We played a wedding at "The Pisa", one of the Brooklyn 'wedding factories', (they were called that for the number of rooms they had) ... so the general manager hears us and tells the guy who had the 'house band' contract to hire us, and have us play there ... The agent wanted to pay us $15 a man ... we said scale is $25 or we don't play ... the gm said "pay them"
In those days, you did not argue with the gm of a catering hall in Brooklyn ...
It was a great deal for us ... we would call the agent on a Wednesday and he would fill in any open spots in our weekend ...