[Dixielandjazz] No instruments on dance floor, please!!!

[Nancy Giffin]

NOTE -- Dance floors are NOT a place to store your instruments!

One musician learned this no-brainer lesson the hard way, at the same time I
learned that I should find a new boyfriend. It was Jubilee 2000 in the
Martinique Room, and some unknown Aussie musician with a handlebar mustache
did the unthinkable: he left what we later found out to be his "viola da
gamba" (small bass) standing on-end, against the wall, of a dimly-lit dance
floor. My boyfriend and I had been gleefully and uneventfully dancing all
evening until... uh-oh... "you-know-what" happened at the end of a fateful
dance-spin-gone-bad. The viola da gamba made a slowly-accelerating scraping
sound as it rotated on its axis along the wall and down toward the floor,
where it crashed with a bang and reverberated as it lay on its side, in the
horizontal position in which, perhaps, it should've been stored in the first
place -- somewhere else!

The scraping and crashing noises were unwelcome percussive additions to the
ongoing music, and greatly annoyed both musicians and audience alike, but
none were so red-faced and fuming as the small man with the big voice that
came running up, yelling Aussie insults in my face. Naturally, I felt
terrible, and that he had every right to be upset. I clasped my hands
together and shrank, as I apologized up and down, over and over, while the
Aussie yelled on and on. At this, my boyfriend exploded into a rage, for in
addition to being a wild man on the dance floor, my boyfriend was also a
musician and an ex-Marine who wasn't going to take all the blame for another
musician being so "thoughtless and irresponsible" as to leave an instrument
out of its case and in the line of fire, highly vulnerable to vicious attack
by vivacious, voluptuous villains. No way! A rather unharmonious
pushing-and-shouting match ensued between the two musicians. I kept trying
to chime in with an attempt at harmony, but to no avail, as the band played
on. It quickly degraded into an insult-swapping match: "What kind of a wimpy
bass is that anyway?" and "Where did you learn to dance anyway?" (ad
nauseum).

I was sober enough to realize that my boyfriend was ultimately going to pick
him up and crush this feisty "Oz"-ie (and his little bass, too) into gumbo
da gamba if I didn't pull him outta there, so I hooked onto his elbow and
said, "Let's Get Lost," as dragged him away from the scene that was
beginning to steal the show from the All-Star band on stage.

Basically, it comes down to: Who was the biggest idiot? A) The clumsy idiot
who did not notice that an expensive and delicate instrument was being
stored, unprotected, in the dark, near drunken dancers? Or, B) The idiot who
placed it there?

I'm no longer with that boyfriend ("Just Friends"), but every year at the
Jubilee, I get "That Old Feeling" and find myself on the lookout for the
handlebar-moustached viola da gamba player. Would he remember me? Does he
see me in his nightmares? Will I be hunted down by an Aussie posse if he
spots me and yells, "I Remember You"? I hope he learned something and is
singing "There'll Be Some Changes Made." Perhaps one of our Aussie listmates
will let me know who he is. At any rate, let everyone learn from "These
Foolish Things": NEVER STORE YOUR INSTRUMENTS ON THE DANCE FLOOR! (It's
called a "dance floor," not an "instrument-storage floor.")

Love and Happy New Year hugs and kisses,
Nancy