Anyhow, there were only 4 of us, so we packed the van and headed over the bridge to the City. Did I mention the theme of this party was supposed to be Zen? Do any of you out there know what Zen really is, and how it relates to parties, and how, for godsakes, Zen relates to taiko, especially Emeryville Taiko, the genkiest taiko group around? Susan mentioned this Zen idea when she was first talking about this gig. That should have been a warning. That should have set off all kinds of warning signals in my head, but did I listen? No. I saw dollar signs. I don't know about all you other taiko players out there, but good-paying gigs are few and far between, and opportunities to raise $600 for the dojo for half an hour's work sounded pretty good to me. When we arrived, we pulled up to some people setting up the check-in table and piled on the table were cheap prayer beads. Not prayer beads even--cheap, hip wooden jewelry that were supposed to be prayer beads. I was kind of appalled. I mean, it's one thing to have a Zen-themed party, but to be giving out prayer beads--what's up with that? Oh, but it gets worse--keep reading.
We were met by a guy named J--. Let's just call him J, and anyhow J had us set up next to a lovely pool, and directed us to one of our two hotel rooms, which were, by the way, reserved for all the people who were helping out at the event, so it was more like the waiting rooms you see in an American Idol episode. Anyway. Here's a picture of our lovely drum set-up:
Looks good, huh? But as soon as we wheeled in the big odaiko, the manager of the hotel came running out and had words with J, and had words with Susan, and the consensus was that they wanted "quiet" taiko, which I guess is what Zen taiko would be if there were such a thing. J was pissed, since it was his party and he paid a lot of money to rent the space. Manager-lady wanted peace and quiet, I'm guessing because of the other guests at the hotel who weren't there to listen to Zen taiko. We were amused. Susan was trying to be convincing that we could play quiet taiko, but really, how convincing can a person be with that giant drum looming in the background?:
There was an open bar, and everytime we saw J, he had a drink in his hand, and every time we saw J, it was because he was telling us that we just had to wait a little while longer. We were the openers. This being an arty event, everything was running late. An hour after we were supposed to start, we were sitting in our cramped hotel room waiting for the go-ahead. Satan was so bored, she passed out:
Then, a troupe of martial artists joined us in our tiny room. I think they were supposed to be Zen too, but I don't know. They were all under the age of 20, overflowing with testosterone, and extremely hyper. Nice guys, I have to say. And acrobatic. Their thing was to do karate kicks and backwards sommersaults simultaneously. At one point, the plan was for them to do their kicking/flipping around us while we played taiko. They said they could do their thing to whatever beat we were playing. I don't know if that was comforting at all. As they were warming up outside I was thinking, oh my god they're going to kill me while I'm playing Heiya or they're going to kick me into the pool, or I'm going to knock their teeth out and then they'll kill me. Really.
And do you know why we were running late, or one of the reasons, anyway? It was because the "Dalai Lama" was late. I thought the Dalai Lama was that Tibetan holy man who is in exile. Seriously, I didn't put it past them to hire some guy to look priest-like and say a few words to add to the Zen ambiance or whatever the hell (or should I say nirvana) they were trying to go for. But then I heard the organizers say "Oh good the Dalai Lama is here! We can start soon." And I looked up, and who was heading into our tiny room but a real Buddhist monk. You could just tell he was a real monk, and not just some guy off the street in an orange robe. At that point I was just so ashamed of it all. I mean here we were, the performers, all serious practitioners of our respective arts: martial artists, taiko musicians, Buddhist monk, and they had us all crammed in a room, on call to perform for their show--for what, money? I cleared a chair of boxes for the monk to sit down on (he politely refused). We talked about the basketball game on the TV.
Well, the show started, and we played horribly. We had to rework Heiya for 4 people, and we missed all our cues, but managed to keep the song together. It was fine. I was waiting for the ninjas to knock me out, but I guess they decided not to kill us and instead they just did their thing after we were done. Then the monk came out and gave a blessing, but you could totally tell he knew that they hired him for his image and played right in to the stereotype they hired him for. I hope they paid him well.
True to our word, we played the second set, even though I was sure the manager-lady was going to jump out of the bushes with handcuffs to drag us away. We played Saidai, which is our loudest most hotel un-friendly song, and even though I didn't see her, Susan said she saw manager-lady after we played the song (perfectly) and she had steam coming out of her ears. Yeah, we were loud and proud. You can imagine how fast we packed up and got our Zen-taiko butts out of there.
I just want to say that this should be a lesson to you all. Gigs are for the money. But if you want to drive home from a gig with more than just a check (say, your dignity for instance) make sure you have a rider. Make sure you get a contract saying that you're going to go on at such-and-such a time, and that you get your own green room and your own case of bottled water and the check ahead of time and if you don't get all those things, well you just pack up and go home and cash your check asap. Get it in writing. It really is important.
Oh and one other thing--don't ever do a gig for anything that includes the word Zen. Believe me. Just don't go there, it's so not worth it.
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