Long Time Passing

Back in the day, I was a dilettante musician who had training in C-tenor trumpet and picked up cornet and flugelhorn as friends of mine were (much more skilled) jazz performers. I helped carry instruments and amplifiers and helped set up stages for their shows and even occasionally was permitted the honor of being before the audience with them, not for a whole set, but for a couple of well-rehearsed songs, or a very brief freestyle session. Anyway, I could stack and connect speakers and drove a Jeep Wagoneer large enough to haul most of a band. One night in the mid-eighties, I was going out to party with a friend of a friend who also dabbled in music, though Gary and I never jammed together, and I think I saw him perform exactly once, but Nashville was and is a big music town, and a lot of folks put an oar in the water, though few have their ships come in from strumming or singing, So, Gary and I end up at a place called Cantrell's near the Vanderbilt campus before they open, and we are milling around an area where at one time a restaurant that had previously been where the club now was had car hops bringing out orders. I noticed someone had abandoned a three quarters empty VO bottle at one of the delivery stands. I would not have touched the filthy thing much less drank from it, but Gary and I were just biding time before the doors opened when a big 70's van with Georgia plates pulled up to the last car hop station. The boys from the Georgia band were around our age and asked if we were with Cantrell's and in finding out we weren't, wanted to know if we knew anything about setting up a stage. We told them "sure" as we were both also musicians (after a fashion at least). They offered us ten bucks each and all the beer we could drink to help them set up, so we became their one night roadies. In carrying equipment in, one of the Georgians saw the abandoned liquor bottle near me and asked if it was mine. I told him no, and that it probably had been left by "some syphilis sufferer" to wit, the young fellow replied "nah"', opened it and finished the bottle. His band mates who were all also watching were laughing it up, and one said "yeah, Michael will drink anything". So we hung with them that night, had several beers, and got ten bucks each. That group we set up one Nashville night was REM.