Winding Down

A few nights ago, I was out on the deck at around 4 am. I was chatting with the karaoke host, she has been going through a rough patch relationship-wise and I’ve been offering my advice to her. After an intense talk about the expectations of relationships, I mentioned the allure of the ocean. It’s really hypnotizing; every time I see it I have this strange urge to toss myself into it. Now, before you start getting concerned about me having suicidal thoughts, she said she feels the exact same way and I know we’re not the only ones. There is something comforting about its vastness that fills me with a desire to be consumed by it. This must be where that old myth about sirens comes from; it is really like the ocean is beckoning me to it with a seductive song of death.

And this seduction pushes itself far past death, into the loins of the ship. The rhythm of the waves fills the staff with an insatiable lust; sex is practically all we talk about here. My co-workers are filled with a covetous confusion, obscuring what the actually want from themselves. Some of my new friends are absolutely clueless as to what they want from a partner. People are leaving in a few weeks but establishing what seems to be serious relationships, others are turning down women left and right because they don’t want an empty lay but they don’t want a girlfriend either. Some of my co-workers cheat on their significant others who are waiting back at home, others try to bang guests every cruise, and others sleep with people they don’t like just because they can. Those lucky enough to find a partner on the ship fall into extremely intense relationships and spend virtually all their free time together. Some have learned to stay away from the other sex all together due to the unavoidable grapevine on the ship. Who’s fucking who is a frequent topic of discussion, so once someone knows it’s more or less public knowledge.

The men on the ship vastly outnumber the women, so you kind of need to get chosen by a girl for anything to happen. I can feel eyes beginning to fall onto me. It seems the closer you are to the end of your contract, the more desirable you become. I guess it makes sense; almost no one out here wants a serious relationship, and dealing with the awkwardness of having to see an old fling every day is something that no one wants. There are girls I have my eyes on, but the majority of them are unavailable, and honestly I’m not very keen on pursuing something. If it fell into my lap (haha) I would consider it, but as of right now, I’m cool as a cucumber.

As far as my post-resignation social life is concerned, I am much happier than I was a few weeks ago. Knowing that my contract is soon up has filled me with outgoingness, which basically means I’ve been drinking. A lot. I think I’ve been up binging until 4 am (at least) every day this week. A few nights ago, I go so drunk that I had to purge, so I pulled the trigger and felt like I was a senior in high school all over again. My drinking isn’t really driven by a desire to get drunk, just to alleviate boredom. Ship life is dull as I have previously written, so I’ve been avoiding that reality by sleeping all day and drinking myself into a stupor at night. It’s not nearly as bad as it sounds, I’ve had some fantastic times doing it, and some hazy mornings. It feels empty because it is, but it’s better to share emptiness with others than in my room by myself.

I’ve been spending a lot of my nights with the showband singer and one of the male dancers. They are both total sweethearts and fun to be around. The past few nights we’ve sat in the singer’s room ‘til the wee hours talking about whatever it is that drunken people talk about. Besides the two of them, there are a few ladies who work in the spa (they’re called “Steiners” officially) who are cute and like to hang out with the musicians, and the art auction workers are a lot of fun and easy to talk to. I’ve befriended a few of the other dancers as well. They are a diverse bunch, some of them are great and others are borderline psychopathic. This coming week the new cast is coming to the ship, and thus begins what a few people have called the “dancer derby.” As I said earlier, sex is mostly what we musicians talk about, so in the coming days there will be a half-joke of a race to see who can get one of the new girls first.

Besides drinking in excess, we’ve spent some nights playing Settlers. I’ve gotten a small group of people to know the game, and we’ve played enough that they’ve actually learned its intricacies. Co-op videogames are also pretty common, as well as music listening/hard-drive exchange parties. Sometimes, a group of us will cram into a room and watch a movie on our 15inch televisions. A few nights ago there was a wine & cheese party in the piano bar, and the pianist played us a set of rock standards, it was quite fun. A few nights before that one, we made a trip up to the “fancy” steakhouse on board. The food was decent to pretty good; my steak was a bit bland but cooked just how I like it. The highlight of my meal was probably dessert. I had house-made mango sorbet that was phenomenal but the portion size was laughable, smaller than a gumball. After that, one of the trumpet players and I split an over-priced glass of cognac. The bottle had never been opened, and the drink was served to us steamed, which wafted a heady aroma into our face as we drank it. The buzz was light and airy, much unlike the belligerence of whiskey that I’ve been used to here.

As things get closer and closer to the end of my contract, the band is really starting to fool around with the material more. At karaoke, we’ve started to switch instruments. I plunk notes out on the keyboard while the pianist has fun playing sloppy drum beats. We play a few rudimentary hip hop songs where the band basically just loops a sample the whole time, so those are kinda begging to be shat upon. As for the dance sets, I’ve been getting more and more creative with the beats I’m playing. The paper for most of the songs is BORING, and I could stand the rote playing for only so long. I’ve been tossing inverted paradiddles in a lot, I like those things. Apparently, I have absolutely no room to improvise on the production shows though. I played out a little bit during our last one, and P promptly told me to stop in a friendly yet passive-aggressive manner. I was feeling mopey about it, so the second show I just kinda went on autopilot. The rest of the rhythm section has room to do some improvisation, so that got me a bit mad that the drummer is always the one at fault. P has a tendency to scrutinize my mistakes and let everyone else’s slide, but I realized it’s silly to get upset about it. I’ll be leaving in two weeks, so it’s not worth it to get dark about stuff like that.   

On the other hand, the jazz sets have been cool. Last week, I did not play my best. There was a total lack of communication amongst the players, and that, combined with a dearth of jazz experience led to a pretty lackluster set. However, tonight there was much better communication between musicians. Tonight, while I was not satisfied with the solos I played at all, they were significantly better than what I have played in the past few weeks.  Unfortunately, most of the musicians are just expecting me to play along to whatever they are doing and no experiment along with the music. Honestly, I have 2 weeks left here, and I don’t want to play underneath people when it comes to jazz. Sure, in more concrete performances I’ll play out less, but when things are left up to us, I won’t give a damn about anything at all except playing the way I want to. Tonight, I got some weird looks from the rhythm section because I wasn’t letting them off easy by keeping straight time. Granted, I made some rhythmic mistakes, but I refuse to just be a background player for them. They are all extremely skilled musicians, probably much better than I am from an objective standpoint, but I refuse to ignore my musical voice because they don’t want to count. This ensemble has two more weeks to play this set; hopefully we will form into something more cohesive in the coming shows. Right now, it just feels like a bunch of egos, mine included, butting against each other.

With only two weeks left, there are parts of this job that make me totally regret quitting, and others that make me feel that these last two weeks can’t end soon enough. I’ll make the best out of the time I have here, and the music we make will hopefully be enjoyable. Until next time, this is drunk me signing off.

-D 

One Foot Out The Door

So Yeah, I’ve quit. As I said last week, I gave my notice a few hours after posting. It went much smoother than I expected it to.  I told P that I was leaving for a job in another field, and he, having worked in the culinary arts in the past, took it well. He was much less stressed about it than I anticipated him to be, saying that he appreciated the notice I was giving and that ship life is definitely not for everyone. He nonchalantly printed off the resignation paperwork, and we made small talk about that kid who got shot for wearing a hoodie.

The paperwork included my exit “interview.” I had to answer questions you would expect a large corporation to ask it’s leaving employees, like “What could we have changed to prevent you from leaving?”, “What do you think of your direct supervisor?”, and “Describe the morale in your department.” I saw this as an opportunity to open up a line of communication between P and the cruise director. As I said earlier, there is some tension between the two, so I spoke my mind in a polite and constructive manner. Since filling out the paperwork, things seem much better between the two of them. Afterwards, P checked the “employment terminated mid-contract” box, which basically means the company won’t hire me back after I leave, we shook hands and I left.

The next day I was called back to his office/room to clarify some of my responses. P was a bit concerned about a comment I made about tension between middle and upper management. We spoke about the difficulties of keeping professional distance in an environment where your co-workers are your only social outlet, and how he can’t really speak about his issues with the cruise director with the musicians. It was productive, but I felt that maybe I should have bit my tongue during the interview just to avoid conflict. I mean, I’m leaving in a few weeks and then I’ll never have to deal with these issues again, why bother with them now? When we were done speaking, he showed me a flash video called “ship of darkness” that is about disgruntled musicians and ship life. It was funny, and I grabbed it from him, so when I get home I can show people what it was like to live on the ship.

I was a bit concerned about how I was going to tell my co-workers. I waited a day or two before I started running my mouth. The first person I spoke to was the karaoke host, a middle aged woman who was recently laid off, so she sold her house and came out to the ship. We were eating lunch together and it just seemed like the right moment to let the cat out, she was understanding and told me to follow what I wanted to do.  Then I started to let the musicians know over the course of the next few days. Everyone was surprised that I was leaving, but when I explained that I found another job that is more in line with my desired career path, they seemed cool with it but simultaneously disappointed. Since then, I’ve been letting a select few people know as it comes up, but I don’t really plan on spreading the word too much. I’m not very well known on the ship, so I doubt many people would be interested in my departure.

The few days after I quit, it was hard to motivate myself to really play out. Instead, I’ve kind of just been going through the motions yet again. Now that I really know the production shows, I don’t really need to read along with them anymore. I get through them pretty well this way, but there are still a few hits that I miss or a fill that isn’t played exactly as it’s written. Honestly, no matter how well I play, the band is wallpaper for the production shows. We are one of the only ensembles in the fleet that is actually in the house speakers when the shows are going on. Most sound guys just play the backing tracks and mute the band, but we are at about 30% volume to 70% backing. Even with this, we still don’t really matter, and if we were to not play at all, it really wouldn’t be a big deal. Because of this, I try to just not make any glaring mistakes and not play in any holes. I am at the point where I can do this without the sheet music, so instead of trying to learn the drum solos note for note, or get every 16^th note exactly right, I just go with it and it turns out well enough.

As for the karaoke sets, they are what they are. I have a bit more creative freedom during these, but I am still playing to a click and not playing like I mean it. Our most requested songs are “Margaritaville” and “Sweet Caroline,” but during karaoke this past week, we’ve had a lot of young girls singing Ke$ha, Lady Gaga and Katy Perry. The songs we play are not stimulating for the band at all, and are meant to be dumbed down versions of pop songs that are easy for the guests to follow. One moment stands out that epitomizes the disconnect between musicians and the singers; this one 11 year old boy came up and sang “DJ got us falling in Love” by Usher. For this song I play four on the floor, with occasional snare hits on 2 and 4, real boring stuff. Well, the entire crowd went BALLISTIC for this kid; the dance floor was fuller than it has ever been, even for the dance sets. Afterwards, I had a chat with the keyboardist about the power of shitty club music, and how people go nuts for it. I guess not everyone has good musical tastes. Tomorrow I have to play songs like that for three hours. Doing this is much more draining than playing music I want to be playing; I leave those sets feeling sluggish and unfulfilled.

I want to elaborate a bit more on the dance sets. As I’ve said before, it is a collection of accessible Motown, Disco and RocknRoll. We try to pick music that everyone will know and enjoy. Sometimes, the production singers will come up and do a few songs with us, but mostly it is our showband singer doing the songs. Here is the setlist for our last set in no particular order…

She Drives Me Crazy – Fine Young Cannibals

I’m So Excited – The Pointer Sisters

Mustang Sally – Wilson Pickett

Locomotion – Little Eva

I Can’t Help Myself – The Four Tops

Sway – Dean Martin

Shake Your Tail Feather – Blues Brothers

The Greatest Love of All – Whitney Houston

Respect – Otis Reading

Rescue Me – Fontella Bass

Last Dance – Donna Summer

Get ready – Rare Earth

Neither One of Us – Gladys Knight & The Pips

Shake Your Booty – KC & The Sunshine Band

What’d I Say – Ray Charles

Wooly Bully – Sam the Sham & The Pharaohs

Ooh Baby Baby – Linda Ronstadt

Sunshine of my Life – Stevie Wonder

I Wish – Stevie Wonder

Late in the Evening – Paul Simon

Midnight Train to Georgia – Gladys Knight & The Pips

Walking on Sunshine – Katrina & The Waves

I Will Survive - Gloria Gaynor

Here are some of the songs that we didn’t play for the last performance but are standards for the set…

Achy Breaky Heart – Billy Ray Cyrus

Ain’t too Proud to Beg – The Temptations

Brown Eyed Girl – Jimmy Buffet

Brick House – The Commodores

Crazy Little Thing Called Love – Queen

Celebration – Cool and the Gang

Crazy – Patsy Cline

Chain of Fools – Aretha Franklin

Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me – Elton John

Disco Inferno – Tina Turner

Electric Slide – Marica Griffith

Freeway of Love – Aretha Franklin

Heard it Through the Grapevine – Marvin Gaye

Georgia – Ray Charles

Get Over It – The Eagles

I Feel Good – James Brown

It Had to be You – Classy Brass

Johnny B. Goode – Chuck Berry

Land of 1000 Dances – Wilson Picket

Love Shack – B-52s

Louie Louie – The Kingsmen

Mony, Mony – Billy Idol

My Girl – The Temptations

New York, New York – Frank Sinatra

Only You – The Platters

Old Time Rock & Roll – Bob Seger

Pretty Woman – Roy Orbison

Play That Funky Music White Boy – Wild Cherry

Proud Mary – Ike & Tina Turner

R.O.C.K. in the USA – John Mellencamp

Soul Man – Blues Brothers

Sweet Home Chicago – Blues Brothers

She Works Hard for the Money – Donna Summer

Sharp Dressed Man – Z Z Top

Sir Duke – Stevie Wonder

Save the Last Dance for Me – Michael Bublé

September – Earth, Wind & Fire

Sitting on the Dock of the Bay – Otis Redding

Shout – Otis Redding

The Twist – Chubby Checker

Twist & Shout – The Isley Brothers

That’s the Way I Like It – KC & the Sunshine Band

Wonderful Tonight – Eric Clapton

Walk the Dinosaur – Was (Was Not)

What is Hip? – Tower of Power

YMCA – Village People

123 – Miami Sound Machine

25 or 6 to 4 - Chicago

There are about 30 more songs in our book that we only play occasionally. As you can see, it’s a pretty diverse mix of recognizable pop music from the 50s through the 80s. The music, save for a few songs, is pretty boring for the drummer. I mostly play backbeats with basic eight-note bass drum patterns. I throw in some ghost notes and fills to keep it a bit more interesting, but there is only so much I can do before drawing the focus away from the singer and the melody.  Regardless, this set feels more like actually making music than the other two do because there is no click and the sheet music is much less rigid.

This past week I was on Port Manning, which means I couldn’t leave the ship. Basically, if an emergency happens while we’re in port; the ship needs to know that some of the crew will be on board to assist with the evacuation. Part of my duty was to perform “just ask” during embarkation day. Basically, the passengers turn their brains off as soon as they get on the ship, so we help them read maps and signs that are posted all over the ship. I stood by the elevators and told people we “You’re on the second floor, the buffet is on the ninth floor!” about 200 times. The whole week was a bit boring, but I didn’t get claustrophobic like I expected myself to. What I did do was sleep, a lot, like 13 hours a day. We visited Costa Maya for the only time during my contract, so my MD gave me his ID and let me get off the ship there. It was basically exactly like the other ports, very touristy. Everyone saw my skin and saw the color of money, so that was a bit annoying, but I got to sit on the beach while I surfed the internet and read, so I can’t really complain at all.

We had a new fly on this past week, JD. He was a nice guy, but not the best singer. We rehearsed for about two hours before the performance then it was show time. I don’t like that aspect of this job very much. As with anything, with a performance, you get what you put into it. Putting only two hours of rehearsal into something usually results in a sloppy and unprepared show, but I guess that’s all the time we have to devote to a one-time thing like this. As you could probably guess, the show was meh at best.

During my exit interview, I spoke with P about some of these things I just mentioned. What it boiled down to was that the musicians are just not fulfilled by the music we are playing. A few days later, the cruise director called a meeting to talk to us about adding another set to our schedule. He said that for this one, we could do anything that we wanted. We settled on a real book set, so we threw together a list of standards and rehearsed them briefly. Oh man, it was sooo good to finally play some jazz! This was the first time that I fully performed on the ship, I was playing out like I never have on this gig. The other musicians finally “got” my drumming, and the response to the set was overwhelmingly positive. It will be quite nice to have this outlet for my last few weeks on the ship. My only gripe is that I never got a chance to play a drum solo, what’s up with that?

So, I only have three or four weeks left on the boat, I’m trying to make it as enjoyable as possible, so I’ve been spending time with the people I’ve gotten to know and I’m introducing myself to those I’ve been meaning to meet. A few nights ago I had a listening party with a few of the musicians, we stayed up until 4 in the morning just playing each other songs; it was pretty fun. Moments like those make me think twice about my decision to leave. I have thought once or twice that I would like to stay, but that is only natural when making such a life altering decision like I am. I have thought much more about how amazing of an opportunity I have coming up with this new job, and how I am going to run such a tight yet fun kitchen.

Today I went snorkeling in the Grand Cayman. It was much nicer than the snorkeling in Roatan; there were many more fish and the reef was much bigger. At the dive off point, there were a bunch of huge Tarpon, they must have been like 4 feet long. It was a bit intimidating diving off and having these fish who could seriously mess you up right there. They were docile though, they hang out there because the dive center keeps them fed as a tourist attraction. The solo guitarist and I stayed out at the reef for about an hour, it was relaxing to swim a bit and see some big schools of fish.

Those yellow fish are about the size of ones that would be in an average home aquarium

Grand Cayman Fish Market with fillets that were caught today

Ships anchored off of Grand Cayman

A few of the many diamond shops the Caymans have to offer

That’s pretty much it for this past week.

Love from the Gulf,

-D