POWER-GLIDING AND WEIRD PLACES TO PLAY VIOLIN. PART 1

There was a smell coming from the kitchen, so I went to investigate. My housemate Laura was cooking. I limped in to make an espresso and to get a bit of sympathy for my torn ligament. There’s nothing good about the injury, except of the fact that people feel obliged to make a sympathetic face, to ask how you feel and to say things like: ‘You poor  thing’ and ‘Ow, I’m so sorry..’, followed by their own story about how recently they broke a leg or two. We’d try to outdo each other with gory details and in the end everyone will go home satisfied. Not this time though. Laura was too excited to notice my suffering as she had a story to share. She just came from the trip to the Alps where she went to play a bit of fiddle. Which is a perfectly normal thing to do. Only she did it while power-gliding at the altitude of 1000 meters and wearing an evening dress….

The dress is under the jacket, I believe…

I guess a normal person would ask: ‘Why…???’.

I asked: ‘What did you play?’. We discussed the tune, style, what else would’ve been appropriate and finally agreed that she made a right choice. We spoke about securing her violin to the glider, and we discussed acoustics at 1000 metres. Not to be outdone, I told Laura about the gig we had once in British prison, then about one on the arrested Russian fishing ship etc. After a while I realised I had enough material to write a decent-sized story or two. Laura finished cooking and went to practice for her next performance. In her case it’d probably be some sea-diving while wearing a nun’s outfit. (Laura is one of those people who like to go sea-swimming at the time when mere mortals like me are getting out their scarves and wooly jumpers). So, she went to practice and I limped back to my room to write about weird places to play violin.

Story one. Ireland.

About 30 years ago I had to perform in a front of a farmer and two hundred cows. In a field, while being late for the sound check.

We had no choice as we were lost, there was no one else around, our manager/driver was British-Italian and therefore geographically useless, and Sean the Farmer wanted to hear a bit of music before giving us directions to the place. We had no choice and he knew it. We took out our instruments and gave one Sean and two hundred Daisies and Bessies a little performance. After 10-15 minutes Sean decided we’ve earned our fee and told us how to get to the Arts Centre. We invited him to come to the concert. Without cows. He was delighted. He said: ‘I’ll go and make meself decent…’. 

We didn’t recognise him as he came in.  He was wearing a suit his father gave him 40 years ago and lacquer shoes which were a size too small. He combed his hair. He looked somber and nervous. He took a seat at the table right in a front of the stage. He was profusely sweating and looked ill at ease, so we decided to do something to relax him a bit. I made a little speech. I said something about dedicating our gig to the person who rescued us from being lost in the fields of Carlow. Sean stood up, turned around and made a bow. He was obviously very touched by the introduction. After one or two tunes we heard a bit of noise from one of the tables. Our friend Sean went to the offending party. We heard a thud and a squeak. Sean came back and gave us thumbs up. From this moment on, the crowd behaved in an exceptional manner. If there was noise, he’d turn around and stare. Apparently he was quite known in the area, so it was one of the quietest gigs we had in Ireland. After we finished, we invited Sean for a drink. He got very emotional. He said the music was ‘shite’, but he absolutely loved the fact that he was personally invited by the band. 

I still have a photo of us playing in a front of cows. Our manager took the picture. That was the only useful thing he did that day.

A little update. The photo is gone. Can’t find it. Very sad. No cows, so I include a photo of me and a horse instead.