In which grandmasterfluffles is presented with an unexpected challenge at a wedding gig
I’m a professional musician, and have probably played live in front of literally millions of people over the last few years. It’s just like any other job really - you just turn up and do it, and things very rarely go horribly wrong. However, I came across quite a challenge last Friday. Nobody tells you when you’re at music college that as a working musician, your powers of keeping a straight face under trying circumstances may be tested to the limit.

During the summer months, I spend an inordinate amount of time playing in string quartets at weddings. Weddings are very easy gigs. Everybody's always really happy with what you do, the music is pretty much always the same whatever quartet you're working with so there's very little sight reading involved once you know the repertoire, and it’s amazing how much free champagne you can get if you make friends with the waiters. They all tend to sort of merge into one when you work at them a lot. All the venues look exactly the same, they all want bloody Pachelbel's Canon when they walk down the aisle, the guests usually totally ignore us to the point of getting bows poked in their backsides from standing too close, and by the end of the day everyone’s too pissed to notice that the quartet is also pissed.

Friday was looking to be just another identikit wedding. Former stately home in Surrey? Check. Lots of fake tan amongst the guests? Check. Pachelbel? Check. The bride turned up on time, Pachelbel was dispatched as she walked down the aisle, the best man hadn’t lost the rings - everything was fine until we got to the vows. The couple had written their own vows - in rhyming couplets. Oh yes, they were in rhyming couplets! Rhyming couplets that didn't even scan properly! It was worse than Vogon poetry - at least with Vogon poetry, the victims were given ample warning. This moving work of poetic genius just came out of the blue.



All of the fake-tanned wedding guests were sniffing into their hankies and I was just struggling to retain composure by hiding behind my cello and thinking very hard about dead babies.
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Wed 24 Aug 2011, 12:43, 15 replies)

It looks like it's been pasted
to the sticky side of a sanitary towel.
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Wed 24 Aug 2011, 12:53, closed)

Stop pissing in my mind.
This wouldn't have looked out of place at my mum's second wedding. At least there was a veritable jungle of flowers into which we could have puked.
( .Yeti. El amor en los tiempos del cólera, Wed 24 Aug 2011, 13:28, closed)

I'm arcing hot vomit
over my keyboard even as I type. Still, makes a change from semen, I suppose.
(Happybara The jungle came alive and took him, Wed 24 Aug 2011, 14:48, closed)

You arc hot vomit over semen?
I bet that's popular with the laydeez
(moon monkey is busy making memories worth repressing, Wed 24 Aug 2011, 15:11, closed)

Phwoar

(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 10:14, closed)

as I believe someone else said
it's like they took inspiration from Adam Sandler.
(cypherspace is not a toaster, Wed 24 Aug 2011, 12:56, closed)

Haha

( Major Turd for tonight only, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 2:50, closed)

....and after all that
you spelt I with an i
(Dan dan dan They tik urh jerbs!!!, Wed 24 Aug 2011, 13:36, closed)

As a semi-professional musician
I do tend to listen to the string quartets at weddings. And I was at one in Marlow earlier this year at which the first violinist in said quartet was awful. Apparently they were also 'very expensive'.

Unfortunately my usual brutal honesty came to the fore when the bride's mother asked for my opinion on the music. She was made aware that she hadn't been given value for money. I think I avoided the use of the word 'pish' but only just.

The rest of the wedding was a grand day out though.
( K2k6 has a proper job these days, Wed 24 Aug 2011, 19:35, closed)

SO with you here
Loads of quartets only hire pretty girls, with absolutely no thought as to whether they're any good at actually playing their instruments. It's really annoying to turn up to a gig and have no idea if your colleagues are going to be competent or not. A while back I was playing with this girl who looked like a supermodel, but she couldn't play Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - I don't think she'd have passed a Grade 7 exam. The people who run these ensembles think that the clients want pretty girls and can't tell if they play well or not so it doesn't matter. But it does - most people DO recognise quality when they hear it, it's obvious that the guests enjoy the music way more when it's played well, regardless of what we look like.
(grandmasterfluffles Come to my Armageddon party on, Wed 24 Aug 2011, 21:24, closed)

Ditto.
Although it turns out that giving one's opinion of the organist's low capabilities and lack of talent isn't all that appreciated, when one subsequently discovers that said organist is a close family friend who is playing for the wedding as a "wedding present". Oops.
(The Empress it seems you CAN polish a turd!, Thu 25 Aug 2011, 10:16, closed)

I didn't find it all that funny
that is until the dead babies part
(MrPlankton, Wed 24 Aug 2011, 19:41, closed)

Oh Come on!
Martin Amis isn't that bad a writer!
(Nitrous Nitrous, Wed 24 Aug 2011, 20:00, closed)

Thinking about dead babies
gets me very hard.
(Vigilante Man weeps because you're stupid., Wed 24 Aug 2011, 23:06, closed)