The professional musician’s life has many attendant aspects, other than the activity itself, so that any successful Caribbean musician will tell you that one of the problems is dealing with hecklers who consider themselves comedians and will shout stuff at you from the crowd, very loud. I remember an incident from the early Tradewinds in Toronto days, with this Trini musician Dave DeCastro who was pretty good playing cuatro and singing popular calypsoes. Castro was a regular at our We Place club downtown fairly often, real Trini loud mouth, and he would come close to the stage with a couple padnas while we were on and try to run some tantalise at us. Most of the time I would just ignore him or laugh him off, but one night he came in and I was fed up with his foolishness (I should mention he was almost bald), so I stopped the band and with the whole place quiet I leaned into the mike and said, “Padna, why you don’t put your two fingers in your nose and go lawn bowling?” Well the whole club cracked up, including his padnas (you know how Trinis love a picong); they roasted him. I never heard a word from Castro after that.
