Three square meals a day, and all the gay sex you can handle.
As for the musician part, after everything passes (basics, Armed Forces School of Music five months) I’ll be straight-up Full Time musician for 4 years anywhere in the US, or Hawaii, Italy, Japan. When I’m not playing, I’m guarding or patrolling a log or something.
I think my real serious concern here is if I can start singing “In The Navy” or if I can start calling myself “Sailor Kagato” and start dressing up in blue and white mini-skirts. And when I get one of those boss-ass hats. Most important, the hat thing.
Just remember: even a musician has to be assigned to a ship months at a time performing menial tasks. If you don’t think you can handle that, it’d probably be better that you do Air Force, because then you’d at least be able to be on a base consistently. My dad was in the Navy, so I can tell you a bit more if you want… but I think that’s all that’s really relevant.
I think that you’d be able to survive tours on a ship. I hear that as long as you go prepared with things to do off duty (ie. books, videogames, etc) that it’s just fine. Would you still want to do music in your free time if that was you primary duty?
So I got a whole bunch of info off the web about Navy and Navy band and went to talk with a recruiter today.
The biggest obstacle is that I have to also audition on clarinet, for scales, a prepared piece "grade 4 or higher (contacting one of my former teachers asking what the fuck that means and if I’ve already been playing stuff like that) and sightreading, which is 50% of the entire thing. I just have to go rent a decent sax and buy/learn clarinet. If I can get through that, I’m set.
Talked to the recruiter about basics, he says it’s just 75% classroom, 25% physical. That, and run a mile and a half within 13 minutes. No prob.
There’s also the option of becoming a Public Relations officer, which has nothing to do with music, but maybe some media-job is related to it. Pays a great deal more (roughly double) and all that good stuff.
