Funny Post About a Piano-Shaped Object

We pianists have the mixed blessing of not having to lug our instrument all over kingdom come to do a job. I say "mixed" because sometimes you have to deal with some exceptionally crappy instruments and just make the best of it. Slightly out of tune (or even moderately out of tune), I can deal with. Some things I've had to work around:

• Sticking keys that don't release once you've played them. If you're lucky, the key might bounce back if you hit it sharply.
• No damper pedal. Can you say "legato fingering?"
• A key that, when depressed, sticks together with several of its neighbors who all come along for the ride. This happened to me during a performance in high school (it was in a mall and no one was listening, but still!) Fortunately it was all in the high register, so I just didn't use that octave for the rest of the performance.
• And of course, the most common: one particular nasty out-of-tune note, the aural equivalent of moldy leftovers crawling with orange and green maggots and fungus. If I don't have a tuning wrench with me, as is usually the case, I just either 1) don't play anything that includes that note or 2) transpose everything to a key that doesn't include that note. This requires lightning-quick mental acrobatics and music theory geekiness, which keeps me on my toes, and isn't always successful.

One of my Windsong friends pointed me to this funny blog post by the pianist for the Bread and Roses Feminist Singers. She referred to this Piano From Hell as "the piano incarnation of Florence Foster Jenkins." Enjoy--it's hilarious!

( Go to Bread and Roses MySpace page and click on the blog entry called "In the Loosest Sense of the Word." Sorry about this indirect link. It wouldn't load when I tried to post it the normal way.)