This was requested a while back when I posted here asking people for recommendations on music stores in Tallinn, Estonia. Well, here it is, about nine months late. I originally started writing this as a response to an old cruise ship thread that got bumped, so I read the OP and realized that my response would no longer be relevant. So here it is, greatly expanded and in its own shiny thread.
I did a three month contract on HAL's Eurodam ship while it was doing the Baltic run. I loved the ports. I got to see some amazing places. Full list: Dover, Edinburgh, Kirkwall, Norwegian fjords, Stockholm, Helsinki, Tallinn (my FAVORITE), Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Reykjavik, the Faroe Islands, Qaqortoq (Greenland), Newfoundland, and others I can't remember. I didn't get my seaman's book in time to get off in Russia.
But I HATED the gig itself. I played in the ballroom dance trio. As far as gigs go, it was actually a ton of work. We played 5 hours a night, every single night. You might think "Oh that's so easy, playing 5 hours a night!" No, it's not. A normal gig like that on land is usually around 3 hours. 5 hours of exacting stylistic repetition is grating on the nerves. 90 days straight . . . . it's a marathon.
The bandleader (piano) was an old pro who worked on land most of the time but did ships when work was scarce. He knew thousands of tunes (sounds like exaggeration, but it's not) right off the top of his head, any key, didn't matter. We had the HAL books and we read from that half the time. We tried to avoid those books though because the charts really were terrible. Like, disastrously awful arrangements. So half the time, the piano player was playing and giving me chord changes with his hands (3 fingers up for A, 2 down for Eb, etc). He also compiled a book of chord changes he wrote down in a binder full of old ship schedules. He could be a REAL hardass. Five hours is a long gig, and if I missed a to coda, he would pound on the keys and flash me dirty looks to make it known he wasn't pleased. He could be incredibly passive aggressive on the bandstand, and some nights were a real nightmare. All told though, he was a good guy and didn't carry over his temper flares after the gig. His time and knowledge of styles were incredible, and at the end of the night when we would play some bebop if there were no dancers, he could rip some great lines. He could also read anything you put in front of him.
For the last cruise, which was a transatlantic one, we got a new bandleader. This guy was the nicest guy you could ever meet, and a very successful and wealthy piano player. For years he had a fantastic gig that paid him a lot. So he did cruises for fun on a short term basis, filling in if someone had to bail from a contract early.
This guy was the exact opposite of the first bandleader. He could not read a note. He couldn't really improvise over changes he hadn't practiced for a long time. So we played the same ~100+ tunes every night, poorly because his time was bad. Also, he was the perfect stereotype of a bad, hammy lounge singer. Overdone, crappy vocals, and the audience banter was cringe-worthy. Not only that, but he couldn't play dance styles . . . IN A DANCE TRIO. He'd call some kind of latin tune, and the drummer and myself would play the style perfectly, but he played everything the same, just played a bunch of tinkly crap in the high register. He wouldn't know a montuno if it came up and took a dump in his face. On the HAL charts, he would frequently get lost. He'd even skip lines in his bad originals that he brought. Every break, I went to the OB for a shot of Jim Beam to get through the night on that cruise.
So that was my musical experience on the ship. Once you get used to it, it's mindless repetition. I nearly fell asleep while playing a few times. That's why musicians on cruise ships look like they want to die.
Sometimes on breaks I would go watch the main band. They had a couple players who were really good at other things. The keys player was a phenomenal classical pianist. She was stuck doing incidental string parts. The piano player was a great Broadway style player. The drummer was a very good jazz drummer, but didn't really know how to play a heavy groove. It sounded very forced for him. The guitarist and bassist were both pretty bad players. The sax player (who was the band leader) was pretty poor.
When the main band did the staged shows, they never played live. They were synching to tracks, which most of the time were bad midi tracks. So apart from 2-hour dance sets, short deck sets, and the Broadway review, they didn't play.
While not playing on your gig, you have to deal with some real crap living on a ship. Naturally, you'll be sharing a cabin. There isn't enough room for both room mates to stand at the same time in a typical cabin. It's like living in a closet that goes up and down in bad weather.
Crew members, especially at the musician level, aren't allowed to do much. Most of the time I hung out in my cabin whiling the hours away playing video games. I played a lot of Postal 2 to vent my frustrations. I also played a lot of RPGs because they're very long games and I wouldn't run out of them too quick.
Then you have to deal with other people. Every night you've got to deal with rowdy Russians or gay dancers having massive parties in their cabins. The dancers you can talk to, the Russians will just get pissed off at you. Then you have to call security.
I went to drink at the OB (officer's bar) every night. The OB was basically where the non-Asian crew members went. If there were officers there, it would always be super loud with obnoxious eurotrash dance music playing. Most of the time it was more chill. I could just go there, have a couple beers, wish I wasn't on the ship, and go back down to my cabin to sleep. Alcohol is very cheap for crew members, around $0.85 for a beer and $1.00 for a shot. They keep it cheap because it's the only way crew members wouldn't mutiny and/or kill themselves and each other.
There is a lot of interpersonal drama that goes on on a ship. Basically, if you LOVED high school cliques and he-said-she-said and he/she slept with him/her, you're going to love ships. If you're a regular human being . . . . not so much.
In conclusion, ships are a mixed bag. At my age, they pay ok, especially given I'm STILL living at home trying to find a job to tide me over til I start grad school. Seeing Europe was fantastic, Scotland especially because I'm a professional piper as well. But knowing what I know now about the gig itself and the living conditions you have to endure, I wouldn't do it again. Hopefully future ship contractors can search this forum and find this post, and hopefully find some part of it useful.
I did a three month contract on HAL's Eurodam ship while it was doing the Baltic run. I loved the ports. I got to see some amazing places. Full list: Dover, Edinburgh, Kirkwall, Norwegian fjords, Stockholm, Helsinki, Tallinn (my FAVORITE), Copenhagen, Amsterdam, Reykjavik, the Faroe Islands, Qaqortoq (Greenland), Newfoundland, and others I can't remember. I didn't get my seaman's book in time to get off in Russia.
But I HATED the gig itself. I played in the ballroom dance trio. As far as gigs go, it was actually a ton of work. We played 5 hours a night, every single night. You might think "Oh that's so easy, playing 5 hours a night!" No, it's not. A normal gig like that on land is usually around 3 hours. 5 hours of exacting stylistic repetition is grating on the nerves. 90 days straight . . . . it's a marathon.
The bandleader (piano) was an old pro who worked on land most of the time but did ships when work was scarce. He knew thousands of tunes (sounds like exaggeration, but it's not) right off the top of his head, any key, didn't matter. We had the HAL books and we read from that half the time. We tried to avoid those books though because the charts really were terrible. Like, disastrously awful arrangements. So half the time, the piano player was playing and giving me chord changes with his hands (3 fingers up for A, 2 down for Eb, etc). He also compiled a book of chord changes he wrote down in a binder full of old ship schedules. He could be a REAL hardass. Five hours is a long gig, and if I missed a to coda, he would pound on the keys and flash me dirty looks to make it known he wasn't pleased. He could be incredibly passive aggressive on the bandstand, and some nights were a real nightmare. All told though, he was a good guy and didn't carry over his temper flares after the gig. His time and knowledge of styles were incredible, and at the end of the night when we would play some bebop if there were no dancers, he could rip some great lines. He could also read anything you put in front of him.
For the last cruise, which was a transatlantic one, we got a new bandleader. This guy was the nicest guy you could ever meet, and a very successful and wealthy piano player. For years he had a fantastic gig that paid him a lot. So he did cruises for fun on a short term basis, filling in if someone had to bail from a contract early.
This guy was the exact opposite of the first bandleader. He could not read a note. He couldn't really improvise over changes he hadn't practiced for a long time. So we played the same ~100+ tunes every night, poorly because his time was bad. Also, he was the perfect stereotype of a bad, hammy lounge singer. Overdone, crappy vocals, and the audience banter was cringe-worthy. Not only that, but he couldn't play dance styles . . . IN A DANCE TRIO. He'd call some kind of latin tune, and the drummer and myself would play the style perfectly, but he played everything the same, just played a bunch of tinkly crap in the high register. He wouldn't know a montuno if it came up and took a dump in his face. On the HAL charts, he would frequently get lost. He'd even skip lines in his bad originals that he brought. Every break, I went to the OB for a shot of Jim Beam to get through the night on that cruise.
So that was my musical experience on the ship. Once you get used to it, it's mindless repetition. I nearly fell asleep while playing a few times. That's why musicians on cruise ships look like they want to die.
Sometimes on breaks I would go watch the main band. They had a couple players who were really good at other things. The keys player was a phenomenal classical pianist. She was stuck doing incidental string parts. The piano player was a great Broadway style player. The drummer was a very good jazz drummer, but didn't really know how to play a heavy groove. It sounded very forced for him. The guitarist and bassist were both pretty bad players. The sax player (who was the band leader) was pretty poor.
When the main band did the staged shows, they never played live. They were synching to tracks, which most of the time were bad midi tracks. So apart from 2-hour dance sets, short deck sets, and the Broadway review, they didn't play.
While not playing on your gig, you have to deal with some real crap living on a ship. Naturally, you'll be sharing a cabin. There isn't enough room for both room mates to stand at the same time in a typical cabin. It's like living in a closet that goes up and down in bad weather.
Crew members, especially at the musician level, aren't allowed to do much. Most of the time I hung out in my cabin whiling the hours away playing video games. I played a lot of Postal 2 to vent my frustrations. I also played a lot of RPGs because they're very long games and I wouldn't run out of them too quick.
Then you have to deal with other people. Every night you've got to deal with rowdy Russians or gay dancers having massive parties in their cabins. The dancers you can talk to, the Russians will just get pissed off at you. Then you have to call security.
I went to drink at the OB (officer's bar) every night. The OB was basically where the non-Asian crew members went. If there were officers there, it would always be super loud with obnoxious eurotrash dance music playing. Most of the time it was more chill. I could just go there, have a couple beers, wish I wasn't on the ship, and go back down to my cabin to sleep. Alcohol is very cheap for crew members, around $0.85 for a beer and $1.00 for a shot. They keep it cheap because it's the only way crew members wouldn't mutiny and/or kill themselves and each other.
There is a lot of interpersonal drama that goes on on a ship. Basically, if you LOVED high school cliques and he-said-she-said and he/she slept with him/her, you're going to love ships. If you're a regular human being . . . . not so much.
In conclusion, ships are a mixed bag. At my age, they pay ok, especially given I'm STILL living at home trying to find a job to tide me over til I start grad school. Seeing Europe was fantastic, Scotland especially because I'm a professional piper as well. But knowing what I know now about the gig itself and the living conditions you have to endure, I wouldn't do it again. Hopefully future ship contractors can search this forum and find this post, and hopefully find some part of it useful.
to say the least
