THINGS TO DO IN NEW YORK WHILST YOU'RE ALIVE

In all honesty I would have been quite happy to just sit in the same room as Andy Garcia all evening for 60 dollars, but last night's gig -THE CINESON ALL STARS featuring ANDY GARCIA + the legendary CACHAO at B.B. King's Club goes into my list of top gigs ever. Let's just get the name-dropping over first because they just kept on getting onto the stage to guest - trumpet player Alfredo "Chocolate" Armenteros and reed player Paquito D'Rivera to name but two, and into the audience to watch - Robert Duvall. So the whole evening had that 'anything can happen next' feel to it, which is always fun.

Cachao is an amazing 88 yr old Cuban bass player, who, along with his brother, invented the mambo rhythm back in 1938 and is still performing two and a half hour sets, without a break, of some of the most uplifting and life-affirming music I've ever heard. Andy Garcia has been working closely with him for many years, since making a documentary about him in 1993 - 'Cachao…Como Su Ritmo No Hay Dos' and he plays bongos/percussion (brilliantly) in the band, and does all the announcements in THAT VOICE.......

I'm meeting up with the lovely Tim Whitehead tonight, who's in town briefly, and we're off to see Bill Frisell. But unless he has Al Pacino as a sideman, last night's gig is going to be pretty hard to live up to....

NOT JUST AN AIRPORT

Yesterday at some ridiculous hour of the morning, and after one hour of sleep, set off with OVP to his meeting at NJPAC in Newark, which he had very kindly invited me along to so as I could meet some folks who work there and have a look around the venue with a view to my future jazz project ideas. I'd forgotten the joys of commuting. Almost two hours of torrential rain, broken ticket machines, cancelled trains, dead ends, dead bodies on the line, deadly umbrellas in the street, no cabs and toxic swamps.

The meeting was good for OVP although most of it went straight over my head as I don't speak fluent 'marketing', but it was good to meet some of the lovely and very committed staff who work there and hear about their ideas and plans for the venue. The main hall itself is beautiful, and the whole building, being only 10 years old has many of the facilities which were always lacking at the RFH (me, incredulously: 'you have furniture storerooms?!'). Particularly liked their remarkably adaptable third and smallest performance space and found my programming-head whirring into action at the mere sight of that and their currently very deserted (because not open until performance times) foyer spaces.
Must visit to see a performance sometime. But next time I'll fly.

THE HIGHLIFE

I have spent an inordinate amount of time at least 800 feet above this city since moving here. This is largely due to having a continuous flow of guests who all want to get high. Usually in the height sense. (It's an age thing I guess).

The current guests, however, have set a whole new level in vertical standards. And so it was yesterday, in honour of C's birthday, that I found myself in a helicopter. Short of a pilot with a private plane coming to stay, I think this is as high as I'm going to get in the near future, and I mean this in both senses of the word, as it was a pretty cool experience.











We're sensible people of course, so thought it wise to stop off at 250 metres for cocktails at the Rainbow Grill on the way back, in order to avoid whatever the opposite of the 'bends' is. Back to the 13th floor apartment next, because you can't be too careful. Then finally the brave amongst us ventured out to partake of the not exactly grounding earth-moving 35hz of bass loveliness from the wondrous groovemeistress Meshell Ndegeocello at Joe's Pub.

They're not at all demanding these visitors, but OVP wants to experience low-life next, so I feel a low-down and worse-than-dirty Bellevue night coming on.....

THE BRITISH AREN'T COMING

Ok, apologies for my less than prolific blogging of late, but I have spent the last several days trying to book tickets for a jazz festival. This is no word of a lie.

So. Very excited I was, at the prospect of seeing lots of UK jazz mates in New York and hearing some fantastic music, so it was with no lack of will and enthusiasm that I went about this task.
The trail originated here with an article about Stan Tracey by Evening Standard jazz critic Jack Massarik in a popular NY jazz magazine. It directed me here.

Let's pause here for a minute whilst trying to put a jazz name to the Buckingham Palace sax-playing-guard face or endeavouring to understand quite what Fernando Varela is doing in a British Jazz Festival, or indeed wondering if Marian McCartland should in fact read Marian McPartland or perhaps even Barbara Cartland ......? And Jean Toussaint is American. Clearly. I then clicked on the link to 'listen to sample tracks' by the festival performers......Tubby Hayes (uh?!) Wow - this was going to be an even more extraordinary festival than I'd imagined.......

Somewhat taken aback by the sheer size of this programme (3 nights and a day) and the number of musicians coming over and hence the resources it would require, and also slightly alarmed that if this was happening in 10 days time, that's not a lot of time to get an audience, particularly if they can't find out how to buy a ticket..

Anyway, there are nevertheless many musicians I'd want to see on that list, Union Jacks aside, so I continued the trail to here. Ok, a page about the festival but no information as to how to purchase tickets. A competition to win tickets though! So I entered several times. I then listened to the station for some mention as to how to buy tickets. (But not for long you understand.) No mention.

Then checked all the musicians websites. Most said simply 'New York UK jazz festival' or various adaptations on that theme, some didn't mention it at all and others said 'tba.' A little suspicious one might think, but then I've worked with musicians for years and frankly most of them have better things to do than update their websites. The lovely Julian Joseph's website however, pointed directly to the venue.

To the venue website then. Weird thing about this being that however many times I reloaded the calendar or joined new types of mailing list, there was no mention whatsoever of a jazz festival. Curiouser and curiouser. So I phoned the venue. A very bemused man in the box office told me I was basically imagining it and there was no jazz festival happening there next week, British or otherwise. But would I like to go to the McDonald's Gospelfest 2006? Nah. Thanks anyway mate.

Ok, I thought, (overly optimistic by now you might think, but by this point obtaining tickets had become the sort of challenge which keeps a shark awake at night,) maybe it's a private hire and therefore there's some ticket agency looking after it? This happens quite a lot in New York, so I was still excited. Ish.

Put a few feelers out re. the 'swanky bash' - but a friend who just happened to be seeing someone at the British Consulate last night and 'mentioned' the jazz festival reported back that they hadn't got a clue what he was talking about.

Then came an email from D, who had been on the trail for as long as I had, and had just received a reply from the record company whom she had emailed to ask how to get tickets.
Apparently the festival is postponed till the Autumn due to 'issues regarding global broadcast'. Whatever that means. I can imagine what it means actually.... one thing spending 15 years in a windowless office in a major arts centre should have taught me – to go with my hunches.

So days later I now have an inbox full of junk mail from all the websites I registered with along the way. I've even been forced to listen to a smooth jazz radio station for a full 2 hours this week (and you've no idea how much tai chi I'm going to have to do to get over that), and there is still a trail a mile long on everyone's websites to this non-existent jazz festival.

Thankfully I have my own Brits coming today – OVP & C. And I’m sure much improvising will take place over the next few days without the aid of a Beefeater, or indeed any kind of net, safety, inter or otherwise.

THE MYSPACE DIET

It has come to my attention from no less than two entirely independent sources that MySpace addiction is resulting in actual weight loss. This is apparently due to the inordinate amounts of time folks are spending on said site trying to gather as many 'friends' (in the loosest sense of the word) as possible, thereby totally forgetting to eat, for hours and days on end.

I sat at the computer on MySpace yesterday afternoon for a few hours to try it out and see if I could shift a few pounds. (I am not yet that desperate for friends you understand - it's actually proving to be a very useful way of being able to keep in touch with all the musicians I worked with in the UK and the ones I've met in the US.)

But then the PC crashed, fatally it seems. Isn't it strange how whatever diet you happen to be on, there's always a new set of excuses as to why you can't follow it....

I'LL SEE YOU NEXT LIFETIME

I toyed for a full 2 minutes with purchasing Madonna tickets for Madison Square Garden in June, which went on sale yesterday. Until I looked at the prices that is. They range from a mere $255 to a staggering $11,400! On top of which you need a Masters degree in architecture to understand the seating plan.

I might sell a few tickets for a fiver to sit at my kitchen window with binoculars, as the view will probably equate to the $300 tickets or thereabouts.

I mean really, what is she, THE Madonna?

BOSTON ADDENDUM

This will be of no interest to you at all unless you find yourself on the streets of Boston without a paddle, but there is a curious cab situation at large in this wondrous city. In short, there is no 'system'. It came to our notice fairly early on in the trip that flagging a cab was a fairly random business. Mainly because the ones that were stopping generally had no light on the top. At first we thought that this meant that if a cab had a light on it was busy, which alone would be a strange enough opposite to the London/NY cabs we are used to. But oh no. On close questioning of several cab drivers it transpired that the light has no meaning whatsoever. ie. it is totally up to the individual cab driver as to whether he uses his light to signify if he is free or occupied. We were urged to write and complain, as the cab drivers themselves were less than impressed with this situation, but seemed to have no idea as to how to change it themselves. Curious.

And whilst we're musing on lack of systems, there also exists a perpetual life/death situation to rival the average whale watch whilst one is trying to cross a road. Crossing the road in Boston is complicated enough as it is - first there is the white-safe-to-cross-man, then there is a flashing red man countdown of 20 seconds, then there is a red man. Which would be all very well if the countdown meant that after 20 seconds the lights changed, but there seemed to be another half hour or so of crossing time after the countdown. Which again would be all very well if the drivers themselves paid any attention to traffic lights, but they simply don't....

MOBY DICK (SIC)

What better way to spend your anniversary than on a 4-hour 'Whale Watch.'
We thought...
For starters, it was certainly more 'watch' than 'whale'. There was an enormous amount of watching in fact, in totally arctic conditions. After about an hour of the crew members going 'look - over there!' and pointing at a vast expanse of, well, ocean actually, I was beginning to think it was a huge con and started muttering in a mutinying-sort-of-way to nearby passengers 'they're making it up.....'

Finally there was a whale. Thank God, I thought, now we can go back. Because I was so not dressed for this trip. Nobody was dressed for this trip. Frankly, you'd have to have been in Inuit clothing to be dressed for this trip. Ah yes, the whale. Well in the femto second that I glimpsed it, it was brown and big and gone again. And from this everyone deduced that it was a finback whale. And who am I to argue. After another half hour or so of waiting (read freezing) for it to appear again, which it didn't, the crew decided it was time to give up and return to Boston.
By this point I had lost the feeling in everything except my marriage, which was just about hanging on in there by a halyard. The TH was in good spirits though and suggested, helpfully, that perhaps the whales had all gone to Boston today on a 'Human Watch' trip.

Then conditions worsened. It had by no means been a smooth ride out, but now we appeared to be 25 miles into the Atlantic on something resembling a large dinghy with 4 ft waves, gale force winds and the roughest seas I have ever experienced even in my wildest nightmares. Even the crew looked pale, which is a facial shade you don't particularly want to see from your prospective lifesavers under such circumstances. And of course everybody, everybody except the TH and I that is, became instantly seasick. There are times when it pays to be a shark and come from an Island. We were just a tiny little bit smug, it has to be said.

So for the next hour and a half we were being flung from port to starboard and back (trying to avoid flying vomit), and to tell the truth it was quite exhilarating and enjoyable - in a survival sort of way. Not to mention the calories we must have burned just trying to stay alive.

The crew decided to give everyone complimentary tickets to come back and do the trip again, as the whales had been less than present this time around. Haha! It was as much as 50 green-faced people could do to actually walk off the boat, never mind raise their right arm to pick up tickets to go through it all over again. We took some tickets though, in a smiley bouncy happy way, just to rub it in....

It took the rest of the day and the hotel room heater on 90 degrees to get warm again. Then to a gorgeous restaurant (good call K!) for lovely anniversary meal. We are totally in love with Beacon Hill here, so that's where we'll be if we don't come back......

ANNIVERSARY

Today is our wedding anniversary and I realised just now, in the realisation-type-way when you sit bolt upright in bed at 6am and shriek, (much to the non-amusement of sleeping husband), that in a WHOLE YEAR, this is the first time we've been away together for never mind 4 days, but even ONE DAY since we've been married! That's ridiculous! 6 months apart at the beginning whilst I was finishing my job in London, packing up and getting the flat sorted in order to rent it out, then 6 months in New York when the TH has been too busy at work to take any time off and I have been alone on trips to Edinburgh, London and Berlin.

Unsurprisingly therefore, this has been a totally lovely mini-break so far and we're finding out again that we quite like each other. A lot actually. We're also clearing up some obviously long-standing misunderstandings, which are the result of spending the past 6 months on separate computers, such as:
TH: 'Does TH stand for Terrible Husband?'
Me: lol
Pause.
Me: Uh? Oh my God, he's seriously asking.
Me: 'Errr no, Tactile Helpdesk'.
TH: 'Oh good'.

LOUGHBOROUGH JUNCTION, CAMBRIDGE

On Friday to Cambridge, where in a summery 75 degrees we explored the University area, Harvard Square and walked along the Charles River. We then wandered way off the beaten track into an interesting neighbourhood, where gangs of youths were hanging outside wooden houses trying to sell us things. When it became apparent that we were not customers, we were on the receiving end of comments. But as the houses in the neighbourhood looked like this, the whole scene took on a kind of poetic license....

LOVING BOSTON