[Dixielandjazz] Break up the band?

[ROBERT R. CALDER]

I suppose if in a strange town 

you could ask a band if there's anywhere local you could sit in
for the sake of your chops et cetera 

 -- does Steve Voce remember John Barnes' comic story
of keeping in practice in a junkshop on a (?)Spanish holiday 

and the shock occasioned somebody looking in the window?
John told it in the course of a broadcast with Kenny Davern,
who'd mentioned the holiday and the prospect of Barnes without chops. 


I used to sympathise with a friend of mine 

who used to moan to me about a colleague of his 

(now dead, and the band they played in predeceased him)

who kept on saying yes to offers to sit in..  


The man with the welcome mat chest wig had it easy 

because the interlopers often enough played in his place 

but as a necessary presence in accompaniment 

my friend the subsequent ex-member couldn't but listen 

for fear the noise would deteriorate yet further 

to the sometimes glaring demonstrations 
of his not for much longer colleague's generosity. 


Some people given initial token encouraged 

never play any different, never get better 

and far too often deliver another trying chorus 

or several, rather than refrain 

and if you fancy sitting in, and band members say no 

you might reflect on their possible past experience;
or if somebody really banal gets in ahead of you 

you might not want to stay on, far less sit in...  


And it can be hard to tell somebody to stop --
or not to be blamed for what they played 

before you gave up trying to tell them 

and realised they were deaf . . .  


somebody could write a novel about this 


Robert