The Passive Aggressive Chance Armstrong

My roommate on the Beagle Chincess was Chance Armstrong. Chance was a passive aggressive. That meant as a quiet guy he was working a huge premeditated self-serving plan all the time. The only catch was you didn’t know what it was. He didn’t talk much, and when he did he uttered self-proclaiming phrases that insinuated he all ready knew what you were going to say. As time passed I found out he was working on musical arrangements for the band. Lance had gland problems. That so he thought enabled him to demand certain things in the cabin. One was it was almost always quiet except for when Chance wanted it otherwise. “You wanna listen to some Dean?” he would ask. Dean Martin he meant, and there we would sit checking out the precursor to Elvis. Dean really was the model for Elvis, and it surprised me whenever I heard it for the first time. My choice of music would have been Miles Davis or something of that vintage. Dean is great, but his choice automatically sealed our fate as different kinds of musicians. Chance was a pure A-hole when it came to sleep. You couldn’t utter so much as a sigh without him having to say something to you in the middle of the night. Forget watching a movie on your miniature DVD player or listening to some music through you headphones. The bunks on Chincess were just that, chincy. There was no sound isolation from top bunk to bottom bunk. I resorted to stealing a piece of masonite from the carpentry shop, cutting it to fit, and inserting it in between the beds stuffed with towels. That helped isolate Mommy Dearest from my personal space. Chance’s largest flaw was also that of Franz Mueller. You see they were our two saxophonists. Both of them, under the leadership of Franz, tended to play in a rhythmic concept that doesn’t exist in the professional music world. I have never heard it ever until I began playing cruise ships. They, instead of playing swing 8th notes in jazz-oriented music, would play swing 16th notes in Ricky-Tick style. The rhythmic resolution was so tight as a piano player with a reciprocating key, I could not match their timing. Their notes were way too close together, and therefore didn’t define time as we know it. The cruise director did not like Franz’s playing, but that didn’t stop her from badgering me off the ship. I quit with only two weeks to go in my contract. That meant I couldn’t work on the Beagle Chiness for at least a year. As it turns out I have had no desire to ever work for their company again. The work load was unrealistic. Most seven day cruises have two production shows, an Intro Show, a Farewell Show, a Fly-On Entertainer, a Juggler and a few comedians. Chincess had four production shows, and the cruise director thought it funny that you couldn’t just sight-read the poorly written music. As was the case on my first cruise line, I ended up having to re-copy a majority of the charts. The copy work was that bad. I knew all four shows on the Beagle as well as having to play the singer’s shows on the last night of the cruise. It was labor intensive with a noon rehearsal almost everyday. Franz also manipulated the “In Port Manning” schedule so he could get off the ship in San Diego, drive his new VW, and collect the dough from his rolling coffee shack. Who would ever get married so your girlfriend could sail for free? That is a pretty high cost of a cruise. I think I would just pay the dough. Things hit a head when I had had enough of Chance. He had pushed me just a little too hard. One night when I was listening to a recording of our show with headphones, I accidentally said something outloud to myself as I was lying in the bunk. He was supersensitive, and interpreted my outburst as a personal attack on his character. (In fact it was about him, but you have to be aware of these things to play in a band and make it work) He curtly asked me if I had something to say to him. It was at least two in the morning. I was a little drunk, but I had no desire to say anything to him. I just wanted to finish listening to the recording. He provoked me again. “Do you want to say something to me?” I called him a fuck mother-fucker,, threatened to kick his ass, and went outside where he followed me. He asked me again, upon which Franz appeared at his door. A little friendly brawl in the wee hours of the morning on a cruise ship is not always a bad idea. In the end Chance and Franz’s poor playing, the cruise director’s antagonism, and the petty childish rhythm section that never learned the shows caused me to quit. Sometimes you just have to draw the line at Chance.