Burned by daylight savings time

It’s not fair to be a musician with a Sunday brunch gig on the first day of daylight savings time.  After a late Saturday gig you are robbed of a precious hour of sleep before waking up at what is really 7:30 to play for Sunday brunch.  The humanity!

One of my first steady gigs back when I first moved to New York, 30 + years ago, was at a boxcar diner with an upright piano crammed into one side called, The Empire Diner.  It was a four hour gig – from 11pm-3am – and it paid thirty dollars plus a meal.  (Eventually it went up to thirty-five)

A couple of times I played the late set on New Years eve which was from 2am-6am.  It paid double scale!  After those nights I felt so prosperous  that I would spring for a cab ride home – from 10th Ave & 22nd st all the way to the Upper West Side on Broadway and 109th st.

Us late show pianists actually caught a break during the change from standard time to DST.  At 2:00am , when the clocks  jumped ahead to 3:00, we would say, “Welp, time to clock out!”

Conversely, in the fall, when the clocks moved back an hour, the place expected us to play for an extra hour.  I would try to sub that night out, or conveniently forget about the time change.

Enjoy the extra light, everyone, we have made it through the dark days of winter.  Now if we can only make it through the dark days of the Trump administration.

 

 

Spring is here

February in California.  The holidays are ancient history, football is over with, and the winter school break looms.   This can only mean one thing:  Spring is here. 

We’re breathing a sigh of relief now that the long, brutal winter has finally come to a close.  We’ve endured some rain, a little wind, and a few earthquakes that were too small to measure.  Us Californians are stolid people, however, and we endured the harsh winter weather in stoic silence as it wreaked havoc on jogging schedules and ruined outdoor wine-tasting events.

Blizzards in Chicago?  Ice storms in New York?  Snow in Dallas?!  That’s all well and good, but here in Berkeley, the cherry blossoms are in bloom and we’ve had nothing but clear 68 degree days for the past two weeks.   

With this kind of weather opening day of the 2011 baseball season must be right around the corner.  What’s that you say?  Seven weeks?!  D’oh!