This is
the e-mail that started it all:
June 25,
2008
Artie -
tomorrow is your debut (at least in this century) as Stage Manager in Our Town. Tonight you are going to
have dress rehearsal, then you will go home and practice your lines one more
time with Alisa. Then you will try to go to sleep, and my wish for you is
that sleep comes easily so you are as alive and aware as possible
tomorrow. We are very much looking forward to being there with you
tomorrow night.
"Stay
loose and play tight" is now my standard exhortation to myself and those
with whom I’m about to go on stage. I heard it for the first time in
1978. I was playing in a band called
One day
Peter calls me (I was the business manager of said band, as well as the bass
player) and says "I got you guys a gig. Any time that Chuck Berry or
Bo Diddley plays in
But get to
rehearse with these 50's rock stars before the show, we did not. Instead,
we were told to learn every song from Chuck Berry's "Golden Hits"
album, which we dutifully did, and advised to be prepared to think quickly on
stage.
Our first
gig with Sir Chuck was at Knott's Berry Farm, a poor man's Disneyland in
At exactly
7:58, the back door to the stage opened, and there he was, guitar in hand, all
alone.
With that
he launched into "Johnny B. Goode," and as the curtain went up the
crowd went crazy. There was only one problem. On his record, he
played the song in B flat. (One of the little secrets to his unusual
sound was that he played in the flat keys instead of the usual guitar keys of
E, A, G and D.) But because he was at least 50 years old at the time of
this story, he had decided to play the song in a lower key to make it easier to
sing. So while he was playing in A flat, we were in B flat or some other
key unrelated to A flat. It sounded a little like that piece that Charles
Ives composed for two marching bands that were to march past each other playing
the same tune in two keys that were as far apart as two keys could be (a
flatted fifth from each other.) What worked as 20th century atonal music
for Charles Ives did not work so well for the song that NASA chose to put on
the Voyager spacecraft, as a representation of earthly rock 'n roll for any
extraterrestrials who might find it.
Several
fretful moments passed before our piano player Jim King yelled out the correct
key and we got into the groove with Chuck. He played this song and two others
with his back to the audience to tumultuous applause. Then he turned his
mic stand around and said "Thank you. With
your permission, we will now begin our performance."
You will
be great. You, unlike Chuck Berry and my
friends in Sonora, have rehearsed your work with each other. So, my friend, my wish for you tomorrow and
the rest of this week is that you stay
loose and play tight.
Peace,
Parker