New Zealand to Singapore

February 24, 2008

We dock in downtown Auckland, New Zealand, The city has the look and feel of Vancouver, except a mirror-image Vancouver because people drive on the other side of the road. Finally, it feels like we’re back in civilization. There are real drug stores here, people carrying briefcases come and go from the intermodal train station where I encamp to use the free internet, courtesy of Subway. This could have been what I’ve been missing since Fort Lauderdale. 

On the other hand . . . the other day, trapped on the old rust bucket for two sea days, Siân sees a cockroach scuttling across the floor of the mess. The following day, she finds a live maggot in among her lettuce leaves and vows to eat nothing but Snickers for the rest of her contract. Nobody is going to bet more pissed off because of these incursions of the insect world than Siân. I didn’t see the maggot, but I was there for the second cockroach incident. When Siân brought up the matter to Wendy, the crew welfare lady, in the presence of no less than the Staff Captain and the crew housekeeper, she was met with the level of indifference she thought possible only in the Queens Room on the third set. They promised to investigate. Yeah. Sure.

We are at the crossroads once again. I keep thinking of what it’s going to come to when the Rust Bucket closes in on Dubai. “Toilet paper? What do you people need toilet paper for?”

Encouraged and emboldened by Auckland, we pull in to Sydney, famous for the transports of convicts. They could have learned something from this ship, and maybe it goes the other way too. We arrived Sunday morning and find our usual position in Circular Quay occupied by the Queen Vic. So we were moved to another slip on the other side of the Opera House in Wooloomooloo. The crew was informed to be back on the ship at 5:30 so we can move to Circular Quay at 6:00. I guess it’s better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, or a full drill in the sun. But there has been some, shall we say, resistance to the idea of going back to the ship on an overnight, although how many will refuse to come back is anyone’s guess. Many of these gripe sessions in the mess never materialize.

I spent a nice afternoon walking through the city’s Hyde Park, down to Circular Quay to have a look at the pokey QV, and generally through town until I got back on the shuttle and headed back to the ship in plenty of time to make me legal, with a sandwich from Subway in my bag. The band is doing our regular gig tonight, even though passengers might be few and far between. Three sets, to the show band’s zero. At least somebody works here. 

Maybe we can have a little quality time tomorrow. We also lose Archie, the Changes band, my roommate Junior and a host of others. Just normal turnover at a major port. 

Maybe we can sneak out tonight after work.

February 25, 2008

This morning, though, we had another incident with a cockroach and Siân in the Concessionaire’s Mess. Feeling something crawling on her feet as she was eating her toast and tea, she was shocked looking down to note a crawling cockroach. She flicked it off, but it wouldn’t be denied, and tried to climb back onto her foot, at which time one of the mess workers collected a napkin and dispatched him. 

John, the crew housekeeper, was having his toast and tea in the mess at the same time, but he shrugged it off. 

This is Siân’s third run-in with the insect kingdom in the mess. She’s beginning to feel singled out.

Afterward, after the official shrug, Richard, our bass player, and Siân and I went over to the Opera House to have a look. I got some pretty nice pictures, and then we went looking for Starbucks, which I had gone to yesterday. I knew where it was, but there were hills and Siân was certain that every tree in town had poisonous spiders ready to pounce on her head, and so wouldn’t walk under them. That being the case, our trip into town took a good deal longer than anticipated, but with the application of a dosage of caffeine all was forgotten and forgiven.

I’ve now exercised my Starbucks card in Texas, England, Greece, and Australia. Thanks, Leroy.

February 28, 2008

Today is a sea day between Hobart, Tasmania and Melbourne, although we seem to be doing 12 knots. By far the highlight of the day for me was when a recording playing in the Queens Room before we started to play started to skip on a tango. Just then Trevor walked in, one of the guys who’s been here since the dawn of civilization. When I pointed the skip out to Trevor, he walked back to the board and told Peggy Nixon, the dance instructor and partner of the unfortunately named Rick Nixon in dance as well as life. As the recording skipped merrily away on its version of Whatever Lola Wants, Lola Gets, Peggy responded to Trevor that this was in fact how the tango was played. This from a dance instructor, who one would suppose ought to know a little more about rhythm, even of their count is 5-6-7-8 to our 1-2-3-4. It was almost boneheaded enough a remark to be downright cute.

February 29, 2008

We are now in the “real” Australia, I feel. Sydney is a beautiful city, but it’s all polished and modern with the definite feel of an Asian city. Melbourne is another thing altogether. It was carved out of the wilderness during a gold rush, and still has many Victorian buildings to support the claim. I woke up way too early--always trouble sleeping before an important port--and took a tram downtown from the port.

Australia in the last decade has been aggressively supporting immigration from virtually the entire globe, so there are more diverse and younger folks here than Sydney or Hobart. The weather’s funny. It’s the middle of the summer, but the wind swirls and wehn it comes from the south the temperature drops precipitously. It shifts to that side of the compass every 30 seconds or so, so even when the sun does its best to warm things up there comes the Antarctic blast to cool things down again.

I found a couple of Santy Runyon’s wonderful rubber saxophone gimmicks in a music store, a days-old New Yorker in a magazine store, and laid hands on the Macbook whatever-it’s-called, which is incredibly light at the local Apple only computer store. Mostly I wandered like a rube around the town. We’re here til midnight, although things fire up in the Queens Room at 7:45 as usual. (Once again, for the second time in a week, the show band has the night off.)

I am filing a paper with the crew office which will if approved allow me to exit the QE2 in Los Angeles at the end of this month. 

The chef who cooks for the crew was replaced in Sydney. Turns out Siân’s discover of a maggot in her salad did a lot of good. She ran into the crew welfare lady, the crew chief steward and the big chief, the staff captain, and wagged a finger at them, accusing them of letting the quality of food in the mess spiral out of control. It’s true, but that maggot, along with the various cockroach incidents motivated her to do something. And now it’s done. 

The new guy gives a shit, and the food has improved noticeably. 

March 1, 2008

A quiet sea day between Melbourne and Adelaide. The form is making its rounds, collecting signatures. I saw a movie called “Dan in Real Life,” deeply flawed but the whole movie featured a large, multigenerational and multiracial family, which got me very homesick. Damned manipulative movies!

March 2, 2008

Pulled into Adelaide, South Australia this morning. Off the ship at 11, into town by noon on the shuttle, toured the street festival, adjunct to the Fringe Festival on the city’s mall downtown with Campbell, the English piano player who used to live in Laguna and Sonoma. Campbell is an excellent choice for a traveling companion in this instance because there the Fringe Festival has taken over the town, along with an adjunct street fair and buskers are everywhere. He’s seen it all, all the street fairs up and down the west coast of the USA, even though he’s English. We saw street jugglers who performed the same finale, who depend on the passing of the hat without being corrupted by accepting gigs on cruise ships, for example. 

In light of the recent upgrade in the mess, we elect to go back to the ship at 1:00 and catch lunch rather than eat lunch in town.

The town is in the grip of a multiyear drought.

March 3, 2008

We played jazz in the Lion at lunch. My contribution beyond playing was to suggest “Gregory Is Here,” a great unknown Horace Silver tune. First time I ever heard Michael Brecker was that record, back in 1977. My level of involvement seems to have lessened since I put in notice. I am also barking out opinions in every direction. When Pete asks if it wouldn’t be cool to play the first 2 A sections of Cherokee with just flugelhorn and bass, I instantly said “No!”

I am truly a short-timer now, unafraid of my opinions, no matter how extreme. 

March 4, 2008

Why we are visiting the port of Albany is anyone’s guess. Even the pandering Englishman who delivers the port lectures spiced with anti-American asides has never been there. Still, there’s a lot to like about Albany, even though it does seem like the shops raised prices when QE2 was on the horizon.

We were warned by the lady selling all-day passes on the shuttle bus that walking to town is a dangerous enterprise, fraught with peril. I challenge her to sell her bus tickets without using fear as the motivation, and she does back off a bit. The walk proves to be not dangerous at all, but we have to walk through a tent to get to the overpass over the rail lines where a new condo development is being pitched. 

One over the bridge we climb a hill into town, and there is a Dixieland band playing on a bandstand in the center of the street. These young guys are from Perth, the most remote city in the world as they say, but they are pretty good, especially the trumpet player and the cornet player . (They go with the two trumpet model of early Louis.) I am walking with Siân, who pokes the shops for a parental boomerang. We get snagged by a couple of passengers who hear her almost every night in the Chart Room and have a long coffee (no Starbucks here) in an outdoor cafe. Siân goes off after the coffee to play her 12:30 set, and I climb further up the hill to see if I can find some wi-fi. I run across a dog who is clearly part cardigan corgi on a lead and take a picture. Further up, a dingo cross seems disinterested in all of humanity, although intelligent enough to cruise the streets without harm. 

I find a cafe where I am required to buy a $4 pastry to use the wi-fi for an hour, and make the most of it. 

Walking down the hill to the rail bridge, I realize that this city, for all its faults, is a lot like Laguna in the early sixties. There must be artists here.

March 5, 2008

Fremantle is the port city of Perth. We come in an hour late so a container vessel can sneak in ahead of us. I’ve been warned that the weather will be hot here, and it is. Not quite Texas in the summer, but enough to notice it. I head out, cross another rail footbridge, and find myself in front of a coffee house carved out of a spare warehouse space in a bicycle shop. I have a coffee and a muffin, $6 special ($AUS=.95 cents US).

I wandered about with no particular plan, but got turned around by the town plan, which is not a grid. I made my wau from bus shelter to bus shelter, watching as the You Are Here dot moved across the landscape. Finally I came to the High Street, which in every English colonial city means downtown. 

March 10, 2008

After four excruciating sea days passing through Indonesian waters, including passage alongside Krakatoa (I took a couple pictures of the volcano from my porthole) we landed in a container terminal in Singapore. This is no way to treat a retiring lady, I think. There is a perfectly good cruise terminal a couple miles away, with shopping attached along with all the local goods and services, including that unique Singapore invention, the hawker food court. 

But wait a minute, a couple days before our arrival in Singapore a suspicious notice appears on the bulletin board of the resurgent crew mess: “INPORTANT (sic) NOTICE.” All crew taking shore leave are advised that they MUST be up the gangway by 4:00. NO EXCEPTIONS,  NO EXCUSES. 

Hmmm. Well, this is assuming that the buses are running in a regular way, and it hardly explains what the deal is. Any part of this INPORTANT NOTICE that can go wrong will go wrong, will go wrong, I’m thinking. Anyone who misspells IMPORTANT is likely to screw some or all part of this scheme up.

Anyway, back to landing in Singapore. The thing I was most looking forward to was the food stalls that Calvin Trillin described in the New Yorker. Truth be told, anything Calvin Trillin describes is of interest to me. Here’s the way the article starts:

THREE CHOPSTICKS

Does street food make the best cuisine?

When I think back on the conversations that took place after I told people that I was going to Singapore to eat, I'm reminded of the scene in "Little Red Riding Hood" when the title character first encounters the big bad wolf. I play the wolf:

"Singapore!" Little Red Riding Hood says, in an improbable New York accent. "But Singapore is supposed to be the least exotic place in Asia. There's nothing to see there, unless you're a connoisseur of skyscrapers or container ports or obsessive street-cleaning."

"All the better for guilt-free eating, my dear. Your meals can't be spoiled by remorse over not having conducted a thorough inspection of the second-most-important cathedral."

"And isn't Singapore the place where you can get fined for chewing gum?"

"But, my dear, you can't chew gum while you're eating anyway."

From those conversations, I have concluded that the governmental ban on chewing gum, promulgated in 1992, remains the fact most strongly associated by Americans with Singapore. If Singapore tested a nuclear device tomorrow, the stories in American newspapers would mention the gum ban by the second paragraph. (Three years ago, the government relented a bit, in order to satisfy the requirements of a free-trade agreement: you can now buy nicotine gum by prescription.) There is a collateral awareness of the penalties that Singapore imposes for such malefactions as dropping a candy wrapper on the sidewalk. According to what's listed on a widely sold souvenir T-shirt emblazoned "Singapore - A Fine City," the acts that can bring you a serious fine include not only gum-chewing and littering and smoking and spitting but also carrying a durian on a public conveyance. A durian is an astonishingly odoriferous melon, much prized in Southeast Asia. Having smelled a durian, I must say that the prohibition against carrying one on a public conveyance (for which there is actually no specific fine) strikes me as a very solid piece of legislation. In American terms, it's the equivalent of a law against carrying a cattle feedlot on a public conveyance.

I'd always thought that I wouldn't go much further than that in supporting Singapore's efforts to treat tidiness as the nearly Athenian ideal of government. Still, had I known that it was happening I would have backed the government's scheme in the seventies to bring food venders, called hawkers, off the streets and into centers that have proper sanitation and refrigeration and running water - a scheme that was inspired by a desire for tidy streets, along with public-health considerations and the needs of traffic control and, presumably, the relentless modernization that seems to have a momentum of its own in Singapore. My support would have been based on enlightened self-interest, one of the cornerstones of democracy. For years, as I've walked past food stands in foreign lands, I've struggled to keep in mind that for an American visitor the operational translation for signs that ostensibly say something like "bhel puri" or "tacos de nopales" is "Delivery System for Unfamiliar Bugs That You Will Bitterly Regret Having Ingested." The temptation to throw caution to the wind has been excruciating, since I may love street food above all other types of food. I have never figured out just why, although I've considered the possibility that, through some rare genetic oddity, my sense of taste is at full strength only when I'm standing up. (The fact that I particularly enjoy whatever I eat while standing in front of the refrigerator could be considered supporting evidence.) For a while, I thought about testing the standup hypothesis at some fancy Manhattan restaurant by springing to my feet halfway through the main course and trying to gauge whether that makes the roasted organic chicken with fricassée of spring vegetables and chanterelle polenta taste as good as those sausage sandwiches you get at Italian street fairs.

Gathering food venders into hawker centers, under the purview of public-health inspectors, meant that a Western visitor not only can have a safe shot at a variety of Singaporean delicacies but can do so in a setting so convenient that his energy is reserved for eating. All over Singapore, there are open-air pavilions where an island of tables and chairs is ringed by eighty or a hundred hawker stands - many of them selling only one item, like just satay or just fish-ball noodles. The government has established hawker centers in the central business district and hawker centers at the beach and hawker centers attached to the high-rise public-housing projects where the vast majority of Singaporeans live. In some of the fancy skyscrapers and department stores, private operators run air-conditioned, upmarket versions of hawker centers called food courts - a term presumably selected by someone who had never tasted what's passed off as food at an American shopping-mall food court. In Singapore, even the establishments called coffee shops are essentially mini hawker centers. They might have started as places that served coffee and the pastries that the British Empire, for reasons of its own, inflicted on unsuspecting colonials throughout the world, but these days the proprietor is likely to operate the drink concession himself and rent out two or three stalls to specialists in, say, fish-head curry or Hainanese chicken rice. It has become possible to eat in Singapore for days at a time without ever entering a conventional restaurant. Since I have never been much taken with the concept of courses - my eating habits are more on the order of a bit of this, a bit of that, and, now that I think of it, a bit of something else - it almost seems as if the Singapore government of forty years ago had arranged its hawker policy with me in mind.

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Can this guy write or what? This is the writing that made me a subscriber back in the seventies, after I discovered when I was on the road that the long bus rides we were subjected to would be lessened by the magazine’s writing.

So you can see how excited I was to be arriving in Singapore, despite the INPORTANT NOTICE. I took the first crew bus to the cruise center, where we should have docked but were displaced by a ship called, improbably, Leisure World. I found a Starbucks and caffeinated myself. 

I hooked up with Richard Williams, Siân, Simon Galfe, and Brad the drummer. We take over two cabs and head for the town from the electronics mall, eight stories of small shops with all the stuff except, apparently, for the one thing I was looking for, a wi-fi detector. I could have bought one for $20 at Fry’s before I left. But they’ve got everything else and lots more. 

By mid-day I am looking for something to eat, and I am not disappointed. One of these hawker centers is in the basement of the electronics mall. I have a three dollar bowl of ramen noodles with an egg and a separately cooked piece of chicken. It is truly glorious. It’s so good that I’m thinking, “This is what the crew mess ought to be.” The taste of that wok-fried chicken among the fragrant broth with its noodles and greens is still with me. It was made by a family in a stand a couple stands down from the one marked PIG ORGAN SOUP. True to Trillin, all of the seats in this food court were occupied, even though it was past what I’d think was local lunch time. 

I wandered a bit with Simon and Siân, who were shopping, Simon for sunglasses and shorts, Siân for silk kimonos for her family and fiancé. We snagged a cab and drove back to the cruise center, past the world’s largest ferris wheel and what will be the only Formula 1 course designed specifically for night races. We arrived at the cruise center at around 1:45, cruised through the shops there, and got into the queue for the crew shuttle back to the ship at 2:45. Soon, there was a line of a couple hundred crew members.

Even though there were no crew buses forthcoming, there were plenty of passenger busses, and some of them were returning to the ship with less than a load. It became frustrating as the minutes ticked away on the deadline for the crew to return. Finally, a crew bus pulled in at 3:30. We were among the lucky 48 crew on that bus, and we ascended the gangway with fifteen minutes to spare.

What the INPORTANT NOTICE didn’t tell us was that the the reason they wanted us back before four was because the Singapore authorities wanted to stamp our passports, and as anyone caught in the web of Singapore regulations will tell you, you don’t mess with the Singapore authorities. 

But what then became of the rest of the crew back at the cruise center? Siân waved at Peter Clagget, who was one of the ones left behind. When I came back to my cabin, which I now share with the keyboard player in the Caribbean band, I recognized the mighty rumble of the leader of the band, who was visiting in our cabin while grousing about the situation. It turned out that 160 crew members had their ID cards confiscated for being on a late arriving bus. A crew members without a card can’t go off the ship, have a beer in the crew bar after work, or even buy a bottle of drinking water. The usual punishment for the offense of being late is confiscation for three ports. But 160 is way beyond the usual number of offenders, which usually number one or two. 

We spent the night wondering how the bridge might react to this situation. Those of us who were there knew that the problem was not the crew members in that line but rather the logistics dreamed up in the crew office for the conveyance of the crew from the cruise center to the container terminal.

UPDATE: All of the crew cards were returned the next day. There still may be some actions taken. We’ll see.

March 12, 2008

After a day at sea, and dealing with the usual fiasco of breaking in a new singer as Kenny left in Singapore, we are anchored off Vung Tao, port city of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon. We are just north of the Mekong delta. This place had a lot to do with who I am. Unfortunately, all of the crew members are still on the ship at noon. We are anchored off the city, a three-mile tender ride. This may be as close as we get to Vietnam. I’m still in my cabin, waiting for announcements. Guess I’ll go have lunch, my bowl of ramen still a close memory.

In no particular order. the three ports I wanted to see when I was deciding whether to take this gig were Easter Island, Vietnam, and Shanghai. Looks like I’ll be batting 0 for 3. Easter Island we were denied shore leave, Shanghai required a $200 visa nobody told me about, and today in Vietnam we were denied shore leave. This is shit. The announcement by the staff captain was only made to deck 6, where most of the foreign crew lives, but I heard it because there’s a stairway to 6 right next to my cabin. The message was pure noblesse oblige. “Thank you for your understanding . . . there will be vendors on deck 2 selling local goods . . .We are setting up busses for Shanghai and Hong Kong.” Yeah, and we found out how good that worked in Singapore. With only a handful of ports remaining—Hong Kong, Shanghai, Osaka, Honolulu, and Los Angeles—and lots of sea days in between, it’s beginning to feel like a prison ship. As Trevor told me the other night, the management of this ship has done everything possible to piss off the crew.

I spent the day here, of course. I went up on Boat Deck and brought my iPod and the speaker, and shared my collection of raunchy Redd Foxx recordings with the guys in the band. In the near distance, Vung Tao spread out. A passenger would walk by every now and then.

The Bumpus Rule

Thirty years ago I lived in Santa Cruz with some very special people, mostly musicians. Some of them are still important players in my life. One of the most interesting of these people was Cornelius Bumpus. Aside from having one of the most euphonious names, ever, Corney had the driest sense of humor on the planet, and he could play his ass off on tenor saxophone. Latecomers to this blog and its players may have heard Cornelius with the Doobie Brothers, with whom he played for two decades, or more recently with Steely Dan.

Corney was so devoted to music that when he made no money, it was no problem. He lived in his blue 1965 Volkswagen bug, not because he liked to, but because, on a musician’s wages, it was his only option. He’d play in the afternoons at Cooper House, the old county courthouse which had been converted into a place for the idle classes to fritter away their daylight hours over a walnut salad and Anchor Steam Beer. On the outdoor patio, de facto jazz groups played under a mural of jazz musicians playing at Cooper House. All of them including Corney were immortalized in that mural, which fell down and went to the sanitary landfill when the Loma Prieta earthquake changed Santa Cruz forever.

Cornelius Bumpus, who was one of the few Santa Cruz natives I knew, refused to sleep in Santa Cruz, even in his Volkswagen. The hat having been passed at Cooper House, the tips having been divided and distributed, Corney would rev up his bug and head out of town on Highway 17, headed for parts unknown, where he made camp and curled up to sleep. 

One spring in the late seventies, baseball fever gripped the musicians of Santa Cruz. It might have been David O’Connor’s admonition that the Oakland A’s--who were between owners and saw their attendance slide from pathetic to insignificant--“needed out support.” David, a bubbly Irish wit who had toured with Buffy St. Marie, Leonard Cohen and the Lettermen, organized (insofar as we could be organized) outings to day games at the Oakland ballyard, a vast expanse of poured concrete and genuine grass where we made up most of the crowd in the left field bleachers. We drank way too much beer those afternoons, due in large part to the fact that we had our own, personal beer vendors. O’Conner drove most of the time in the gigantic car that Steve Bennet owned. If memory serves, David was the one of us who was sober enough to handle Highway 17 and its blind curves. We drove to one day game in Jaws, also from the Bennet stable. Jaws was a Chevy crew van, retired from the Forest Service. I think Zack Arbios, who was not a musician, sold Jaws to Steve, who sold it eventually to drummer Peter Burchard. 

I have in my mind a picture frozen in amber of O’Conner behind the wheel of Bennet’s massive Chrysler, four of us in the back seat giggling like fools as he showed us how a Highway Patrolman would take a curve coming on to 17 in San Jose. He kicked the transmission down and punched it, locked his arms at 10 and 2 on the wheel and grinned like a character out of a Hunter Thompson book as we climbed through the iceplant and pointed Bennet’s boat toward Santa Cruz. 

It became obvious that going to an occasional day game in Oakland wouldn’t be enough. The A’s were on the road half the season and could move to another city the moment Charlie Finley sold them. It was decided that our afternoons, after Cooper House ended lunch service and before happy hour was upon us, we would spend a few hours in Branciforte Park, playing softball. 

It was never an organized game, but these afternoons lasted through the languid summer until the rains came and washed the infield away. Almost every musician made at least an appearance, some lasted the whole summer. Some tried, without result, to get the game operating on a more serious level, or even to convert it to fast pitch. Whenever the bartenders at the Crow’s Nest or the Catalyst showed up there was some effort to take the game to another level, either by making the pitches whiz by or using one of the massive 12-inch spongy softballs favored by Polish teams in Chicago.

I am happy to report that all efforts to organize and change the basic reason we were playing failed, because we were, well, musicians from an essentially anarchist community with a socialist majority on the city council, enjoying the afternoon. We started a pickup game that stayed a pickup game, wedged into our schedules between afternoon gigs and evening gigs, once a week.

The only significant deviation we had from the rules of the game involved Cornelius Bumpus. 

Corney possessed massive upper-body strength. When he swung at a ball he moved nothing from his hips down, relying instead on his arms and trunk to launch the ball when he connected. He hardly ever whiffed. Striking out was not his problem. He could easily slice five or six foul balls down the left field line. And that was a problem.

Branciforte Creek formed the limit of left field, running through the park. Only Corney could hit the ball into that creek. There were a couple guys who had volunteered to bring softballs to the park, and their balls were frequently fouled off into the creek and were coming back soggy. These guys, it must be said, were not musicians, but friends of musicians and bartenders. Unfortunately, we made so little playing music that we didn’t have it in our budgets to buy new softballs.

After a couple weeks of walking away with soggy balls, the bartenders and friends of musicians decided to impose a new rule that would penalize Corney. Henceforth, a “Creek Ball” would be called if a ball was sliced foul into Branciforte Creek, and the batter would be out.

I remember watching the Bumpus swing. Corney swung like a gate, all muscle in the top end with hardly any leg movement at all. I also noted that Corney was pointing his toes into foul territory, guaranteeing a long series of foul balls. Once the new rule was in place, I took Corney aside and suggested he might point his toe around into the field of play. He tried it and, with no modification to his swing, just moving his gate more toward fair territory, Corney was able to change his long loud foul balls into long loud home runs. But the non-musicians were still getting soggy balls, as the creek also ran defined the home run line as well as the foul line. And so the Bumpus rule was extended to fair balls as well as foul.

Corney took it all in stride, and in time started peppering line drives into every field by shortening his stroke and pointing his toe just before swinging the gate, much like Saduharu Oh. He became the nemesis of every outfielder on the opposing side. 

When we started playing--when we made that transition between the bleachers in Oakland and the hallowed fields of Branciforte--Corney was playing music primarily with Jerry Miller in his resurgent Moby Grape at night, and daylight hours in the odd jazz gig at Cooper House or one of the various venues around town.

We were all a little stunned when Corney brought a couple of the Doobie Brothers to Branciforte to play one afternoon. The Doobies were from the other side of Highway 17, the area that was to have become Silicon Valley in a few years. They seemed to play pretty well, and I think we treated them like regular musicians. 

And so it came to pass that Cornelius Bumpus was recruited by the Doobie Brothers, not for his mighty swing to the outfield that resulted in the institution of the Bumpus Rule, but because of his soulful tenor playing, his doubling on Hammond B-3, and his vocal skills. Michael McDonald had recently joined the band for touring, and it was a good time to make a move. The Doobies had a hit record out called “What a Fool Believes” and were packing them in at stadiums and larger venues worldwide. 

Word was on the ballfield that Corney was pulling down $1200 a week retainer when the Doobies were NOT touring. For a bunch of guys who, like me, had cheerfully gone out on the road for $225 a week, it seemed like Corney had made it, big time. Nonetheless, Corney still wore plaid long-sleeved shirts and Levis 501 jeans on stage and off. 

I saw him about 6 months later, when I had moved to southern California so I could gain visibility as a road musician looking for work. We met up by the Universal Sheraton hotel at the top of Cahuenga Pass. Larry Scala and I were living a couple miles apart in West LA, and, as part of the Branciforte mob, we decided to drive up to the hotel and take our chances on finding Bumpus before the band headed off to the gig. We were successful, although we felt like stalkers. We caught him between limos, heading off for a sound check. Larry and I congratulated him and wished him well, and he was off. 

A few months later I got a card from him saying he had made a record and would be driving down to play at the Baked Potato in Los Angeles, and suggesting that I might want to hear the band, which was made up of him, a Santa Cruz piano player who had played a few games at Branciforte, and “a couple brothers from Harlem.”

When I got to the venue, it turned out the drummer and bass player were indeed brothers, but not from Harlem, but Haarlem, in the Netherlands, two gangly white guys.

Corney got married, built a house in the Sierra Nevada foothills, and started a family. He became a part of the community when he was off the road. Longer than a decade later, the Doobies imploded, but Corney was ready with Plan B, and moved with his family from Murphys, California to New York City, where in time he joined Steely Dan.

He always maintained ties with the Sierra foothills. One day he got on a plane to perform at a jazz festival there. He died on that plane, of a heart attack, over Montana, nearly thirty years after the Bumpus Rule went into effect at Branciforte Park.

I still congratulate him and wish him well. Keep swinging, brother.

Beyond the Dateline

February 16, 2008

We crossed the international dateline last night. When I was a kid, we had a globe in the house and I remember the little rotating pressed metal plate on top of the thing that figured the time zones. I’d line up the time in Massachusetts and try to figure out what the time was in some of the cities that I heard about on the radio, television or in the paper. Now I’m going to be in Tonga, for crying out loud, although none of us is counting on getting off the ship because it’s a tender port. I have IPM too. I also happen to have a brother-in-law, about to become a transplanted Texan as his son will play for SMU, who was born and raised in Tonga.

For those of you home gamers who don’t know, IPM stands for In-Port Manning. You get IPM every eighth port on this ship, and you’re obligated to stay on the ship for the entire day in case anything goes wrong. 

Brad asked me a couple days ago if I wanted the bandleader job in the Queens Room. He was conveying to me the wishes of the office, but I’m going to turn him down. First, we have a young trombone player who wants the job so bad it hurts. Stu will do a fine job and he knows the gig better than anybody, having been on the band since last June. Second, I’m wary of the additional responsibilities. I’d rather help Stu however I can by writing and keeping up the standards of play rather than deal with passenger complaints about how fast a cha cha ought to be. You can’t win in the Queens Room. You have two factions that are trying to rip the band apart at all times. Any decision the bandleader makes is going to cause an eruption from the opposite faction that feels like it’s been slighted. 

This is the second sea day since Papeete, Tahiti, although on the calendar it looks like we did three because of the dateline. Another two days separate Tonga and Auckland, which has a proper port. That’ll be Thursday, then another two sea days and we’re in Sydney for an overnight.

Today at dinner, Siân and Patrick are miffed at the absence of milk--the allocation thing again. You can’t deprive an Englishman, or for that matter an Irishman and a Welch harpist--of milk for their tea and not expect to hear about it. They do not disappoint. Siân finally manages to get one of the manager girls, the one who has her waiter guys tucking napkins into the serving pans so they don’t appear so messy, to make a call up to the passenger areas and order some milk. How they expect to balance their books with irritations like this one is anyone’s guess. 

In addition, right before the latest milk allocation this evening, a roach climbed the wall of the mess. Nothing you can do about that, I’m thinking. We are in the tropics, and some are bound to stow away with the food provisions loaded up in Tahiti. Then again, my experience says that if you see one, there are thousands hiding in the walls, breeding. We have an inspection in Sydney on the 24th. 

Looks like we are getting off in Tonga, though. The larger boats will be used for tendering. Siân will be leading a tour without a tour guide. That’s what they do in Tonga. I might take a stab at getting off the ship even though I have IPM. 

Blood Pressure

I started using a cuff to monitor mine when the pressure of adapting to this ship caused my BP to soar into the near-dangerous range. I started taking pills that I’d stopped when I was on shore, to see what would happen. on the 25th of November my BP was 172/85 with an 85 BPM pulse.I started a FileMaker database to see where it would go. 

This morning, almost 3 months later, my BP is 112/56 and my pulse is 54. I have lost weight on this trip. The food is dreadful except for our 20 minutes of glory in the Lido after work. And I have to climb 5 flights to get almost anywhere worth getting to. I’m not making a big deal about it, just going about the business of the day and adding a couple pills, climbing the stairs a few times every day, passing on the food that’s awful, substituting something raw that they can’t mess up.

Today we played another Jazz at the Lion at 12:45. This time, Brad just indicated that the whole Queens Room band would play, ending the unintentional policy of setting up de facto groups. We are playing very well together. We opened with Sofrito, then Tin Roof Blues, On the Sunny Side of the Street, a ballad medley like in Jazz at the Philharmonic, and closed with Mood Indigo. It pleases me that we cover so much ground, so much so that we are hard to pin down stylistically. I was the announcer, which is a lot of fun.  

Monday, February 18, 2008

It’s been a pain going through the South Pacific staying connected with email. For that reason, I’ve been using the ship’s wifi. At 50 cents a minute it’s an expensive way to go, but there’s a bit of business I need to do that requires internet access. My guess is that things will get better when we hit Australia and from there on out.

Archie is on the coals because, although he might be sick, he didn’t try to tell Brad until 11 this morning, thereby making his job a lot more complicated. Because the entertainers for the day were already set in the Daily Programme (yes that is what it’s called), Brad is sending Stevie down to work with us tonight. That ought to be interesting, the triumphant return to the Queens Room of one of its former bandleaders. I won’t even begin to describe the torments that the Queens Room had for the rather unassuming Stevie, other than to say that, at the time, it was decided that ProShip had an exclusive monopoly to book the band and they sent the sorriest bunch of losers ever for Stevie to lead. Then the passengers, having something to complain about, proceeded to make it all a hell of a lot worse. 

I spent much of my lunch time with Trevor trying to convince me that I had made the wrong decision to turn down the gig leading the Queens Room band, but I was having none of it, despite his best efforts.

Valparaiso to Tahiti

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. 

Rio and Beyond

On the sea day separating Bahia from Rio all the Americans who work on the ship are called in to the Crew Office and informed that their payrolling mechanism, in fact their definition as employees, has been changed, effective the first of the year. We are no longer employees of a shell company which files payroll taxes in the US, but are rather contractors working for P&O out of England. Needless to say, we are a little miffed. We had a nice little system of direct deposit going to our US banks and credit unions. Now our pay has to be wired from the ship and the deposit will be a good deal later in the month.

The thing that makes me furious about all this is that the paymaster on this ship is an ignoramus who can’t answer our questions about what’s happened and seems incapable of rational thought in general. How do these folks get and hold their jobs? He’s very good at posturing, but just try to ask him a fundamental question about what’s happened to your money and you can’t get a straight answer. Jan calms me down over the phone and explains that this maroon did not make the policy which went into effect without informing us, he was just the guy who should have told us that the change had been made when it was made. Some of the Americans are a good deal hotter under the collar because they have an automatic debt repayment schedule and they’re going to have to contact each of their creditors to rearrange their payments. We’re told about this change on Friday afternoon, so these guys are not very happy.

I don’t believe that such a fundamental change should be made when we’re working under a valid contract. One of my comrades told me, he won’t be able to work for Cunard again, because it’s going to put him into a 35 percent tax bracket with him doing all the contributions to SSI and Medicare. Better to work for Princess, which he’ll do, at least until this latest wrinkle at Cunard is either proven (they show a decrease in their expenses) or not (they lose all the Americans, who are mostly musicians. All Russian show bands are possible.)

They handled this all wrong. They were ham-handed. We still haven’t received the notification from the head office which will actually explain the change, which the fool on the ship is incapable of doing. I’m thinking we won’t get that letter until the end of this month.

Of course this is all a corporate shell game designed to save expenses. If there’s a lawyer out there who is willing to challenge the breaking of everyone’s contract, the conversion of our status to independent contractors even though we can’t turn down individual projects, well, I’ll bet that lawyer is in Fort Lauderdale next to the call center, where the rights of the Filipinos to get paid their overtime wages while at sea were won. Then there was the time a couple years ago when an insurance deduction suddenly appeared. That one never made it to court. 

It turns out that there is, incredibly, an allotment system for milk in the staff and crew mess. I thought that it was just a rumor, but when Jim went to get milk for his coffee and came back black with an explanation by the mess staff my fears were confirmed. 

They are trying to balance the books on a rounding error. Both on the American paychecks and the milk in the mess. I know that this ship burns a gallon of fuel for every six inches it moves. But there are surcharges. You could cut back passenger services, but these folks will make a big stink of they are deprived of even the slightest thing.

Rio was great, although Up until that point in my visit, it might have been any other port city with a downtown and a beach. The enormous swings from poverty to the rich were there, though not as visible as in Bahia. Junior and I spent some time in Copacabana, where we went using one of the jewelry store shuttles. We walked up and down the beach, not much else, but it was very pleasant and, after all, we were off the ship after sea days. The weather was cloudy with light sprinkles.

Contrary to popular belief, there is not a lot of coffee for sale in Brazil. Being an important export crop, you’re not likely to find the equivalent of a Starbucks. There was one, and the coffee was great, but it was tucked away in a shopping center. Rodrigo, the sound guy who is from Rio, rejoined the ship there and brought me a stash of his favorite coffee.

Some of the other crew members were lucky enough to encounter a samba school practicing in the street, but they were unlucky enough to have their pockets picked for their efforts.

I didn’t feel that I was really in Rio until the Samba show blew through the Grand Lounge at the same time that we were to play. Here’s how that worked: We arrive at the Queens Room for our 9:45 set, and nobody except for a couple gentlemen hosts is there. That’s because the samba show, complete with lavishly undressed Brazilians of both sexes, and a band led by a cavaquinho player and drummers. According to Stevie, the ship used to dock for two or even three nights during carnival, and passengers and crew used to join in the festivities. For the last pass through these parts, the company in its wisdom chose to arrive a week before carnival and--wait for it--leave that same night. You can always count on Stevie to tell you how things used to be in the good old days. 

Montevideo

The first overnight port is Montevideo, a pretty nice place. The capitol of Uruguay, the city is sited in a gorgeous setting on the River Plate. A little further upriver is Buenos Aires, the capitol of Argentina. The port is located in the Ciudad Vieja, the old city, which was founded by pioneer stock who wiped out a passive indiginous population and started subdividing the country into fincas and ranchos. 

Cattle appears to be still king, with the main shoreside activity being promoted being a dealer in leather goods, which has been advertised days in advance of our arrival on the television in our cabins. There is also the usual assortment of seedy bars and snappy restaurants within an easy walk of the ship, not to mention call centers and internet places. (I chose to walk inside the Ciudad Vieja looking for my combination of caffeine and internet, and I’m glad I did.)

First activity of the day was a totally useless drill, where we watched once again the video of an English soccer stadium bursting into flames, from which somehow we’re expected to learn something about crowd management. I did see John Lawrence once again in the role of the Cruise Director, which he plays better than anyone.

The crew morale thus deflated, we were free to wander about the city. I chose the $10 (PLEASE DO NOT DISCUSS THIS RATE WITH PASSENGERS!) crew bus tour of the city, with the usual monuments and statues, and a couple unique ones thrown in, the ones which memorialized the pioneers--two monuments featuring teams and wagons headed for the interior of the country with futures uncertain. The guide has English (as they say), but he mumbled and was hard to hear over the roar of the bus. 

Next to me on the bus, a Brazilian waiter took it upon himself to turn up the MP3 player on his phone, and, frustrated because I couldn’t hear the guide, I turned to him and said, “You don’t even THINK that’s rude.” The phone was put away.

I snapped quite a few pictures. I learned (finally) from the guide that while the minimum monthly salary is $150, the average tends to be around $300, and that the busses run all the time so that most Montevideans didn’t have cars.

When we ended the tour I wandered in the Ciudad Vieja. I found coffee at McDonalds, which is setting up ersatz Starbucks in a lot of their international stores. A latte ran me a couple bucks, tall cotton in this country I think, but I needed it. Walking back in the general direction of the ship I stopped at a neighborhood internet place with nothing fancy and incredibly cheap prices. I may have just had the most expensive cup of coffee in Montevideo, but an hour of hooking up my Powerbook to the internet cost me nine pesos, which is about a quarter.

As night fell, we played our gig and in the last set decided to play the Mancini waltz medley, our last tune, taking all second endings and no Ritards at the end. I packed up my horns and left them on the bandstand and we went to the buffet briefly before we met at the gangway.

We pile into a cab and head for anywhere that’s open, and end up in the new town at a sidewalk bar and cafe. I celebrate my birthday with a beer that’s around a 40 ouncer. No halfway measures here. 

This was one of our few overnights, where we didn’t sail until the afternoon of the second day. I returned to the same internet place next morning. Another cup of latte at McDonalds and I was set for the day, although we are looking at two sea days ahead and uncertain ports ahead because of the weather. Everyone knows this captain is overly cautious about going into ports where the wind is up, and if both of the ports in our immediate future are missed, we will be at sea for a week, from Montevideo to Valparaiso, east coast to west coast.

We lost Neville, who had to go home to Liverpool for a family emergency. Shame, that. We always seem to lose the good guys and gain egos.

======================================== 

February 1, 2008

Stanley, Falkland Islands

The reason we went into Montevideo rather than into Buenos Aires, Argentina, is that this ship was converted into a troop ship when, in the early eighties, Argentina and England were at was over a useless speck of land in the south Atlantic called the Falkland Islands. The junta that ran Argentina at the time were having difficulties with their economic policies and chose to flim-flam their citizens by pointing out that some treaty back in the early 1800s entitled them to Las Malvinas, their name for the Falklands. The UN tried to prevent it, but, like Terry-Thomas in The Mouse That Roared, the Argentines dispatched troops to capture these islands where sheep are the majority. Only thing is, Margaret Thatcher didn’t know her end of the plot. She was having a few economic problems of her own at the time and, after arousing her populace chose to put troops into the situation--a double flim-flam.

Much discussion has taken place about the significance of calling at Port Stanley after a sea day. But the fact is that weather did not cooperate, although that didn’t stop the RAF and the Royal Navy from flexing their military muscles before we scooted out of there. We had a couple supersonic fighters do their thing for us in a low speed flyover and then, coming back, a subsonic though rapid one. We then drove the ship under a RN helicopter, which had a sailor dangling from a lead, whom they winched down so that he touched our deck, then pulled him up again. I saw it all on the bridge camera in my cabin, which was probably better than any point of view on the decks.

You can see why then that so many of the English remember the Falklands campaign as the last gasp of something uniquely British, complete with the QE2 pressed into service. The sad fact is that the curve of civilizations takes them from net producers to net consumers with the inevitable trajectory that means that the progeny of QE2 such as the QM2 and QV have been made in other countries, to say nothing of the nationalities of the staff, which were once, not so long ago, mostly English. 

And as far as the lingering problems between Argentina and England go, well, after all, we’re going to Vietnam, and they welcome us Americans and our dollars. Why they do that is a mystery to me, except, as a country steeped in Buddist traditions the people possess forgiveness in abundance. Nothing will stop me from getting off the ship there. 

Still there are those sad vogons who wonder why Britain cannot do what she once did. As you’ll read in a future installment, there is plenty that Britain can do, and not all of it good either. 

If we had to miss one port, for my money this was the one to miss. When we combine it with the sea days on either side of it we have a lot of time on the ship, some of it scenic, some not. 

February 2, 2008

We are cruising Cape Horn. Scenery is a lot like Alaska, not surprisingly. The ship traces a dollar sign on the map on the TV and scoots north again, I assume to go through the straights rather than around the horn, although the weather at the horn is pretty nice. 

Brendan’s 25th birthday is today. I got ahold of him on his cell but then the sat phone started acting up. They’ll be more to say when we get to a more stable area. In the band, we started playing my chart of I Got It Band (and That Ain’t Good) last night, which I remember playing at the Playboy Club right after Brendan was born, with seven horns instead of our three. So much has changed over these 25 years!

There is no port today. We are aiming for Punta Arenas tomorrow, but it’s on the Magellan Straits, where the weather can be a little on the windy side. Even if we drop anchor they’ll be a tender ride, and with all of these passengers to move about it’ll be unlikely that we have shore leave. (Note the military way of describing this situation, which is not the same way they describe it on Princess.)

The food in the mess hit a new low today. The vegetables look to have been reanimated, after they died of natural causes. Slabs of mystery meat slathered in equally uncertain gravy compete with various forms of dried-out chicken. Nobody gives a shit about us. The only meal we really have is supposed to be a buffet snack, between midnight and 12:30 in the Lido. None of this is a problem on a Princess ship, where we have access to the buffet at most of the times and if we feel like it we can have a 7-course meal at Sabatini’s or the steak restaurant for $5. And they’re not putzing with our checks over there at Princess either. At Christmas I was struck by the officers coming down and serving us in the mess at dinner, which may have been the last good meal we had. But now, with the advantage of hindsight and the erosion of standards, I think I was wrong to think of their actions as anything but an affirmation of the class system. Rigid beyond what an American can think, the English want people in their places with No Exit signs all around them. They don’t want too much mixing of the classes, either. Servants--and that includes musicians making less than, say for example, Sir Paul McCartney--are to be looked upon with a certain sneering disdain. Really, the passengers and the officers can be creepy when you meet them on this level. 

Every night we play three sets for folks who seem like the have no appreciation for what we do. That’s bound to wear us down. But there are some passengers, most of them Americans--who are supportive and even at times effusive in their praise. 

Winston and his wife are there at least part of every night, and we keep Splanky handy for him.

Then there’s Pete from Virginia, a passenger who, it turns out, was a road rat. Pete played trumpet on the Miller band and the Tommy Dorsey band, a decade behind me, though we have lots of buddies in common, like Jay Cummings and Dick Gearhart. Pete brought his trumpet with him and takes over the band room every morning from 7 to 9, when we working musicians are asleep. I’m going to expand some of the band’s charts for a second trumpet to accommodate Pete, so there will be 2 Petes on the bandstand. 

One thing that happened on this Scenic Cruising Day was that the Queens Room band, less Stu, the trombone player, had an afternoon session in the Yacht Club. Usually the chore is handled by the Orchestra, whose players pound for pound are less than thrilling jazz players, but for which the Musical Director plays. So the front line was me and Pete on trumpet, with Richard and Richard and Jim on rhythm. At the last second it was decided that I would introduce the tunes and do the announcing, and I was pretty much on the game. It felt like I’d been awakened from a long sleep. I introduced the band by saying that, as far as I could tell, we were the furthest south jazz quintet playing anywhere in the world, due to the fact that we were somewhere around 54 degrees south, at the very end of South America. We opened with Sugar, a bit of a departure from the usual fare that’s either “safe” real book material or downright Dixieland. It felt really nice to cut loose and take a couple choruses on some pretty challenging stuff, although we had a train wreck on Dolphin Dance. 

I came away from this experience thinking I’d like to do more leading, and missing the presence of Stu--We are a section, and having one of us sit out doesn’t do anybody any good. We could have done Mood Indigo! I don’t know what Brad’s thinking, or if he’s thinking, but, hey, it’s just a gig after all. 

February 3, 2008

We are blown out of Punta Arenas. It will be the sixth when we test the land in Valparaiso, Chile, from the afternoon of the 30th in Montevideo. 

When did this become a prison ship? Two sea days after this one. For crying out loud. Who picked these ports? There is some idle chatter in the crew mess about there being a dispute between the Chilean government and Cunard which will mean we’ll not be allowed to put in at Valparaiso. If that happens, we won’t see land until Papeete on the 14th, by which time I would think we’ll have grown gills. 

How far can this ship go on a tank of fuel?

February 5, 2008

The last sea day before Valparaiso drags on. 

Our toilet stopped working at 1 pm. 

We rehearse a theatrical big band show at 5:30. Last night we did something called the Puttin’ on the Ritz Ball. Of course nobody asked if the band had a chart--or even a lead sheet--on Puttin’ on the Ritz. And nobody told Michelle until 2 days prior that she’d be doing a tap dancing introduction to the ball. Typical. 

So I wrote a chart on the lead sheet that was in my computer, and everything went pretty much without a hitch. And that portion of the day was saved.

I did have a thought, though, to change the name of the ball to the Time Magazine Man of the Year, Putin on the Ritz Ball. I keep thinking about that spooky picture of him on the cover of Time. Anyway in his honor I ran out parts for the Song of the Volga Boatman. I don’t think anybody got it, but there you are.

I’m stepping back from this one tonight, because I got the impression from Brad that they were missing a bunch of parts and it would be very nice if I would write the missing ones. I already bailed them out on a big band night that they scheduled at the last minute on New Years Eve, and you know what happens when you keep bailing incompetents out on a regular basis. It’s one thing if they occasionally slip up, quite another when they act like they do here on these ball night and the various entertainment snafus. So I will happily be a sideman tonight, which I get paid for.

Jim Panalver is leaving in Valparaiso, flying back home to Spain and hopefully to the snare drum that my brother got him in the States. He’s been a stalwart, despite the pitched and ongoing battle to have the snare delivered, since I got on. I can’t imagine anyone doing a better job of keeping the band in line. He’s worked hard against his own countrymen, which explains why he lives in Spain. I will miss him.

Prelude to Rio

My opinion of the United States of America has changed a good deal since I started this contract, which is now at its midpoint. I’ve been working for a mostly English company and going in and out of European ports, except for that three-week run to the Caribbean for Christmas and New Years. We made it into New York after the long haul across the Atlantic, had some hassles getting off the ship because of Coast Guard drills and immigration clearances. But it wasn’t until we were in Lauderdale, where we were frisked at the gangway like criminals and where a Cubano rent-a-cop layed some goofy interpretation of immigration law on all the Filipinos, that I realized that the USA really is the best country on the planet. 

The reason is we have problems here like any other country, but we set about solving them, which is something I don’t think any other country can do as quickly or as flexibly. 

The English pay just about twice what we pay for the necessities of life in the states, with the exception of gasoline, which they pay $10 an gallon for. Their VAT is just the latest in a long line of taxes without representation, and Her Majesty’s Tax Office had decided to hide a lot of the taxes within sale prices. 

Go to a cheaper country, like Spain or Portugal for example, and you’re likely run into rampant corruption. And you’ll have to put up with the whole country putting on their pajamas in the middle of the day. The EU has untangled some of that knot, but there’s a certain boring sameness about the counties of the EU, whose countries seem to have gone through a cultural mixmaster to produce a purée. The cheaper countries are catching up with the more expensive ones because of the common currency. (One thing though--that currency has both one Euro and two Euro coins, which seem to work pretty well, although I have a whole pocketful of them and nowhere to spend them in my immediate future.)

The new bandmaster, Brad Black, arrived in New York. He’s just taken delivery on a Monet trumpet, to the tune of NINE GRAND in US dollars. His name is inscribed on the bell, but trumpeters beware: He’s still spending three hours of long tones making the adjustment to the new horn. Brad’s managerial skills were almost instantly revealed when Siân went to him with a problem. She had been playing every embarkation for two and a half months, and she wanted to have some port time, especially in Sydney. Instead, Brad decided to relieve her in Fort Lauderdale, move a keyboard down to the embarkation, and let Frankie handle it. 

So we started out, the three of us, Siân, Archie (aka Richard the Canadian piano player), and me, off to Starbucks for a little coffee and, for me anyway, a lot of wi-fi. Siân was afraid of the trucks, which are lots bigger in the States than they are in Wales, so we had to reassure her through several pedestrian crossings. After they finished their coffee, they headed off to a mall, but I decided to buy a day pass in the Starbucks wi-fi. Turns out that a new Apple Store had opened at that mall. 

The Gig Update 

The replacement for Pedro, another guy named Richard (there are now three of us in the Queens Room band, fully half the band is named Richard), is as solid as can be. No virtuosic flourishes, just four solid notes to the bar, like all the great bass players. The band has responded very well to this reversal of our fortunes, locking in solid with him, and losing a boatload of hostility in the process. 

As if that wasn’t enough of an improvement, we have a new singer, the same one that was going to join in Southampton, Neville Skelley. A native of Liverpool, he just stands there and sings the notes, nothing fancy. At his tender age he’s got a lot of learning to do, but he’s willing to learn.

My cabinmate has changed for the better as well. Junior Williams plays drums in the Caribbean band. He’s an emergency hire from Barbados, replacing Juan, who had to go back to San Lucia. He’s a heavy sleeper and a congenial guy. He’ll be on until Valparaiso. 

Nobody’s asked me, but I think they need to rethink the repertoire in the Queens Room. I think the time to act is now, when the company is promoting the idea of the Queens Room in their print advertising. With that ad in the New Yorker last week, we have an opportunity to treat the Queens Room as a foreground issue, one that the company’s fortunes rise and fall on.

In the shifting demographic mix that we see in the Queens Room night after night, there are of course die hard advocates and practitioners of the English take on ballroom dance, which is called Strict Tempo. Regardless of false dichotomy, which makes Basie less desirable than some of the stiff British dance bands, they form the backbone of our audience. Now that there are more Americans onboard, we’re getting a more tolerant group, but there is still that central issue of the age group, which, with some exceptions, is 70+.

The only way a good thing like the Queens Room is going to survive--on the QM2, QV, and the ships on the drawing board--is if a way is found to draw from a younger demographic. I believe that a good approach would be what we’ve done with the ORB. The origins of the Original Recipe Band were my experience with Duck Soup, a band whose owner made a lot more money than he deserved. Their tune list was a mix of Motown, rock, and Sinatra. The problem was there were no charts, so everyone who joined the band had a period of adjustment where they played like idiots for weeks at a time. When we started ORB I decided to write everything down, so nobody had to go through the idiot period. Make the book the star was my goal. That’s not the way the three Queens Rooms now operate. 

About half the charts we play are from Princess, xeroxed endlessly so that they are nearly impossible to read. The rest are these English charts which are designed to be played by any number of horns from two to infinity, Some are useful, most are crap. I’m not certain of this, but I suspect that the libraries of the Queens Room bands are quite a bit different from ship to ship, depending on the taste who was leading the band at crucial moments.

This whole dance band scheme in the Queens Room is supported by ten, count-em, ten Gentlemen Hosts. I want to see the spreadsheet where THOSE cabins are justified. The have to share, but still . . .

There’s an entertainer on board who plays clarinet like Benny Goodman as his main thing. He’s pretty good, pretty English, and he’s cooking up a deal for New York where he’s going to try to get Warren the Cruise Director to hire enough musicians to make a full big band. I can’t see that happening, though. The purse strings are just too tight. You’d think this cruise line was going out of business the way they complain about their budgets. We have two trumpets, two bones, three saxes and a couple rhythm sections on board, and to augment them into a full band, you’re talking two more each of trumpets and bones, another alto and a baritone player. It’s not just money. You have to get guys who’ll pass the medical, have valid passports, and on and on. Mazel tov.

The Russian dancers, who don’t think their exhaust products stink, are not working except for a single show and are leaving in Sydney. Oh man are these guys snotty. They walk around with their noses in the air all the time and are unintentionally hysterical. There are also aboard three Ukrainian girls who play classical music--violin, cello, and piano--who have the same disorder. They have Viktor, the alto player in the other band, in tow. Viktor seems to use a lot of hair-care products, and the girls seem to have no relaxing clothes. It’s a lot of work, being them, though, so there is little enough time for relaxing.

Crossing the Equator

January 22, 2008

We have crossed the Equator. Last night we had Neptune’s Ball, which was a somewhat droll and adolescent way for us to repackage the music we always play, but Michelle was having pretty funny running the show, although the dance mixer games that she comes up with are so complicated that they tend to take twenty minutes each. The Queens Room for the occasion was done up in plastic seaweed by the two decorators on board, who seem to win the award for working the fewest clock hours on the ship.

This afternoon we’re playing the Neptune ceremony, which is apparently a long and noble tradition when “crossing the line.” People who haven’t been across the Equator are subjected to various indignities, all in good fun, with us musicians playing the processional, fanfares, and second-line recessional. It’s going to be the three horns from the Queens Room, Jim, and Stevie from the other band playing the old banjo. It does appear to be raining at 10 am, so whether it will happen seems in question. They might move it inside, but the ceremony involves fish guts, so we’ll have to modify that part of the proceedings. 

I really don’t know what to expect, but so far everything the crew staff has undertaken to make the passengers happy during sea days has been pretty dumb. My guess is that if you polled the passengers (“guests” is often used), most would want more Bingo games and otherwise to be left alone.

While most of the passengers are English, we have lots more Americans since we started the World Cruise. Two American passengers worthy of mention are Pete from Arlington, Virginia and Winston from southern California. Pete’s done the World Cruise before, but our horn section knocked him out when he heard us, and he’s been back every day since. Winston and his wife spent years visiting Disneyland so they could dance to Basie, Woody, Harry James and the rest of the big band who used to play there in the summer. How well I remember paying $8 for a night ticket and hearing four sets of the Basie band in the Carnation plaza or whatever it was called! Winston and his wife are dancers, but more the type that has that rhythmic impulse shooting through them. They know the music too, and we’re happy to provide it, making space among the quicksteps and waltz medleys for Moten Swing, In a Mellow Tone, and I Got It Bad and That Ain’t Good. At last we have fans.

I’m off to see if we’re having the Cross the Line ceremony in this weather.

Well, that was totally weird. The British have these quaint customs which are at their roots class versus class, and this was no exception. The idea is to round up everyone on the ship--passengers and crew--who have never crossed the equator and memorialize the event with someone dressed up as King Neptune who acts as a judge in a trial against these “polliwogs.” They are all found guilty of these offenses and their punishment is the humiliation of having fish, fish parts, and food poured over their heads and inserted into their nostrils.

When I got back in the cabin last night, I noticed that the carpet was beginning to get a little wet. This ship, with its ancient pipes (originally PLASTIC) are held together with joints that crack every once in a while. Like they told me to do, like I was trained to do, I went up to the crew office as soon as it opened in the morning and signed the first position on today’s clipboard, describing the leak and the swamp it was starting to accumulate. Sure enough, no plumber called and I was out of the cabin most of the day. Then when the room steward arrived I told him what happened. By then we had a nice little swamp in the hallway going to the porthole. 

The steward’s supervisor really took the situation by the horns, so we’re now in a passenger cabin until the thing’s fixed. I might use this as an opportunity to contrast and compare some of the features of a passenger cabin and my cabin, which was once a passenger cabin but no more.

Here goes:

The mattresses are a lot thicker. The decor is kind of 1969 deluxe, with a bizarre mixed-media piece hanging on the entry wall. Looks to be a little smaller in gross square feet than mine, no porthole of course. There’s a ventilator howling in the passenger cabin, but I suppose you get used to it or go mad trying. Much of the furnishings are the same, although the desk and most of the other things have been updated and reupholstered. 

Biggest difference is the bathroom. My bathroom has a fiberglas shower that’s been patched a few too many times. This may be what’s leaking. The passenger bathroom is all stainless steel, with a beautiful glass shower enclosure. The passenger cabin has less space, though, and the porthole is a deal breaker. We slept until noon because the passenger cabin was so dark. 

When we did finally get up, we were in Salvador do Bahia, my first South American port. I’m afraid that I was disappointed. The city is a real dump, even though at one point it was one of the richest places on the planet because they grew coffee and sugar from the colonial days. After four sea days any place ought to look good, but this place is pretty picked over. From the moment we got down the gangway we were tripping over the cobbles which looked like they dated back to colonial days. While the people were vibrant and poor all at once, the place felt more dangerous than soulful. I went walking with Jr. and he’s convinced that a guy that bumped him was trying to lift his wallet. 

Now we have a single sea day, followed by Rio, which I am prepared to enjoy, followed by two sea days, followed by two days in Montevideo. That’s as far ahead as I’m willing to look.

The mess in the mess

We have to eat in either the crew mess or the staff mess. which has a cute-ass English name I can’t remember, but which is also sometimes called the Concessionaire’s mess. Both these messes are a step below their counterparts on Princess ships, and in addition on Princess we musicians and most of the crew who wear suits can eat in the Horizon Court buffet in all but the busiest times. Additional options for dining on Princess include the Italian and steak restaurants for a modest cover charge. 

None of these options exists here. The guys who have been around longer than anyone else--Stevie at 29 years and Trevor at 15--remember a time when dining options were available, but say that some people overstepped and the privileges were revoked. That’s a typical response to complex issues on ships, but usually you get the privileges reinstated after a short period of hand wringing. This does not seem to be the case here. Privileges lost are seldom regained.

There must have been a change in chefs right around Christmas. The menu became blander and less varied. As so often happens on ships, they had the serving staff obsess on cleanliness issues to take them off the taste duties. 

And things went downhill from there in a hurry. They brought out lunch meats that had been frozen and thawed. When nobody went for it because of the texture, they brought them out again the following day, folded differently, and still there were no takers. The entrées went from average to institutional, as in frozen peas and carrots with pasta in a cream sauce. It was obvious that somebody just didn’t give a shit.

For me, the line was crossed when I took a bite from a bran muffin at breakfast and tasted the overwhelming alkaline taste of baking powder. Sitting across from Stevie, I couldn’t help but ask him if anybody around here knows how to cook.

In what might be the final indignity before the pendulum swings, we had our allocation of milk thrown in our face. I don’t go out of my way to drink milk, but when I’m up for breakfast I do put milk on some oats and nuts cereal. One day last week, at the end of breakfast service, when the musicians are still straggling out to make cereal and Nescafe, the milk ran out. Rather than go get another half gallon, the two servers told us that we were allocated one half gallon and once that ran out, we were out of luck. 

Allocation? Is this a cruise ship? (OK, is it a liner?) I’ve never heard of an allocation for anything on a ship! Even for crew, there are no limits on something as fundamental as milk. One of the wags in the mess commented that this was starting to more resemble a prison ship.

Other irritations: the cereal is padlocked in a cabinet when breakfast is over. On most other ships you can grab a box of cereal most any time of the day or night. Everything is locked up, in fact, except for hot water and tea bags, and even then just generic tea. 

The hours could use some work. The adjacent crew mess is closed from 12:45 to 1:00, at which time it reopens. The staff mess doesn’t open for dinner until 6:30, even though a lot of us have a to be at work at seven. 

These are things that the passengers are unaware of, of course. And as for the head office in California, they must receive the menus of each day’s offerings, or else why would they make up all the fancy French names for each main dish?

Another way of looking at this is the White Star Service program, which is the linear descendent of the CRUISE program at Princess. It’s basically a way to institutionalize common sense, although in this babel of cultures and languages common sense is a little hard to come by. One of the points made by White Star (and is it odd that the program is named after the company whose hard-driving policies drove the Titanic into the sea?) is that we are internal customers, and when a crew member serves an internal customer, the person being served is entitled to the same level of service as a passenger paying full fare. Well, they’re falling down in that department, just like the plumbers who, when informed of the leak in my cabin, chose not to check it out. If I did the equivalent and decided not to play music for a day or so, I’d be sacked. And I’d deserve it. 

As I write this it’s now the day at between Bahia and Rio. My cabin is 83.3 degrees F. and there is a drying fan at work, since yesterday, on the carpet. Paulina, the housekeeping supervisor, just checked in on things. She’d going to call the AC guys to get that thing going so some of the stink will be carried off. 

I’m hoping Rio will be a little more congenial than Bahia was.

On the sea day separating Bahia from Rio all the Americans who work on the ship are called in to the Crew Office and informed that their payrolling mechanism, in fact their definition as employees, has been changed, effective the first of the year. We are no longer employees of a shell company which files payroll taxes in the US, but are rather contractors working for P&O out of England. Needless to say, we are a little miffed. We had a nice little system of direct deposit going to our US banks and credit unions. Now our pay has to be wired from the ship and the deposit will be a good deal later in the month.

The thing that makes me furious about all this is that the paymaster on this ship is an ignoramus who can’t answer our questions about what’s happened and seems incapable of rational thought in general. How do these folks get and hold their jobs? He’s very good at posturing, but just try to ask him a fundamental question about what’s happened to your money and you can’t get a straight answer. Jan calms me down over the phone and explains that this maroon did not make the policy which went into effect without informing us, he was just the guy who should have told us that the change had been made when it was made. Some of the Americans are a good deal hotter under the collar because they have an automatic debt repayment schedule and they’re going to have to contact each of their creditors to rearrange their payments. We’re told about this change on Friday afternoon, so these guys are not very happy.

I don’t believe that such a fundamental change should be made when we’re working under a valid contract. One of my comrades told me, he won’t be able to work for Cunard again, because it’s going to put him into a 35 percent tax bracket with him doing all the contributions to SSI and Medicare. Better to work for Princess, which he’ll do, at least until this latest wrinkle at Cunard is either proven (they show a decrease in their expenses) or not (they lose all the Americans, who are mostly musicians. All Russian show bands are possible.)

They handled this all wrong. They were ham-handed. We still haven’t received the notification from the head office which will actually explain the change, which the fool on the ship is incapable of doing. I’m thinking we won’t get that letter until the end of this month.

Of course this is all a corporate shell game designed to save expenses. If there’s a lawyer out there who is willing to challenge the breaking of everyone’s contract, the conversion of our status to independent contractors even though we can’t turn down individual projects, well, I’ll bet that lawyer is in Fort Lauderdale next to the call center, where the rights of the Filipinos to get paid their overtime wages while at sea were won. Then there was the time a couple years ago when an insurance deduction suddenly appeared. That one never made it to court. 

It turns out that there is, incredibly, an allotment system for milk in the staff and crew mess. I thought that it was just a rumor, but when Jim went to get milk for his coffee and came back black with an explanation by the mess staff my fears were confirmed. 

They are trying to balance the books on a rounding error. Both on the American paychecks and the milk in the mess. I know that this ship burns a gallon of fuel for every six inches it moves. But there are surcharges. You could cut back passenger services, but these folks will make a big stink of they are deprived of even the slightest thing.

Rio was great, although I didn’t feel like I was really there until I came back to the ship and heard and saw a local samba show. Up until that point in my visit, it might have been any other port city with a downtown and a beach. The enormous swings from poverty to the rich were there, though not as visible as in Bahia. 

But, as I said above, I didn’t feel that I was really in Rio until the Samba show blew through the Grand Lounge at the same time that we were to play. Here’s how that worked: We arrive at the Queens Room for our 9:45 set, and nobody except for a couple gentlemen hosts is there. That’s because the samba show, complete with lavishly undressed Brazilians of both sexes, and a band led by a ukulele player and drummers. According to Stevie, the ship used to dock for two or even three nights during carnival, and passengers and crew used to join in the festivities. For the last pass through these parts, the company in its wisdom chose to arrive a week before carnival and--wait for it--leave that same night.