It must be a situation in which  every journeyman professional has found himself.  It appears that just when things couldn’t get any worse, matters are compounded by a bandleader who just won’t finish the gig.

Picture the scene: you’ve driven a great distance in pouring rain to play a gig, you’re tired already but know you’ve got the same schlep after the gig to look forward to, or maybe a stay in a hotel at which even Norman Bates would turn up his nose.  You’ve arrived at the gig, let’s say a wedding (See Weddings), been bollocked for using the front entrance of the venue and redirected through the kitchens.  You’ve not been given a band room and so have had to change in the toilets, safe in the knowledge that they’ll be awash with piss when you come back to change after the show.  You then find out that the caterers know nothing about feeding you, and that there’s not enough time to leave the venue to get some sustenance.  The Bride’s Mother’s being a pain in the arse, and to cap it all, the bandleader runs way past the agreed finish time.

Now I know I’ve deliberately made this seem an extreme scenario, but this sort of thing is quite amusing to witness if you’re in the know.  You can sense the rank and file’s tacit hostility towards their leader rising exponentially with each second they’re kept on the bandstand after time.

Surely this is just the lot of the weary old jobbing pro?  It must be very different in top-notch, famous bands?  Well, apparently not.

Look at this video of the Duke Ellington Orchestra in 1965.  You’ll hear from Duke’s announcement and introduction of Billy Strayhorn at the beginning of the clip that this is the encore of a gig (– a great opportunity to hear Strayhorn play, incidentally).  What’s apparent if you look at the band, though, is that they appear to my trained eye to have been kept on the bandstand way after time.  You can almost feel the rising hostility towards Ellington as the clip progresses. 

At 0:55 you can see the trumpet section blatantly chatting and putting their music away.  At 1:30 you can see tenor saxist Paul Gonsalves asleep in the section and the trombonist behind him packing away his glasses etc.  Tenorist Jimmy Hamilton’s body language at around 1:35 clearly says to me ‘I don’t want to be here anymore’. 

When the band comes back in with the tune at around 2:20, you can see the lead trombone miss his entry because he’s not actually holding his instrument anymore; and check out Johnny Hodges on lead alto.  Or rather not on lead alto.  He’s not playing because he’s packed up already, much to the consternation, it would appear, of Russell Procope on 2nd alto.  Hodges seems to be just sitting reading something which he then puts in his diary before pocketing it.  The look of utter disdain on his face speaks volumes. 

Ellington, of course, remains the grinning urbane showman throughout, but there’s no doubt in my mind that at that moment, the seething animosity radiating from the band must have been almost tangible.

I was once in a band the leader of which seemed never to have heard the term ‘false tabs’ (a deliberately early wind-up which means the encore finishes at the agreed end time), and consequently we always finished late.

As world-weary (and puerile) musos in the face of adversity, we turned this into a secret game and played ‘Last Note Lottery’.  This game involved all the sidemen predicting the exact time the last note of the gig would finish and putting a pound into the kitty on a winner-takes-all basis.  It was really quite funny to see nine musicians all immediately look at their watch as soon as the last note ended and then to see one of them pumping his fist triumphantly.

The last number in that band’s set was a ‘Sing Sing Sing’ type thing with an open-length Gene Krupa style drum solo in the middle, accompanied by the band clapping on two and four.  We knew it had all started to get a bit silly when some of the musicians started glancing at their watches on one and three…

And finally… à propos of nothing, here’s a great clip of the most entertaining band I can remember seeing since the Chevalier Brothers in the early ‘80s.

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