February 7, 2008
Well I’ve heard of some weird policy decisions made on ships, but this takes the cake. All the musicians were rounded up for a meeting in the band room behind the Grand stage at three this afternoon and informed that the officers were cracking down on alcohol consumption on the ship. This past week 10 crew members were taken to the bridge after being breathalized and found to be over the two drink maximum.
But then we heard that one of the cases was a chef who called Security to report that a crew member was pissing on his door. By the time they got there the pisser was gone, and the Security chose to breathalize the chef who had made the call, who was sleeping it off when he called them!
I don’t endorse drinking to excess, but this is absurd.
Among the other plums which we were privy to at this meeting:
We were told that we had to wear name badges, even though no name badges had ever been issued to us.
We were instructed that “having more fun than the passengers” would have to stop, specifically in the Lido, or we would lose our 20 minutes at the buffet after midnight. This wouldn’t seem like an unreasonable request if the passengers, specifically those with the tendency toward complaining, weren’t such a collection of dour sourpusses.
More restrictions on dress: no open-toed flip-flops, no denim of any kind, just shirts with collars.
What this amounts to, then, is the institutionalization of common sense, in the service of Command and Control management. But they weren’t done then. Abruptly, the topic, and the style of management changed. We were asked for suggestions which might save the company some money. Suddenly we were using the horizontal management model, and asked to innovate with ideas which, regardless of the impact to the bottom line, would net the initiator $50 and a hearty handshake from the captain.
We were promised at this meeting that we would be granted shore leave in Easter Island on the tenth. Fat chance.
February 8, 2008
Sure enough, I showed up for my 12:30 jazz concert in the Golden Lion and found out that Brad, the bandmaster, was otherwise engaged. Instead of playing trumpet he was up on the bridge with two or three of the Russian musicians who were breathalized last night and failed. There was a birthday party for one of them in the Fol’csale which got rowdy, by all accounts. I can’t believe that these guys, all of whom were at the meeting, didn’t heed Brad’s pitch at the musicians’ meeting.
Later in the day, in the Staff Mess, the Russians are there and Brad can’t disclose what happened. Either they actually got the wrong cats (unlikely) or they caved when they realized that they’d have to replace three (or is it two?) of the guys in the show band way out here in the Pacific Ocean, miles from anything. I lean toward the caving explanation, and I think this shows the gross hypocrisy of doling out these unenforceable policies. What next, the lash? Cat-of-nine-tails?
It’ll be interesting when we get to Easter Island, because we were promised shore leave in our meeting the other day. It’s a tender port, though, so I’m not counting on it.
That’ll be three days into Easter, the day where we can see the island in the distance, followed by three sea days. Another seven days on the ship. That’ll land us in Papeete, where there’s a boat drill scheduled. Assholes.
February 9, 2008
Third sea day out of Valparaiso, straight as an arrow at a course of 280. Dwight, the American bass player in the show band, is sick, so they robbed us of our bass player, leaving Archie, aka Richard Walliston, to play keyboard bass. On a break, Archie and I have coffee and he is about as emotionally exhausted as I’ve seen anyone in the crew. He does have his travel advice, though, the information about his flights when the ship arrives in Sydney on the 25th. For someone carrying this document, he’s a little on the emotional side, but we have put up with rude passengers, fellow crew members who have their own agendas, and the maddening addition of command and control rules. I don’t have any answers. I feel the same way without the travel advice. Turns out he was ready to leave the ship in Barbados a couple weeks ago, He’d already lined up a flight.
Which leads me to the next revelation. If they don’t start treating us like the adults we are I will leave the QE2. The easiest way would be to leave in Los Angeles and take a Southwest plane to Austin. March 30 is the day we are in LA, and I’ll be trimming off three weeks and a flight from Heathrow to the states. Not a bad option. There are other airports, too that have cheap connections with Austin: Fort Lauderdale and New York (Islip).
They just monkeyed in a real fundamental way with our salary, making us into independent contractors instead of employees, thereby making all the rules that they care to enforce on us useless. Or that’s what it seems like to me.
February 10, 2008
Sure enough, when the officer of the watch comes on this morning to announce the passenger procedures for tendering, she adds the following: “There is absolutely no crew shore leave.” Snotty little bitch.
At lunch, I sit with Trevor and Patrick, and Trevor tells me that Brian Ibbotson, who played piano with us before Archie got here, had to be airlifted from the Queen Mary 2 with massive organ failure. He’s in a coma in a hospital in Barbados. They’ve amputated his legs.
Brian’s worked as a single and trio pianist on the Mary since its launch. He’s a great piano player, a superb arranger and a hell of a nice guy.
Except for the youngsters in the Purser’s office who sat there at lunch contentedly chattering, there is a lot of palpable tension in the mess this afternoon.
February 11, 2008
Trevor buttonholes Wendy, in charge of crew welfare, to explain why keeping the food at this level of expertise is asking for trouble. A large black woman, raised in Hawaii and living in Siân’s home town in Wales, Wendy thinks Trevor is being sarcastic and gives him the brushoff. This is a typical reaction in this ship. Hey, it’s not us musicians who are pissing on cabin doors. When somebody who’s been on this ship as ling as Trevor has brings up some issues, you should do yourself a big favor and listen.
February 12, 2008
The new singer, Kenny, comes from an acapella background, specifically barbershop quartets. He’s brought his first efforts at arranging, and there are a lot of problems with them--road mapping, voice leading, range, layout--that he needs to address. He’s counting on me to straighten him out on these things, but hey, I’m not here to teach arranging or Finale. He’s fallen into a bit of a trap in the Queens Room. The old birds who think they run the place are up in arms because Kenny reads his charts when he sings, pulling a Manhasset music stand up so high that it obscures his face. That’s something they can’t abide apparently.
Once they’re on to you, they circle like sharks. My guess is that Kenny’s in for it. You don’t want to cause these tongues to clack. Less stated is the fact that Kenny doesn’t seem to understand about the importance of setting and maintaining dance rhythms, even down to the level of individual notes. Nobody cares what sorts of vocal gymnastics the singer may be capable of. They want a presentation of melody that allows them to dance. That’s the simple fact that so far only Neville seemed to know. Why is this shrouded in mystery? Just stand there and sing.
From a rocky start, the new drummer has risen to the occasion. Archie is counting the days/hours/minutes until Sydney and his release.
Today we had one of the strangest encounters with civilization in the history of cruise ships. Between Easter Island and Tahiti is Pitcairn Island, famously selected by the mutineers from the Bounty as the place they’d be safe from capture by the Royal Navy due to its remoteness. They mixed with the island’s natives and in time an odd mix of people arose from the island, and the Bounty burned and was scuttled. Unfortunately, when the Captain announced that we would be calling at this unscheduled port, it was revealed that we would be incapable of landing because there is no wharf, and our boats couldn’t even tender because of the lack of a wharf of any sort.
No matter, though. We would, the captain announced, circle the island twice after representatives of the inhabitants (drawn from the 150 or so who live on the island) had come aboard to sell their wares and otherwise swindle the passengers.
Imagine! No troublesome landings. No more surly immigration officers. Let the port come aboard to you.
Instead of slogging through the surf (admittedly a difficult option for this demographic) the natives board the ship and sell pieces of wood for the Yankee Dollar. Postcards are sold, stamped and posted from the island when they return to it, as long as the mail bag is not lost in the breakers. Your passport could be stamped by a Pitcairn official for a mere $5. This is entirely consistent with my theory of life becoming more and more inauthentic and more like professional wrestling. Of course, most inauthentic experience comes to us by way of television, or through Disney. Disney television is the double whammy.
The Pitcairn inhabitants stayed with us a couple hours as we circled their sad and remote island a couple times, got on their aluminum longboat and left. We press onward for another two sea days. By the time we get to Papeete we will have been confined to the ship since Montevideo, except for on day in Valparaiso since January 30. By then it will be February 14.
February 13, 2008
This afternoon someone (not me, I promise) posted a single paragraph apologizing to the passengers for the crew’s inattention lately and blaming it on the captain’s clamping down on shore leave privileges. The reality is a little more complicated, but that is one of the (many) core issues. Maybe the passengers don’t need to know what’s happening in the mess, what the Filipino overtime hours are, and the other issues are. I heard from Archie that the Lido privilege was withdrawn two years ago and the musicians, seeing it was their only 20 minutes to throw together a good meal from what’s essentially a snack service, layed down their tools. When confronted with no music, the officers reinstated the privilege in a hurry.
Papeete is famously a port where no crew members may join or leave a ship without French work papers, which take at least a month to obtain from a French consulate.
It might be a good time, depending on the mood of the passengers, to make a case. I know that the apology came not from one of us musicians. Maybe one of the Filipinos has been pushed too far by the officers clamping down on our privileges and the supervisors pushing them too hard. I know that the crew is ready to do something. I just wonder what it’ll be.
I am just about two-thirds through my contract. 64 days to go.
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