Every once in a while I have to explain to a non-musician friends what a gig is. It happened a couple of times this past week, and I found myself wondering about the word. Oh joy! A good excuse for a romp in the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, 3750 pages, conveniently bound in two massive volumes. That's the "shorter" part: there are only two. The full-size Oxford is a set of books bigger than my apartment.
As it turns out, gig as a noun has many definitions, only one which is the one I am using: (the engagement of a musician or musicians for) a performance of jazz,pop music, etc, especially for one night only; the place of such a performance.
But most of the other definitions fit, too, in their own ways...
A thing that whirls; a device consisting of an arrangement of feathers used to attract birds to a net by revolving. Perhaps the arrangement of feathers is the "chirp", aka "canary", aka "chick singer"?
A fancy, a joke, a whim. Fun. merriment glee. Sometimes, yes. And "on the gig" can mean in a state of boisterous hilarity. That would be when Richard de Rosa is on drums, and on a roll with his puns.
An arrangement of hooks set back to back... That would be the pop music gig, yes? No. It's a device for catching fish. Or frogs.
Finally, and my favorite, really: a two-storied lift used by miners in ascending or descending a pit-shaft. Anyone who has been working in jazz for a while knows that there are clubs like that. And when you are in one of them, it can be pretty dark. You need gig lamps, otherwise known as spectacles (which reminds me of a fabled bit of audio tape of Jimi Hendrix in the recording studio on which he can be heard talking about his "ear goggles", i.e. headphones).
A gig is also a light, two-wheeled one-horse carriage, and a gigster is the horse suitable for pulling it. Or... a musician who performs at gigs.
Let's not discuss the gigolo.
