Matt, please tell me that conductor is now out of the music business...

I was once sitting at home on a Saturday, doing not much of anything. At 4pm my phone ringie dingied. It was a guy I had known for several years bu7t never worked with, and in fact he was the leader of a rival band in the day. He said "East (Eastside) I am in a bad jam. My keyboard player just had his appendix out and I have a wedding tonight. Can you come and fake your way through charts to play the dinner set and then we get to the stuff you know." I said "Sure." So I quickly shower, dress and go. I got there and set up like 10 minutes before we were supposed to start. The dinner stuff was easy for a keyboard player, as the sax carried most of the leads. Green Dolphin Street, Satin Doll, etc... The dedication song was "Endless Love", which I had heard several million times on the radio but never played. He said "It'll be fine. It's charted out and I know you read." So I spread the thing out on the top keyboard, loaded a beautiful Rhodes sound on the Mirage, and off we went. Following along the Bb chart, singing in my head "Love... there's only you in my life...." as he went through the schtick "And the father of the bride, Fritz Sheckleman" or whoever they were. Then we got to the bridge. I followed along to the page marked bridge and it was NOWHERE near what I was supposed to be playing. As I started to panic, faking my way through by ear and familiarity with the song, I started looking at pages, and page 3 and 5 were out of order. So they were laid out 1-2-5-4-3, and to not take my hands off the keys, I played through a 15 minute rendition of that song as everybody came through the line to be introduced following it along out of order. We had a pretty good laugh about that.

So move forward 20 years. That guy was then doing a solo act with just him and his geetar. I had a friend visiting from out of state who grew up here and wanted to see him because of the nostalgia. We went into the place he was playing, out on a big patio. (His band had a local hit called Funky Poodle which he wrote, so I have always called him Poodle, short for "The funkiest poodle of them all".) We walked in just as he ended a song and he looked over and said into the mic "And the Eastside is now represented." as I pointed at him and just said "Hey Poodle". 10 minutes later I sent a note up with a waitress that said "Can you play Sittin' On Bay Dock The Of?" And he laughed. When he came to say high on his break he said "And I know EXACTLY what that meant!" Funny moment with a really nice guy.

Topic relevance: He DOESN'T play sax!