A Barking Dog

Well, we made it. All except the backliner’s luggage and the luggage of on of the support band’s significant others. It was brutal at times, nearly prison sex brutal. Except for myself, backliners and jazz singer’s assistant all our party had “First Class” seats, which looked more like ’80s versions offirst class. The aircraft, dubbed Red October by me was a fairly new 767 and not one of those Soviet era Iluyushin or Tupolev that you see over on the Euro side of the pond. In fact, I don’t think they allow those old bone shakers in the US and probably for good reason. I’ve been to the former Soviet Union before, but not Moscow. I’m getting ready to hit the sites before a load in/sound check later this evening. I’m hoping to at least see Lennon’s tomb. I was pretty young when the Beattles first appeared and find it odd that he’s buried in Russia. I am the Walrus…

It’s an interesting gig. A few months ago a Hollywood power player type inked a deal to provide the entertainment for the wedding of a Russian oil billionare to a young pop star princess. I wonder if he is an “oilman” in the same way Johnny Sack is in waste management. The details of the gig were sketchy at first, we’d go over, do 40 mins with another jazz/blues/R&B act we’ve worked with before several times. Other band is pretty good, Grammies, platnum records, well respected, good crew and staff, just like with jazz singer. I think they only call us jazz so we can get into the really swanky high dollar Eurotrash gigs and weddings and aniverseries of the well to do. This isn’t the first of this sort of gig we’ve done with jazz singer. Other band does those as well.

As we worked through the details of the gig, there were to be jazz singer, other band I’ll call guitar player that sits (no, not that one, the younger one…) a Russian jazz orchestra for the wedding, a high dollar corp cover act to play from just after midnight until 0500 or when ever the drunken guests leave and another lesser known R&B group that I won’t even try to call jazz. Only jazz singer and guitar player that sits have crews and tour managers. At check in in LAX we wrangle a couple of band types and guitar tech for guitar player that sits and bring them into our party. The guitar player that sits and the rest of the party leave from NYC so we get the left coast folks. A few days prior to departure, an email is circulated from the event producer that wanders between informative document and condescending blather. At one point where it got to dress code, it read like New Guy to High End Gigs 101. A lot of attitude about how to dress and what not to bring. My first high end gig was at night, but it wasn’t last night. Usually we’re told the parameters of dress and we respond accordingly. That’s one of the reasons we are show biz professionals. Such as it is. Little did I know that as I met some of the other members that weren’t with jazz singer or guitar player that sits, the wording of that email would suddenly start to make sense.

We were to meet at LAX and Aeroflot to Moscow. When I’m out I like to try to learn a few of the local words. For example, “da” means yes, “wodka” means vodka and Aeroflot means “I sure as shit hope we make it over without plunging into the Atlantic”. The amenitites are, well, spartan. As I first boarded the plane I look at what was to be “First Class” (where I wasn’t) thinking it was some sort of low budget business class. As I turned forward to see what real First Class looked like, I only saw the cockpit. We make our way back to economy, or Siberian Class as it is known. Fortunately I’m next to jazz singer’s assistant and not some Ukrainian yak herder. Not that I have any thing against Ukrainians or those in the agriculture or livestock biz. It’s yaks that I don’t like. Never have. Or Ralph The Wonder Llama or Reg Llama from Brixton. As the boarding progressed, I was pleased as we had either no llamas or yaks. What we did have were a lot of people that even in their own language don’t know what “take your seat and fasten your seat belt” means. They were to serve us a couple of tubs of gruel, a few drinks but no movie or audio system. I usually only do plane movies on overseas flights only because they are so damn long. I also bring a couple litres of water, Starbursts, Altoids and assorted two handed reading material suitable for public consumption in the plane. It was a long twelve hours, with only three or four things being spilled on my seatmate as things were being passed to me.

After what seemed to be the longest twelve hours in my life, we prepared to land. Just prior to touchdown, several of the locals decided that they needed to get up to retrieve hand baggage and head down the aisle to wait to get off the plane. They were rounded up and seated. Once we landed, barely slowing most of the same people got up again and went to do the same thing. After a couple of near misses with dropped hand luggage from the overheads and a couple of people tossled into the seats of others, we made it to the gate, only to be a half hour early and having to wait until another flight cleared the ramp so we could disembark. We finally made it to the gate but I don’t know that we were fully prepared for the next couple of days.

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