Flaco is sitting at the bar when I walk in to the Road. I sit down next to him and we great in spanglish. John, the bartender, sees that I brought a roadie so he just says a quick ‘com esta’ as he passes by.Flaco and I speak in English for a while about nothing more exciting then the weather. Slightly bored, I start cussing him, his sister and his mother in Cuban. Since he realizes that he has only himself to blame for teaching me this sh1t, he only interrupts to correct my grammar and pronunciation.
At 355+ pounds Flaco is not a guy you want to piss off. You’d have a better chance of survival slitting your wrists and jumping into a pool of hungry sharks. Our friendship is just one of those curious things that happen in this city.
My jazz flutist friend Mark is playing that night with his collection of musicians du jour. The guy who plays bass is a regular but the others vary depending on who is in town. Most electric basses have 4 strings. Some have 5 or even 6. This guy has 8. The neck is almost as wide as it is long. On the planet this guy is from, 7 strings simply don’t provide him with enough notes. Give this guy one chord to jam on and he’d be happy all night. With the jazz progressions they usually run he rarely comes in contact with any scales most humans are familiar with. I think he’s a bit over the top.
There are probably many accomplished and fine bassists who in a month will never approach the number of notes this guy plays in one night. I’m not particularly fond of being force fed more notes per measure then considered physically possible to consume by most humans. Occasionally Shikira’s drummer Brandon will anchor the rhythm section and at barely 21, he’ll hold the bass guy in check. Gawd bless him.
Mark brought his wife that night and she brought a few female friends. During a break I came over and sat at the table with them. The entertainment during the break fell on Mark and I. We weren’t doing too bad. Mark and I make a pretty good team. The cutie beside me was flirting up a Latino tropical heat wave and I was being sucked in like a gringo cold front.
So I made the pass in my best espanol.
“Dude, I don’t do guys over thirty”
Thud….
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