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1. A HARD RAIN’S A-GONNA MAYBE FALL<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player doesn’t like to play in direct sunlight.\u00a0 He wants our contract to say “We will not play in direct sunlight.”<\/p>\n I ignore him.\u00a0 At summer concerts, I try to set up outside.\u00a0 This has cost the band one loudspeaker, damaged by heavy rain.<\/p>\n Yiddishe Cup has played on the Wiley Middle School lawn, University Heights, Ohio, for 16 years and has moved inside the school three times.\u00a0 (Thus, there is a 19 percent chance we’ll get rained out in Cleveland on an August night.)<\/p>\n At private parties, clients sometimes rent backyard tents just so they can have something extra thing to worry about — whether the tent will blow down or not.\u00a0 Some Jews will pay extra for another worry.<\/p>\n Yiddishe Cup played<\/strong><\/span> a tent in Dayton, Ohio, where it rained so hard, busboys poked holes in the canopy to collect rain into garbage cans.\u00a0 I thought the band might get electrocuted, the floor was so damp.<\/p>\n At a Shaker Heights tent, the air was so hot and humid, my clarinet slid apart at the cork joints. \u00a0Biloxi, Miss., had nothing on Shaker that night.<\/p>\n Yiddishe Cup played poolside in a Shaker backyard.\u00a0 We were like Catskill mambo kings.\u00a0 At the Akron (Ohio) JCC, we also played poolside, and the kids tried to splash us with belly slams and cannonballs. \u00a0That was Family Fun Day, a.k.a.\u00a0Let’s Destroy Professional Musical Instruments Day.<\/p>\n Yiddishe Cup’s keyboard player<\/strong><\/span> doesn’t like it when I vacillate between indoors and outdoors.\u00a0 Mr. Keyboard Player, who are you going to trust, AccuWeather or your leader?<\/p>\n I avoid indoors if possible. \u00a0Granted, outdoor sound is mediocre, but the breeze is good and the kids get to run on the grass, and summer is so brief.<\/p>\n Last summer at University Heights, we moved the band’s equipment indoors at the last minute.\u00a0 The storm knocked down a chain-link fence and several trees.\u00a0 That was one of my better calls.<\/p>\n —-<\/p>\n Here’s a video clip<\/strong><\/span> from last year’s concert.\u00a0 (The stage patter at the end of the song, at 1:58 min., is amusing.)<\/p>\n