ANECDOTES: tales from the bandstand

Miss Saigon
Once, Lou Savage was asked by a frantic hotel banquet manager to locate a Vietnamese folk musician for a special reception preceding a performance of the musical, Miss Saigon. What she didn't know was that for the previous 10 years, Lou had been part of an American rhythm section hired by Vietnamese studios to record songs for them that were distributed all over the world.

With just a couple of phone calls, Lou located a youthful female Dan Tranh (a Vietnamese zither) player who, in her beautiful, traditional Vietnamese ceremonial dress, entranced the crowd with hypnotic folk music. The banquet manager was a hero.

Night of the Dragon
Another event last year called for a Hootenanny trio for a sales meeting on a beach in San Diego. An archaic art form? Yes. A problem? No. All it took was a little research into things like... finding the words to "Where Have All the Flowers Gone" and "Michael Row the Boat Ashore."

The crowd, it turned out, was immovable at first; A mob of 20 and 30 year-olds who weren't in the mood for songs like "Puff the Magic Dragon." The 63 year old CEO was, though. It didn't take much coaxing for us to get him up to the mic on "Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley." The problem was, none of the young people were interested in Tom Dooley. It was a classic mis-communication:  The person who hired the band thought that "Hootenanny" meant music by the Eagles, and the Beatles. What she meant was "unplugged," meaning "using acoustic guitars."

There was tension in the air until a dramatic turning point when Lou's wife Deborah introduced the players. Lou's affiliations with various famous groups drew a small, polite response, but guitarist Bobby Cochran's history with Steppenwolf opened up a whole new uncharted territory. Someone in the crowd shouted, "Play some Steppenwolf!"

At the end of the night, the crowd appeared to be completely de-iced and thoroughly malleable, thanks to Steppenwolf, Rock and Roll... and beer. The closing scene was lit only by a single spotlight and the sputtering flames of the dying fire on the beach that shrouded us in an inescapable micro-climate of smoke. It was the backdrop for what might have looked like a pagan ritual to a casual onlooker.

The crowd of 20 and 30-year-olds elbowed us, and one another, out of the way as they struggled to bear down on the one microphone in front of them. They squinted and strained as they tried to decipher the words of the ritual chant printed on the fluttering sheet of paper clothes-pinned to the music stand. The ritual chant was a song. The song was "Puff the Magic Dragon."