Click images for desktop size: "Skull (Detail)" by Cezanne In England our bass player had a friend. She was a paramedic. Her life long dream was to sing in front of a rock band. A coworker of hers was having a party on a rented boat and told her that she could perform if she could put together the band and could do it for no money.
So she asked our bass player and he asked me. I thought the woman was alright and after she explained that this was a dream and part of a plan to impress a man she had a crush on, I was in.
As usual I played rhythm. We went to the first rehearsal and we were a little bit surprised. The rest of the band, the drummer, keyboards and lead guitar were strictly amateurs. This was there dream too, I guess.
They were enthusiastic and pretty untalented.
Really enthusiastic.
Ol and I looked at the charts and were surprised that we had to cover Sk8er Boi and Like A Pill, but she had some standard charts so we were able to get through them with no big problem. The rest of the band, as amateur musicians tend to, got worse with rehearsal. I had to play drums on a couple of the tunes because the drummer couldn't keep the beat or do the fills or grace notes, let alone handle the breaks. But the woman handled it all well, bossed the band real good and she got a sound she was happy with.
Come show night the crowd was about 200 strong, mostly doctors and nurse and heavily female. The stage was a 6 inch riser.
Neither Ol or I were too stressed. It was "just a laff" for us. Maybe if we hadn't been so busy harassing each other we would have noticed that our band mates were having serious anxiety attacks.
The first number was a nightmare. Ol and I may not be much good but we keep the beat and the rhythm rock solid. The rest of the band was rushing as if the best thing that could happen would be to get this whole thing over with as quickly as possible. I even used the old Chico Marx line at the end of the second number, "Well, I sure beat you guys that time!"
The third number was Sk8er Boi and I had to sing the harmony parts (all of them I think) and she was going through the lyrics so fast that as soon as I'd catch up she'd go faster.
Then there came the ultimate disaster: A request from the audience.
They wanted "Sweet Child Of Mine" for the guest of honor . . . I thought cool. Easy enough to fake and the lead guitarist gets to wail on a real easy pentatonic scale. Except he refused to play it . . . He said it was too hard.
Of course I got asked if I could play it. I said sure and did my standard imitation of hard rock lead guitarists everywhere. Like a fool I kept trying to get the lead guitarist to step in and take over. In my experience even the worst guitarist will generally jump in and improvise a bad lead on this sort of tune.
Then our lead singer, the one who roped us into this stopped singing! And then gave me an elbow to the kidneys to take over.
The tune went down well and we got a lot of stamped feet and whistles.
Now for this story to have a real point there should have been an EMI executive in the crowd who was so blown away with me stepping up at the right time that he offered me a 10 figure deal.
What really happened was that a bunch of drunk female doctors and nurses pinched or patted my butt, and we all know how much I enjoy that . . . then at the end when I was trying to get my amp and gear to the car I had to disentangle unwelcome arms from around my neck and keep twisting my head away from mouths that reeked of beer and whiskey while they tried to jam a tongue down my throat/ear/nose or lick my cheek. Then the lead guitarist announced that he would never play with me again because I had upstaged him! It didn't help that I burst out laughing when he said this. He was serious. I guess he thought all the drunken women actually belonged to him.

Click images for desktop size: "Flowing Paradise" by Wirestyle But the woman was flushed with pleasure. She'd had her dream. She'd stood in front of a crowd, fronted a rock band and sang her songs, so it was worth it.
Anytime someone accomplishes a dream whether its big or small its always worth it. People forget that.
Sometimes we forget to dream.
What else is there?

I've been feeling pretty rotten. I saw the doctors and after all the tests its not an onset of the leukemia. Its not that bad. It just infections running rampant through my system. Unless I'm prepared to live in a plastic bubble I'll have to deal with that for the rest of my life.
Its dealable, especially when you have a dog to watch over you at night and tell you good jokes.
I've been approached, with no elegance, to coach a Pop Warner team. I have to think about it. Can I handle it. I think teaching the little ones is hard work, but a lot of fun. There's nothing like giving a big pre game speech and looking out at a team of crooked helmets and kids wearing their shoulder pads backwards.
I worry about handling the rather awesome responsibility of such young children.

I still haven't missed any work.
I only seem to miss communicating with people.

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