed, as we parted around him like water around a boulder. My car faced more smoke-filled, angry-looking-men-with-scary-hair-filled cars. "Did you want a ride back to the door?" I joked.

I managed to be in bed by 4 AM. I woke at 8, and met my friends for a gorgeous run from the Emeryville Marina at 9. To be continued...