Good Afternoon, Ladies and Gentlemen...

I tried to find a pic or two to help illustrate the last post. Unfortunately, I don't have any decent shots of the current Flying Eggheads lineup, and the pictures from last March's Big Annual Concert (serious impact fanfare) haven't arrived yet. Here are a couple of pics from a gig we played on the South Plaza behind Mito Station in October last year...as part of a demonstration in favor of educational subsidies (I'm such a rebel!)...



I didn't take these pics, so don't blame me. They do show the Flying Egghead mascot/logo on the box stands used by the sax section, though. Ms. Kitaki (1st alto) is taking a solo, and the others look overwhelmed with enthusiasm!



This was actually kind of a fun gig. We were bussed in by the private school teachers' union, who also paid for everything (to help the government understand that they can't afford anything)(Makes sense, doesn't it?). We arrived to find a group of very drunk, homeless men occupying our intended space. I refused to do anything about it and told the kids to keep their distance while the planners debated calling the cops. (Fortunately, the homeless guys moved on their own...not that they didn't make lots of noise and give our girls plenty of verbal harassment...) Organization was at a minimum; they couldn't agree on who was going to do what...let alone when. They also kept changing their minds as to how long they wanted us to play. After being told, "Please wait a minute," a few too many times, I finally just told the kids to set up and start tuning, did a quick, easy tune as a "warm-up", and as soon as they introduced us I started the program. Halfway through they asked us to stop for a bit while they gave a couple of (horribly boring) speeches (wiping out our audience), and then they asked us to play some more. We'd already exhausted our rehearsed set, so I dug up some other tunes that were "in the folder". (Some of the kids didn't have the music for them, so they had to play by heart or improvise, i.e. authentic jazz.) I won't bother going into all the miscommunications that happened after our performance. This post is already longer than I intended. Still, it was a memorable experience, and the kids actually seemed to enjoy it.

Onizawa didn't enjoy having one of the program organizers damage his trumpet, though, but I think Mr. Ogawa did enjoy wringing the repair costs out of the union!