Okay, in the spirit of keeping the ball in the air while we wait for Vimeo to finish encoding (OMG! it is my 53rd birthday in 42 minutes! how fucked up is this that I am killing time waiting to post when it is ready?), here's my past pedigree of jobs over the years.....
Undertaker's assistant and hearse driver (high school job)
Public Radio night shift personality/D.J (college)
Baker in a communist worker's collective health food bakery in Ann Arbor (college)
English translation style editor of Pravda anti-american and israel brochures while a student in Moscow in the late 1970's (hey. it paid for black bread and vodka!)
Pit orchestra director off broadway for musicals and really bad experimental productions - early 1980's (after I got back for Moscow Conservatory with a doctorates in music on a Fulbright scholarship. A long and strange story there involving Jimmy Carter)
Dry cleaner of fine Persian Carpets in New Jersey in-between pit orchestra conducting jobs in NYC (early 1980's as well)
Apprentice Wooden Boat Carpenter on Cape Cod for a couple of years as income while trying to start a 16th century renaissance dance band south of Boston (sort of like roofing, but earthier? Actually, boat carpentry is more like "siding".)
Grant writer for Goodwill Industries of America (late 1980's) to get funding for chronic schizophrenics placed in community housing and jobs bagging groceries at a SafeWay near you!
Music Director for the Boston Lyric Opera Company (
http://www.blo.org/) for most of the 1990's though 2004, while, at the same time in the later years, starting a porn company!
Lots more little jobs scattered in there. As a musician, that sort of "just happens" to pay the rent.
Oh yeah. I also have done my share of nail banging on construction crews, siding and (GASP!) roofing over the years! ROLF.
Cheers,
Colin