First Day on the Boat

Man, today has been a total overload. That shuttle I mentioned in the last post took me to the boat and left me at the crew security check point. After a quick frisk and check, accidentally walked through a fork lift only area and boarded the ship. That confusion was pretty indicative of the next few hours on ship. I went through a metal detector and my bags got scanned, then after ambling around the hallways for a few minutes, I found the porters office. There I handed in my passport and medical papers. Then I think I signed my life away, that contract was far too long to actually read.

Then the music director showed up, I’ll call him P. He’s a pale, stringy, hairless man who plays the trombone. P began to show me around the ship, showed me where my cabin was and started to tell me the rules on the ship. He has a generous sense of humor and seems easy going, should be a good boss as long as I show up on time and know my music.

After about half an hour, he took me to one of the lounges on board where I began my corporate training. An all-business Chinese man introduced himself, gave us some packets and played some blah training video that I’ve already forgotten. Then the head safety officer talked to us about fires and men going overboard in a thick Italian accent. After that I was taken to my muster point and the passenger safety drill began. I didn’t know what to do at all, so they let me go back to my room.

After about half an hour of waiting, rehearsal started.  It was there that I was told that we would be performing a show that night…and that we wouldn’t be rehearsing that show at all. Instead, we jumped into a bunch of Motown and Rock standards. Let me tell you, the band can play. There is a good mix of young men around my age and mid-life bachelors. There’s also one female singer that’s in her 20s. I’ll post about the band more once I get to know them better. None of the playing is really difficult, but the volume of music I need to know is pretty intimidating.

Then we had a dinner break, I stayed behind for a few minutes to learn about clocking in and out. The food was alright I suppose, standard cafeteria fare. I was warned that washing my hands was EXTREMLY important to avoid GI infections, there was an outbreak just last cruise of about 50 passengers so I was extra careful concerning all that.

I went down to a different lounge and we did a quick live karaoke rehearsal with the rhythm section. I’m the only one listening to a click during this and I start the band for every song. There is a book of about 200 songs that we sight read, it’s all pretty simple stuff. I think this should be a fun set to do. Then the horns showed up and we rehearsed a funk set we do every week with a guest performer. Standard fare stuff, but I hear he is pretty hard on the drummer, we’ll see.

There was a short break where I went over the show music once or twice, put my pit uniform on, shaved and headed to the theater. The show started with a drum roll and I was off. It was all kinda cheesy, military style snare rolls and 2&4 rock beats. I stumbled through it without any major mistakes, I had to sit out once or twice but luckily there was a backing track. Then the cruise director came on stage and made fun of the audience for a little bit, the passengers ate it up. I was warned before the show that the cruise director has no idea how to cue the band. He tried to cue us once to play some walk-on stuff and we totally missed it. Then the keys player tried to count us in late and just he and the bass player started. We got cut and the cruise director made some snarky comments about the band, P rolled his eyes and the show went on.

After some crowd pleasing antics, a comedian came on. He started his show by singling me out. “Hey, the band got a new member tonight, so in honor of him…What do you call someone who hangs out with musicians? A Drummer!” Silence. I was tempted to play a rim shot, but held back, don’t want to piss anyone off on my first day. So I just looked at him and smiled. He recovered and even made me laugh a few times before we played him off and the cruise director closed the show. We played the audience out with some broadway rock song.

So at this point I had been up since 4am and it was 11:30pm. We broke the stage down and I got pulled aside by the stage manager. Apparently they love to blow stuff up, but can’t use pyrotechnics unless everyone involved in the show watches some bland powerpoint video of pyrotechnics safety. It was riveting stuff, but I got through it.

So here I am now, in my room reading over my orientation packets and getting ready to sleep. My room gets no natural light at all, so I’m guessing that I will have no idea what time it is when I wake up. I don’t have work tomorrow until 5:30, but I should probably get up earlier to get my medical test over with and go over tomorrow’s show. It’s been a long day and my brain is full. Night guys.