{"id":2612,"date":"2010-11-24T08:00:07","date_gmt":"2010-11-24T12:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/?p=2612"},"modified":"2023-12-28T13:28:30","modified_gmt":"2023-12-28T18:28:30","slug":"thanksgiving-wedding-sick","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/24\/thanksgiving-wedding-sick\/","title":{"rendered":"THANKSGIVING WEDDING . . . SICK"},"content":{"rendered":"

 
\nWhen the mother <\/strong><\/span>of the bride says you’re on for the wedding, you’re not always on. \u00a0The bride, not the mother, makes all final decisions.\u00a0 The bride can — and will — override Mom.<\/p>\n

I once negotiated a Thanksgiving Day wedding. \u00a0\u00a0The mom thought Thanksgiving would be the perfect wedding day, because nobody would come. \u00a0The groom’s side was from New York, so flights to Cleveland would be expensive.\u00a0 Terrific. \u00a0And the locals would pass on the wedding to eat Thanksgiving dinner at home with their kids, who wouldn’t be invited to the wedding.\u00a0 Also, terrific.<\/p>\n

I listened to this for three phone calls.<\/p>\n

Then the mom hired Yiddishe Cup.<\/p>\n

Yes!<\/p>\n

The band members<\/strong><\/span> rescheduled their own Thanksgiving dinners.\u00a0 Not an easy task.<\/p>\n

\"\"The mom called a fourth time and said the bride wanted a different band. \u00a0I didn’t even ask who.\u00a0 I usually ask, but \u00a0I was so mad — mostly at myself because I had forgotten the rule “it’s all about the bride.”<\/p>\n

[Exception: A mom booked us for a Cleveland wedding, and the bride — from Seattle — ran up to the bandstand and said, “I hate klezmer music!\u00a0 How could my mother do this to me!”]<\/p>\n

After Ms. Thanksgiving Turkey<\/strong><\/span> hung up, I called a second client — a bat mitzvah mom — who was late with her contract and deposit.<\/p>\n

She said she wanted to talk more. \u00a0I had already talked to her several times.\u00a0 I said, “Yiddishe Cup has been around over twenty years.\u00a0 You’ve seen us.\u00a0 Everybody has seen us.\u00a0 You know what we’re all about.”<\/p>\n

She said her husband was sick.<\/p>\n

Pause.\u00a0 Sick<\/em> in the band biz means very ill. \u00a0It sometimes means dying. \u00a0I’ve played simchas<\/em> (celebrations) for sick people; these affairs are the most poignant. \u00a0\u00a0I’ve seen dads roll down the aisle in wheelchairs.\u00a0 Dads who couldn’t talk because of strokes.\u00a0 Guys with half a brain left.<\/p>\n

Yiddishe Cup has played for dead people; we played a bat mitzvah luncheon where the bat mitzvah girl’s mom died the day before.\u00a0 The funeral was the next day.\u00a0 We played in the family room instead of at the party center.\u00a0 Two or three people tried a hora.<\/p>\n

The woman with the sick husband<\/strong><\/span> came to my house to further discuss the bat mitzvah. \u00a0I asked what her husband’s illness was. \u00a0She said he was depressed.\u00a0 \u00a0Her husband — a doctor — had lost a patient that week.<\/p>\n

He wasn’t sick!\u00a0 Doctors lose patients all the time!\u00a0 She just wanted to change the date, the number of musicians, and a few other things. \u00a0\u00a0Which she did.<\/p>\n

The gig — on a new date, with fewer musicians — was surprisingly fun.\u00a0 Everybody was upbeat, and nobody bugged the band, except the good-natured grandfather, who said to our pianist, “Do you know your fly is down.”<\/p>\n

Our pianist, not missing a beat, answered, “No, can you hum a few bars?”<\/p>\n

Nobody was sick.\u00a0 That was something to be thankful for.<\/p>\n

—-<\/span>
\nPlease see the post below too.\u00a0 It’s fresh.<\/span>
\n—<\/span>
\nYiddishe Cup plays Columbus, Ohio, 6 p.m. Sun., Dec. 5.\u00a0 Chanukah.\u00a0 Please contact Tifereth Israel Congregation<\/a> for details.<\/span>
\n—<\/span>
\nIllustration by Ralph Solonitz.<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  When the mother of the bride says you’re on for the wedding, you’re not always on. \u00a0The bride, not the mother, makes all final decisions.\u00a0 The bride can — and will — override Mom. I once negotiated a Thanksgiving Day wedding. \u00a0\u00a0The mom thought Thanksgiving would be the perfect wedding day, because nobody would […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2612","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-klezmer"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2612","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2612"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2612\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":31277,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2612\/revisions\/31277"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2612"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2612"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.yiddishecup.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2612"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}