Re: What is the weirdest...


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Posted by Joe S. on December 05, 2000 at 00:02:38:

In Reply to: What is the weirdest... posted by Joe S. on December 04, 2000 at 21:05:20:

About twenty years ago on the then newly-opened north loop of the perimeter interstate here in Memphis, there was a rash of "bumper" car-jackings, due to occasional low volumes of traffic. (That's when some criminal "accidentally" [gently] runs into the back of your car, both of you pull over, he shoots you, and then he takes your car.) I was offered a Christmas eve midnight mass job in the cathedral in that part of town for (like Tony's gig) a lot of money. Needless to say, I was packin' heat - and without a permit to carry. The neighborhood was so bad that I didn't want to leave the piston in the car, so I played the job with a loaded pistol in my interior suit coat pocket.

The circumstances above are sort of weird, but when you combine them with the funny part below, this gig qualifies above other weird Christmas gigs. (' even qualifies above the one where I had to put a fire out that had caught during a service from an alter-mounted Yule-Log's candles burning all the way down. - Really.):

[Back to the story] Most all of the good trumpet players were out of town spending Christmas with relatives, and the only one they could find to do the gig was a recent Louisville grad who allowed air to hiss out of the sides of his mouth when he played. (Sorry, Louisville.) The trombonist, as tremendous player named Jon Lindsey (He is teaching at a university down in Louisiana now - ' anyone know him?... ' absolutely a NUT.) would turn slightly towards me - everytime he was not playing and I was - and blow air in my face out of the corner of his mouth. If this weren't funny enough, Jon has one glass eye (on "my" side of him) which somehow he was managing to roll into his head with the plain side out.


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