The Work Band

Much has been written (and little has been read) about putting together a band at work.

My company has a yearly back-slapping outing at a large hotel ballroom and invites everyone from everywhere across the country.  It’s actually quite inspiring, in that groups put on sketches relative to the company.  At the end, judging ensues, at which point the official entertainment starts.  Since long before I started with the Twilight Zone<tm>, entertainment consisted of a bunch of guys who worked there playing forty five minutes until the judging ended and the announcements started.

Sounds pretty simple, doesn’t it?

It is simple - everywhere except where I work.  I performed in this conglomeration (to call it a band would be a bit of a stretch) for a few years until it truly struck me; the esteem in which we were held.  As we were falling onto the stage to start playing, someone told us they ran long and we should cut the set to almost half of our material.  I retired that evening.

Flash forward quite a few years and here we are `getting the band back together’.  When I say getting the band back together, of course I mean two dudes from before and several new ones.  The conglomoration appears as if it could be pretty amazing as there are two guitarists, one drummer, and a bassist who sings and can play some keyboards.

But you and I know it’s not going to go down that easy.

I floated the idea and BING - several issues immediately made themselves apparent:

• it’s almost impossible to get the core group together in one spot on one evening
• one of the group is religious and won’t perform certain songs
• even though practice is right after work, the drummer can’t make it til 6:30
• there is a miniscule practice p.a. system that we can’t actually locate

Now that was just the normal stuff that popped up.  Because I work with special people, I got several special responses from female singers.  This set off internal alarms because of all of my previous interactions with female singers.  To put it mildly, they haven’t gone well.  Some haven’t gone at all.  Some left me wishing they hadn’t gone at all.

Both ladies identified themselves as singers.  This would normally be a good thing but where I work, it is tantamount to self-identifying as bomb-testers: in other words, I’ll believe it when I feel it.  I do make a point of asking frivolous questions like `can you sing?’.   Sometimes it makes a difference.

Have I mentioned that both also stated that they sing in church?  Uh-oh.  We’re going to look like four different bands because only two of us are `allowed’ to play all the songs.  The certainty and assertiveness of the ladies put me off immediately: I have never had anyone with any talent be this assertive.   I heard that one of them wears sparkles in her hair and clothes.

The instrumentalists are meeting this week.  I have to somehow explain that although we are performing from a classic rock point of view, certain classic rock chestnuts will not play well in front of our target audience.  You know, Stairway to Heaven and Freebird… they’re songs to avoid, not to recommend.

Next week will be explaining to the women why Miley Cyrus just isn’t going to make it either.  Let’s think Aretha, please.

For some reason, it just occurred to me that one of the things I hated most about bands was babysitting.

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Meanwhile my `regular’ band has practice tonight.

I just got off a week of being `not there’ with some sort of flu-like thing.  My wife said my eyes looked cloudy.  I felt cloudy.  I was so incapable of using my brain I could have run for public office.

So this is my first day back to work, brain intact, and I’m in no rush to sweat for three hours of band practice if I’m going to be the only one sweating, so to speak.

I emailed the troops to ask if they had learned the songs we decided on.  Immediate response from one was `sorry, I didn’t get around to it - I’ll try before practice’.  Nothing from anyone else.

I suppose that was an improvement from what I feared (”What songs?  The ones we agreed on as we were packing up last week?  I was too busy at work” or “My daughter sawed her finger off.  Again.”).

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More fun will definitely ensue.  Stay tuned…