<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I didn't want to say it myself...... but HELL YEAH!!!Go for it, get some suntanning done, check out the babes, and get paid for it!
[img]wink.gif[/img] [img]cool.gif[/img] [img]biggrin.gif[/img]
Hey tombo,
3-4 weeks? Do it! You'll have a ball man. It's pretty addictive too, I didn't get off ships till 6 years later. I started depping for trios on there which would play dance music and back cabarets. Then got a regular gig with a trio, and then got offered to do the 7 piece showband which as dazzler pointed out, requires good sight reading. So I started learning a different showpad each night before rehearsing that show the next day and they did about 10 different shows a cruise, plus cabaret, plus big band dots for dance nights. It was even better when a new show came on, as I was there from the start including all the band calls where things were added, taken out, and notes are made.
I had my own cabin, but the few times I had to share I didn't like it. If you don't mind sharing for a few weeks, that's cool. It's a paid holiday and you'll most likely do very little playing each day. But there's loads of time to practise. On my ship, there were 4 or 5 other drummers in different bands, one or two of which were into the same stuff, so we would hang together, talk drums, swap music, inspire each other, that sort of thing. Of course, when I was doing a new cabaret or show and I knew some of those drummers were looking in, it was sometimes a bit off putting [img]tongue.gif[/img]
Go for it, get some suntanning done, check out the babes, and get paid for it! [img]biggrin.gif[/img]
<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ January 10, 2005 03:23 PM: Message edited by: Rudy_Ment ]</font>
<font size="2" face="Verdana, Helvetica, sans-serif">I didn't want to say it myself...... but HELL YEAH!!!Go for it, get some suntanning done, check out the babes, and get paid for it!
[img]wink.gif[/img] [img]cool.gif[/img] [img]biggrin.gif[/img]
All my friends (well three of them) who've worked on ships all said they'd rather have jumped off and swam back home before completing their SENTANCES... err...I mean...contracts.
It depends on the sort of person you are. I'd never be able to do it for more than 4 weeks without itching to get off. I'd love to see some places I haven't been for free, whilst doing something I love, but like this? I couldn't do it for more than a month at a time...
MP
I just went to my local drumshop where one of my ex-student works. He recently did a 4-month stint on a huge 5000-people ship. There were 9 bands on this ship; I couldn't believe...a floating city! He was in the lowest band in the "food chain". They played a room where barely any customer ever showed up. He had to argue for some weeks with the MD to have him take off the drum track off the sequences...he was sick of faking it and this is quite understandable. He said the ship was very "high class" and that they were very severe with musicians. Customers rated the bands, shows; and those comments were looked at on a daily basis. MD's didn't wait long to fire musicians (mostly drummers because of reading problems and bad time), which were flown out on a regular basis to fly in subs. He said many musicians had drinking problems (boredom factor, I guess) and were also fired when caught drunk. His band had bad ratings but they didn't bother flying them out during the cruise, MD was just told he was on the line "black list" after the cruise. My guy earned very little IMO; 400USD/week for 6 days of work.
He was affected by boredom; counting months, weeks, days and hours before the end...If a musician left by himself before the end of his contract, he had to pay back something like a month's worth in penalty. To "survive", he flushed his canadian girlfriend by email to make a new one (staff) on the ship…
The musicians in the 1000-seats show hall seemed to be less depressed. They were busy rehearsing new shows during the day, sight reading demanding scores with a click at night for acts that were just flown in. I hope they were paid more. My guy said these were under high pressure; he said he could’nt have handled it. I would like this challenge (cause I’d swim back too if I have to play the same boring set every day). I think I’m a good reader, but everybody seem to say these shows are damn hard. Do they sight read the Black Page or what? I bet not, but I don’t want to burn myself and get fired for missing a cue.
A cool other thing is that apparantly family and friends can get on the ship for ~100$/week (instead of 3000$) if some cabins are free.
6-month contracts are pretty easy to get since not too many guys are willing; but for 1-month, looks like I have to be on hold.
Oh, and if you’re caught cruising customers (babes), you’re fired too, he told…
Well, there are of course ships rules, and I don't know what ship he was on, but really, you need to try it first hand, because everyone's experiences are different. I worked for P&O cruises which is a major company, large high class ships, but on the whole, they treated us good, even the trios. There certainly wasn't any sackings going on all over the place. Money I have to say, worked out in UK sterling a lot more than $400. More like $700. However, I didn't get any more money by changing up from the trios to the showband.
If you're up for a challenge tombo, then yeah, you'll definitely find the shows challenging, fun and interesting. Each show is generally 1 hour long repeated twice in the night. A lot of the music I read not only had lots of tempo changes and ralls etc, but also had click for quite a few of them. The thing is the sheer volume of reading that you have to do, and even when you get to know the shows backwards, there's always a new cabaret coming on, sometimes a real roast up!
Every cruise, there was one night where the showband would have to play outside at night, a gala type show with guest cabarets and dancers, etc. Man, that was fun but hell too! Because the wind was always strong. So each of us had an allocated music helper, who would whip out or spread out the music which was clipped down behind a sheet of perspex. The show parts of that between the cabarets were also clicked. Lol, one drummer who did it before me, ( dazz knows him, it's barry brewer, great showdrummer),
his music ended up in the swimming pool, and of course, the show was stopped for a while. [img]tongue.gif[/img]
This is not intended to put you off, rather give you some insight as to ship life. There's definitely ship politics that happens on all ships, a lot of it is pointless, so expect that.
I still say give it a shot just for the experience.
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edit: oh, and, we were not allowed to bring females back to the cabin, date them, that sort of thing. But of course, everyone did as long as they were subtle. [img]biggrin.gif[/img]
<font color="#a62a2a"><font size="1">[ January 10, 2005 08:51 PM: Message edited by: Rudy_Ment ]</font></font>
<font color="#a62a2a" size="1">[ January 10, 2005 08:52 PM: Message edited by: Rudy_Ment ]</font>
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