First Thoughts on Arriving

I am lucky. I hit the jackpot,with the gig on the QE2 (is it THE QE2 or is it just QE2?), in the nature of the band I am in--a dance orchestra with a lot of blowing, in my accommodations. Now if I can only find a way to sleep life will be very good indeed, as the English say constantly.

The flight was pretty awful. I took a couple Ambien for sleep and acted so much like a drunk that the ground crew picked me out for a potential troublemaker, probably a stumbling drunk, and delivered a stern lecture about how I would not be served any more cocktails or coffee (now THAT will teach me!) while the plane was in flight. How I wanted to tell them they were wrong, that I hadn’t slept right in days and had ingested the equivalent of a hit of acid by way of sleeping pills which made me actually see double and less than sure on my feet. Instead I chose to nod and agree to the sentence, though never the crime.

Arrived in Heathrow and discovered that my folio of papers had gone missing. My passport was safe, however, so I managed to bluff my way through the customs. Surprise, no baggage inspection, whatsoever, in Heathrow! My medical certificate was gone. It was Saturday. I had no idea where those papers had gone, no way of tracing the missing certificate and I knew that the office must be closed, it being Saturday. Got into the Heathrow Holiday Inn at about 1 in the afternoon and threw myself down on the bed. Slept a couple hours, walked around the building and explored. 

In the evening I had dinner at the Indian buffet in the Holiday Inn (voucher) and went on a stroll to see the little town right on the edge of the airport. A quaint English village with the pubs and chips shops to prove it. Also a village threatened by the expansion of the airport I gathered.

In the morning we had breakfast (by then a busful of new joiners had arrived, including the new piano player who shared my room at the Inn), and we were whisked down the M3 to Southampton, where sat QE2 (there, I’ve made a decision), large and beautiful in her own way, yet dwarfed by the nondescript ship next to who, whose mission was to send Land Rovers throughout the world. Getting on a ship for the first time comes with a lot of trauma, and this one was more than most. There’s the security deal, although these folks were very nice and professional. Then you’re buried in paperwork to fill in. There’s a short meet-up with your boss, whose name is, improbably, David Pitchfork, who showed me to my room. James, the young bass player in my band, is my roommate, and the cabin we share is one of the best I’ve seen for a shared cabin on a ship. It’s a converted passenger double with a PORTHOLE! In the conversion, they added a couple closets, making an L-shaped hallway leading to the porthole, where they added an out-of-the-way desk, which had been cleared off by Steve, who I replaced. (Steve’s from San Antonio and replaced ME on the Dawn Princess.)

Oh almost forgot . . . in the process of filling out our papers the David asked me if I knew where the new guitar player was, and that was my old buddy Vladymir, the Ukranian Spike Jones! We shared a depressing cabin on Star Princess. Vlad was late for the Star by twenty days, which I benefitted from because he was to share my cabin. Late is a way of saying “snarled in a sea of Soviet-era red tape.” Transiting through Russia is never easy for a Ukranian. Looks like they snagged him once again, as David had to ask the bloke he was to have replaced to hang out for another go-round. But I assured him that Vlad was not the problem and was in fact worth the wait. He is still MIA somewhere, the person he’s replacing extending his stay until he shows up.

Here the naming of the decks is backwards. Seven deck is the bottom, then, going up, six, five, four, three, two, one, Upper Deck, Boat Deck and so on. I am on five deck, and the porthole looks to be about 40 feet from the sea. 

Then there’s the haul-ass factor. This is not just the fastest liner on the sea (and among the last), it’s one of the fastest vessels, period. Top speed is in knots is in the low thirties, and my guess is we do twenty-eight knots regularly. Most modern cruise ships do 22 knots. We’re right up there with the warships, which makes sense because QE2 was used by the Royal Navy to move troops to the Falklands after a brief retrofit. This fact explains why we won’t be calling on ports in the Argentine, as the people there have long memories.

We made our way to Lisbon. I heard a port lecturer on the tv say that we should get up early and see the sun rise over the famous bridge that spans the harbor. I obediently did so, regardless of my lingering jetlag. I took a couple shot of the bridge, which was alive with rush hour traffic, and of the statue of Christ which looms over both the bridge and the commuters. My sense was that it was early for the money shot. We parked at a terminal across (?) from the Christ statue, within shouting distance of the bridge. If only shouting could have drowned out the roar of traffic! 

This bridge is no stunner like the Golden Gate in San Francisco. I think the bridge it most resembles is the Vincent Thomas Bridge, which connects Long Beach and Los Angeles harbor. Still, the Portugese are proud of their bridge, and if they choose to rank it with the Golden Gate, who am I to argue the point? A bridge is defined by its utility in easing the passage of traffic, something I know nothing about. By looking at the bridge’s traffic load--both its upper roadbed of cars and trucks and its lower bed where double floored rail cars zipped along--I’d say it was a success.

All this theoretical thinking took its toll, and I went back to the cabin and settled in for another round of napping. Reducing the influences of life which deprive me of the most good, I am left with sleep and food, and sleep is winning out. 

James, my cabinmate, a short-termer who has been here since June and will be going home after this cruise, has mastered the art of sleeping. He’s been very generous in his knowledge of the ship and how its business is done.

Tomorrow we head into the Mediterranean, going through the African side of the Strait of Gibraltar at 5 in the morning. We have a day at sea tomorrow--what Princess calls a relaxing day at sea, and we pull into Cagliari in Sardinia day after tomorrow. In order to get there, the captain announced, we’ll be doing 28.4 knots. No sweat.

Random observations:

Despite being long in the tooth, QE2 has a lot of classy appointments. The walls are made from birch panels, not plywood at all and certainly not the plastic stuff that Princess makes its newer ships from.

The relationship with Carnival, if it is mentioned at all, is usually followed by an apology. So many of the standards of the liners are still intact here that the other fleet of floating Holiday Inns that plow the waters is just looked at as a vugarization of the breed. 

There are English musicians, some of whom can swing, some not. Dave Cutler is clearly one who can swing. Although not here, his reputation from when he was dominates. Stevie, who’s been playing guitar here for almost 30 years, knows Dave well and chooses to talk about his stay very little.

Speaking of vulgar, how about that all-Cockney crew staff? It’s no wonder that the English decide who’s who by the accent used to speak the language. 

There once were two saxophone players in the Queen’s Room dance band. They tried, for whatever reason, to work with one, and the plan took. That’s why I have to bring the whole pawnshop with me.

Laundry is not the rosy universe that it is on the Princess ships. We get our uniforms (tux for us) cleaned for free, but we have to pass them in on Tuesday or Thursday at 1 in the morning for a 4 pm pick up the following afternoon.

Adrian Cross is playing piano with us. A proper English bigshot, but still an awfully good pianist, he’s on for just this one 2-week cruise. How the parent company can afford to shuttle musicians on and off this ship is a mystery to me. I’ve found so far just one guy who’ll be on the ship for the world cruise--the Trombone player in our band, a Princess veteran who is from North Carolina. He’s doing it for the same reason I am, the opportunity to escape the trench of the Caribbean and to see places otherwise not offered. 

I have room in my cabin for my folding bicycle to be stowed. I hope it can be sent to me, to New York at the start of the world cruise. And after the world cruise I can mail it back from New York. 

The food is far better than pianist Vladimir reported (“Shit”) though not as good as Princess overall. 

My cabin mate James leaves at the end of this cruise, He’s been on since June, so it’s time to go home to Illinois. 

Oct 18 2007

Today I got off the ship for the first time. I didn’t feel up to it on the first port, Lisbon, a couple days ago. Today I felt like I had to do it, stretch the legs and absorb the Italian hospitality of Sardinia. I wasn’t disappointed. 

I got off the ship with Jim, the drummer and bandleader for our band, the Queen’s Room Dance Band. Jim is a Brit who was raised in Australia and moved back to England in his teens and now lives in Madrid, where he and his gal have a 6-year-old son. He knows a great deal about American cars, especially the Mopar Chryslers and Corvettes.

We hooked up with the piano player from the show band and had an amazing coffee at just another exceptional sidewalk cafe in Cagliari. I had a small cappuccino that beat holy hell out of anything I’ve ever had in Starbucks, Jim had a large cappuccino, and the piano player had a tea. I snapped a couple pictures of the buildings in the town and of a sign of interest to Leroy Rodriguez and any other person interested in the works of Philip K. Dick. Unfortunately, the Italians close their shops at 1:30 for a siesta, which is good for them but less than good for ships’ crew, so I went back to the ship, watched a couple movies, while drifting in and out of sleep. The one thing I missed out on that I regret is going into an internet place and getting my email.

Tonight is the first time we’ll be in long ties since the night we left Southampton. That’s because the captain here does not have his cocktail party for returning passengers (aka repeat offenders, though just to us), he throws a cocktail party for everyone, two a night, across three evenings. 

The suit I wear as a tux is not really a tux at all, but sufficiently formal to fake it. I might yet order up a polyester tux from Uniformshop.com. We’ll see how I hold out with the one suit. My plan either way is to be organized enough to separate my “excess” clothing, which is to say any stuff not nailed down that I can do without on the final crossing to Southampton, and mail it back from New York, or from Fort Lauderdale. Some, I guess, I guess, can even go back from Los Angeles. That’s a long time off, though. We have many waters to plow before then. 

Some of my winter clothing can go back sooner still, when we’re in New York at the start of the world cruise. I just needed it for the couple weeks we’re in the colder parts of Europe in December, before our famous Caribbean adventure--out a week, in the Caribbean a week, and back a week to Southampton.

The Dancers and the Dance

The English have a special way of doing ballroom dance. It’s more organized, more like a subculture with its own rules and regulations which are strictly adhered to. In fact, with things we play are called Strict Tempo Ballroom Dance Music, something that the folks back home could only dream of. It’s sort of like Ken Ragsdale with the drummer in a click track. Older James is the lucky fellow, Younger James (the bassist and my cabinmate) is the direct recipient and we follow them. There’s no push-pull in from the orchestra, though. There are three horn players: trumpet, trombone and me on tenor and alto. Word is there used to be another saxophone, but for whatever reason the alto and tenor player merged into one person. 

(Right now I’m watching the bridge camera on my tv as a tug pushes us out into the Mediterranean, leaving the sheltered waters of Cagliari harbor and into the rainy expanse of sea between where we are now and Athens, where we will be on Saturday. The tugs drop their lines and, after a pause, we are on our way and under our own power.)

The concept of Quickstep is also a little different to English dancers. Mostly we take fast, often 2-beat charts and play them even faster, usually in the neighborhood of 200 or 220 bpm. We have an excellent rhythm section that can hold any tempo, but the other horn players can easily get sucked into that tempo and only come out for air. Although I find myself depending on Sam Butera licks in the faster tempi, it seems to work for me. 

So then we do a waltz, maybe a 120 bpm swing tune, and we’re off to the races. We see the same full dance floors with the same folks every night to a great extent. We might have a ball or some other special promotion, such as a demonstration by the resident ballroom dance instructor couple that will bring out a greater, or ad least different, crowd.

Now, you can’t talk about this dancing situation without mentioning the Gentleman Dance Hosts. They have to pay their way onto the ship, and one of the six Hosts came from Oregon. They bunk them 2 to a room, and they work the room, asking ladies without escorts if they would like a dance then. One of the fellows looks like a cross between Dino Lee and a real gigolo, for you Austin homegamers. The rest are far closer to or beyond the retirement line. They glide across the dance floor, regardless of the tempo or the step, in their white coated formalwear most nights. For what? What would motivate them, I wonder? Maybe I’ll make it my business to meet one of them and figure out what his motivations are. 

They might be as innocent as my own, although they are shelling out the cash to dance, which no musician would ever do, I’d think. I’m sure somewhere there’s a model for bringing musicians on board just like the Gentleman Dance Hosts. Would it work? Maybe. There are enough amateur bands to fill up every cruise ship in the world in Texas alone. As far as that line of thinking goes, if we normalize relations with Cuba, 

The Ray Terry band is on board playing traditional jazz, or “Trad” as the Brits call it. Trad had a life of its own when our Dixieland fell from fashion in the early sixties. What I find odd, though is they don’t seem to use 2-beat at all, which is something that I look for as a bass saxophonist, with the very British accent on the second syllable.