Prologue

Every human being who has ever called himself a musician has, at some point in his life, picked up an instrument and dreamed of legend.

It is a dream that for some surely includes preferred seating at waiting-list-only restaurants, VIP standing at the plushest five-star hotels, entourages of body guards and screaming fans, and riders with every demand that royalty is allowed. All the luscious, decadent clichs.

More profoundly, it is a dream of that moment on stage. Coltrane had it. Jimi had it. When through the sheer weight and breadth of their gift, their ability to compel, even change thought, they manage to place an audience under some kind of inexplicable spell, and in doing so, shift culture just ever so slightly.

And it is only the opinion of this scribbler, but that is, without a doubt, the true dream.

The reality, more often than not, is just a tiny variation on that theme:

And now ladies and gentlemen! Please welcome, for the first time ever as husband and wife, Mister and Missus Joel and Rebecca Cohen! Lets hear it for them, Ladies and gentlemen! A-one, a-two, a-one, two, three, four

Thats a casual.

In musician parlance, it means a private party. A birthday bash, a wedding reception, an office mixer, a bar mitzvah; the list goes on. New York musicians call them club dates. There are probably a half dozen terms for it in a half dozen cities. Casual is the L.A. term.

According to Websters Encyclopedic Unabridged Dictionary, the word casual means: 1. occurring by chance. 2. without definite or serious intention. 3. seeming or tending to be indifferent; apathetic, blas.

Ironic (telling? hilarious? tragic?) that such a word would even have been adapted to refer to the making of music.

The question that begs examination, of course, is: what happens to the person who chooses a path that embeds from the very start the implicit suggestion of its non-impact, its barely-holding-on-to significance, its indifferent, apathetic, blas place in the world?

The answer? No one chooses to become a casual musician.

It chooses him. By means equally desperate and rationalizing:

Hey, its a nobler living than phone sex or selling used cars.



TRISTAN

For the new Mr. and Mrs. Joel Cohen, this is the happiest, loveliest, most romantic, straight-out-of-a-movie moment in their lives. A moment they will remember forever. For Tristan Baylor, the gigs leader, it is that exact same moment two hundred days out of the year. Just another casual. Or bloodbath, depending on his mood. Another chance to hear the chick singer next to him (whose name he doesnt bother to remember) screech out a too-high-for- her-range rendition of Andrew Lloyd Webber, and screw up the form, and over-riff with her vocal acrobatics, which Tristan can invariably count on from most of the chick singers he works with. Their only use, as far as he is bitterly concerned, is to blow him in the back of his SUV after the gigs.

As he entertains loathings that have surely become routine, but with a smile on his face to show he cares about making the Cohens special day even more special, Mr. and Mrs. Newly Married are in Heaven, dancing the choreographed routine theyve worked on, with the record, at home.

It had been their first dance, which they are now reprising, choreography and all, as their last dance of the evening.

Thank God this shit is over.

When the singer comes to the close of her Phantom of the Opera medley, Tristan notes to himself that for every song she sings badly, she will owe him a blow job. And hell be more than happy to owe her one back if she ever JUST ONCE sings a song in tune, proper form, actual melody, something! for fucks sake. She is a Christina Aguilera wannabe who has no clue what it takes to be a musician, and who saturates every song she sings with all of her little R&B chick licks, whether it is the appropriate style or not.

But lest anyone thinks this is just a chick thing, Tristan rationalizes, as he finds himself defending his silent rant against imaginary complaints on his misogyny, which even Tristan has to cop to, the truth is that there are guys on this bandstand, as well, who have no business being paid good money to pluck, strike, blow, or whatever various sodomies they perform on those poor instruments. Yet here they are, guys who can officially call themselves professionals, because they have the 1099s at the end of the tax year to prove it.

To Tristans bored chagrin, this blessed event has made no promises to give him any reason to actually stay awake. Hes heard so many wild stories over the years, usually around the break room roundtables at gigs, about outrageous incidents that happened at this or that wedding reception. Like the one about the bridegroom who gets up during the reception to give a toast. He proceeds to tell the guests to please look under each of their seats, where they will find a little something from the bridal partyto themwith love. And he dedicates that gesture to his new bride and his best man. What the guests find under their seats is a Polaroid of same bride performing a gifted fellatio on same best man, apparently snapped by a private investigator, hired by the suspicious groom, on the night before.

That particular tale has been floating around for years, with no one guy actually able to claim it any longer as his own, and which is considered casual legend.

Or the time that the grooms mother popped the bride in the jaw, careening her, white gown, bloody nose, and all, into the six-tiered cake. Apparently, icing rained down on all the instruments, causing various electrical shorts and other brilliant mayhem.

But Tristan isnt so lucky this evening. No such mischievous, diary-warranting fun will happen tonight. Everything has gone smoothly and without a hitch, due to caterers, florists, and coordinators doing their jobs efficiently; and largely, as well, because of Tristans expertise as a bandleader. And the bride and groom wont ever even realize his value in making their evening seamless, because to them he is just the faceless, nameless tuxedo behind the microphone and guitar.