Mr. Chow's

Musicians are a crazy lot.
Look at me.
It’s the nature of the business for us to be slightly off-center from time to time.
I’ve been gigging for well over 30 years. My first gig was at 17 years old, an almost prepubescent, ripe and obviously under age time of my life. I was still a kid.
I got a piano/guitar/vocal gig at a restaurant called “The Huguenot”.

I was thinking the name sounded American Indian when in fact the name applied to members of the Protestant Reformed Church of France, historically known as the French Calvinists.

What the hell was I thinking?

International politics at 17?

I don’t think so.
Hey, it paid cash money and for me, that was good enough.
I was still in High School for cripe’s sake.

I remember the first night I played.
I went to see the owner at the end of the night to get paid and he hands me 100 bucks.
I made 20 bucks in tips.
I’m a junior in High School and this is 1976.
Yeah, I had girlfriends.

Did I like this music thing?

Hell, yeah . . . big time.

This story isn’t about me though, this is what started me thinking about some musical friends of mine that got a bit crazy one night.
Chinese restaurants will do that to a working musician.

This story was passed along to me by God knows who but I thought it was entertaining enough to post here.
You should entertain the thought of reading it.
I won’t let you down.
Promise you’ll read until the picture at the end of the post.
{Do not scroll down yet!}
(the names have been changed to protect the innocent…or guilty)

 

Some friends of mine were playing a Chinese restaurant in the area called Mr. Chow’s. On the breaks, if the lounge was too crowded they would sit on the couches in the lobby where people came in.
They would stare at the fish tanks loaded with the seemingly infinite possibility of Sushi and gaze endlessly at the ‘nightly special’ sign with its obligatory “Children under 10 – ALL YOU CAN EAT”.

The band got restless and wanted to have some Vocab/ Scrabble fun…with the nightly special sign.
That particular night the sign read: Tonight’s Special – HUNAN FISH.

After raiding the coat closet for a stray consonant, the sign now read: HUMAN FISH.

Cool.
A chuckle and they were back to work.

A set and several Mai Tai’s later they found themselves once again staring at the sign.

Human Fish was funny but. . .

Another trip to coat closet yielded the letters they so desperately needed.
Many people came in, read the sign { see below }, did a 180 and left in a hurry.
Suffice to say, the band never played Mr. Chow’s again.
Go figure.
True story.
Yeah, we musicians are a crazy lot.

 

~m