The Key of G Broke

2009 started off right for me with a gig on Saturday the 3rd, making music with my favorite group of musicians known as Urban Blue. The New Year is fresh, the music is loud and fun. But only a couple of songs in, something happens and I'm suddenly thrust back three years. (Cue Mike Myers' Wayne's World flashback sequence.) It was November 2005, I'm recording in my basement studio when the unthinkable happens - the "G" key, G4 to be exact, the G just above middle C on my favorite keyboard, breaks. Breaks, for crying out loud. And let me tell you, I'm a sucker for G4. I use that key more than I care to mention. Without her, I'm lost, fumbling around unfinished chords, searching other octaves for solace. Alas, with visions of the construction worker suspended by his hardhat from a steel beam in the 1980 TV commercial, I break out the Krazy Glue. Certainly, if Krazy Glue can suspend a grown man, it could hold my precious G key together. Well, it can. For just over three years. Fast forward to Saturday night's gig. I stumble through about two and a half songs, lamenting the repeat loss of G4, when it hits me. The one thing that could mend the pieces of my broken key that just might exist at the gig: duct tape. Krazy Glue may have been around since 1973, but duct tape was created in 1942 to repair military equipment in World War II. And yea, as it turns out, it doth exist in the gig bag of the saxophonist, and he saw that it was good. I finish the rest of the show gingerly using the taped and broken G key, my Kerri Strug ankle.

Could this event be a telling metaphor for the year ahead? Will I, when faced with adversity, look to history and respond quickly with practical solutions? Perhaps. Or maybe in 2009, I will find myself older and wiser, and get the damn thing fixed before it happens again.