[Dixielandjazz] music math

[Richard Broadie]

Whatta story.  Yes, I must have been in your band, having had many similar experiences but always somehow managing to get paid.  

Most recently I was booked as a single into the world famous Racquet Club in Palm Springs where I had played many happy seasions in the past.  By week 6 I still  had not gotten paid.  I finally located the corp headquarters which proved to be "Spirit of the Dove" nursing home chain. an organization that knew nothing about managing a resort hotel.
 By directly threatning the controller of the corp indicating that they were in violation of a written contract I eventially got paid.  A couple of months ago, they closed their doors for good.  Seems that, to my considerable joy, their food and beverage manger got stiffed completely.  He may have been the same guy who "stole" the pianos.  He was that kind of a guy.  While it is true that sometimes the good die young, it's also true that sometimes, the good get paid.  Fortunately its too late for me to worry about dying young so now I can afford to be good - and paid!  :-)   
Dick B

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Hot Dang Dick!

Are you sure you didn't play in my band back in the sixties and early seventies?

I had to furnish my first home and all the band members homes and vans in what we fondly referred to as "Early Holiday Inn."  Back in those good old days, I booked a chain of 111 Holiday Inns, and unfortunately the lounges and ballrooms were managed by the Food and Beverage managers, also better known to musicians worldwide as Clueless IDIOTS about music and or musicians.  Now this fine group of TALENT BUYERS usually demanded higher kickbacks than the agent's commission, and often even the agent had to kick back to them on top of his earned commission.

   We all know this of course does not set well with musicians but it went along with the way the business was operated in those days, along with payola (we all remember that dirty little word don't we)?  By the way it is back and Bigtime, actually never went away, just got moved to a different department.

Well, these self proclaimed "Entertainment Directors" always thought of musicians and treated them like chamber maids and dishwashers.  They would book all the private parties, dances and weddings and conventions, trade shows, etc., at the hotels and often would also screw up the catering, food service, decorations and all the other things they liked to try and package as the Do-All guy in Food and Beverage, of course getting a kickback in cash or goods from everyone.

Often their clients would not be honorable past the deposit they put down to have the affair, and then there would be a big fight at the dance or wedding or whatever and the Hotel Food & Bev. guy would get stiffed on the balance of his contract, oops time to not pay the sub contractors, Musicians always first unless you had been slick enough to get all of yours up front, ( Which I learned to do, with a Money Back guarantee of course).

Whenever this happened to me or one of my groups, I would book them back for him with for a future event to show there were no hard feelings, and show up for the next gig with two vans, One to carry our equipment and the other to collect collateral for the none payment of the last gig.  If your good you can get two lobby couches and an upright piano into a standard nine passenger van, in about five minutes with two guys while the others load the equipment in the other van.  I think this is how and why "Roadies" became an intricate part of so many bands, ( to carry equipment out not in) ha ha.

Anyway, I recall working several times for this one particular sleazeball, who booked me for a big Filipino Wedding Dinner and reception for $3,000.00, and when we showed up and played the party was going great and 5 or 6 hundred people were dancing and having a great old time, when one of the lovely Brides ex-boyfriends decided he knew why she should not be wed to the groom, so he shot the groom. Then he and a few of his buddies started fighting their way out of the panicked crowd with knives.  Needless to say the party was over for us and it was lawsuits forever time for the hotel.

The Food and Bev. guy sleazed out the back door with the promise to pay me three days later after all the fuss died down.  which of course he did not do.

After numerous visits and calls to him for the payment he finally just told me he was not going to pay me at all and that if I ever wanted to work that Hotel again I should just forget that gig and move on to the future ones he could get for me.  Of course I had already paid all my guys with checks, so now I was out of pocket big time for those days.

I screamed and yelled as much as I could to let him know how really angry I was with him, then got him to give me five more dates for $3,500.00 each to make the money back over time.  I then asked him to sign a letter addressed to me to the fact that I would get this work so I could take it to my bank and get a loan to pay the sidemen's checks before they bounced.  To keep me from breaking up everything in his office and the lobby of the hotel he did so, and promised that we would be friends and make lots of money together in the future.  But we just had to keep this little transaction and the Filipino Wedding gig quiet.

Well, I showed up the next Sunday afternoon to play another big dance and brought two extra vans, and two roadie helpers who were given instructions to go down the hall from our ballroom and borrow four upright pianos from the other unused ballrooms and take them down to the garage and put them in our vans before load out time after the dance.  And if there were any microphones or PA equipment sitting around it should also fall off the stage and into the van.  It was clearly understood however that on this or any other occasion for this kind of employment, nothing was EVER to be removed from the Ballroom that we were contracted to perform in, "I MUST STAY FREE SO WE ALL STAY FREE."

I knew there would not be any music events requiring the pianos till at least the next weekend, so they would more than likely not even be missed till the next Friday.  The hotels were always short staffed on administration folks on weekends and the crews that worked the weekends including the food and beverage guys usually were off on Monday or came in very late in the day.

We drove out of the garage with our band stuff and went home, but bright and early the next morning I had those two vans deliver those four pianos to a local music store whose owner used to love to buy instruments at below pawn shop prices for not asking where they came from.  I learned about this the hard way too, by going there and buying some of my own stolen equipment back a couple of times.

Now since he knew that I knew about his activities, he did not hesitate to roll out his big wad of cash and buy all four pianos for $500.00 each, but he was slick enough to make me write out and sign a receipt for the money selling him the pianos.  Being a bit stupid I of course agreed and signed the receipt.  However, while he was busy gloating over his good deal that was going to make him a fat return for the pianos he bought so cheap, I made out the receipt in the Food & beverage guys name and pulled out his letter to me and traced his signature onto the receipt for the cash and then carefully traced over it with the same pen I used to make out the receipt, folded it up and slipped it into the music store owners pocket with a wink.  We glad handed each other and I left.

Later that afternoon I made an anonymous phone call to the local police and told them I had been shopping for a piano and found some that seemed really cheap at that store, and that while I was looking them over I noticed there was a metal tag attached to them reading that they were the property of this hotel uptown.  As a good citizen I thought they might want to know just in case the hotel happened to report them missing or something.

Well, needless to say the Food and Beverage guy was quickly terminated from his position at the hotel, and I made an appointment with the hotel manager and got a contract with them to book all their entertainment for the next two years.

Yes they did get their pianos back too, and it was most enjoyable sitting in the courtroom watching the Music store owner and the food & beverage guy squirm when I denied knowing anything at all about the situation since I was not at the music store and had no idea why my old friend the music store owner would say that he bought those pianos from me when he had a receipt with  clearly someone else's signature on it.

When called to the witness stand I sealed their fate by proving that absolutely nothing was missing from the ballroom where I had been employed that afternoon and that I certainly could not have taken the pianos because my van was full of Drums, and a large B-3 Organ with two Leslie speakers, guitar amplifiers and bas amplifiers, so how could I possible get four pianos in there too.

And, I even asked them if they had checked the pianos to see if they had my fingerprints on them anywhere, nope nothing there except the store owners that they could identify especially since the guys who took them out of the van worked for the music store.  Then the judge chimed in and asked the District Attorney "if he had any idea how many sets of fingerprints might be on those pianos since they were used by many piano players in the course of their use at the hotel ?"

Revenge is Sweet, I learned to never Stay Mad but do Get Even.

Cheers,

Tom