Re: It shoulda been a Goff

[plev@ix.netcom.com (Pete Levin)]

<< Never mind.  I'm just venting.  Cheeez, what a night! >>

>Pete-- If it makes you feel any better, I hear a lot of stories 
>similar to yours. Jimmy McGriff told me his nightmare story about the 
>night he and Jimmy Smith were to play a "dueling B" set together at 
>Carnegie Hall (of all places) and one B-3 died, so they rolled out a 
>crappy piano and rolled the


Actually, Smith was scheduled to play there the next day.  After the 
night-of-the-sparkling-Hammond, I assume they found a replacement.  (I 
hope they did!)  He'll never know what he missed, bless him.

Small epilog.  The guy mixing house sound found me in the hotel bar 
that night.   Up in the audience, he'd been unaware of the big 
adventure.  He just wanted to tell me there was a loud hum in my 
Hammond that he couldn't seem to get rid of - and sorry 'bout that.  
(MY Hammond?)  What could I say?  I bought him a drink.  Nice kid.

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.  Of course I should have brought my V-3 
along, although without a soundcheck and no MIDI KB in sight I don't 
see how we could have got it up and running in time to do any good.  
But I should carry it.

And of course that wasn't the norm.  That axe had clearly been 
mistreated.  (It was being mistreated while I watched.  Plugging in a 
Leslie while the power is on is just plain stupid.)  The next night in 
Chicago I had a gem.  No rebuilder's name anyplace, but a nice clean 
set of tubes in the Leslie.  Didn't have the nosebleed volume a Goff 
could get to, but I didn't need that.  It sounded fine - simply because 
somebody was taking care of it.  People - including stage crews who 
certainly should know better - just assume that those big analog pieces 
of furniture are indestructable, or a least impervious to heavy handed 
treatment.  They rent a 9-foot Steinway for a festival and wouldn't 
dream of treating it roughly.  But the Hammond gets slammed around like 
an Anvil case.  Its really a shame.  

I know I'm preaching to the choir here.  Like I said, I just needed to 
vent a bit.

Pete