An oasis of cool in suburbia
Aug. 25th, 2002 08:56 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beetigerI woke up Friday morning wanting to go dancing, but Bard would only agree to join me if it was a folkish-kind of dancing, and didn't require going into Manhattan, and that just doesn't exist around here. So, I took the opportunity on Friday night to drag him out to to one of my favorite music venues in the area, the Towne Crier. It's up in Pauling, NY (Up? Everyplace is “up” or “down” for me; I have no natural sense of direction, and this is really more a figure of speech than anything else), which is not quite the middle of nowhere, but it's not quite somewhere either. I always think that it's infinitely far away, because of a few experiences of choosing to go there in the middle of snowstorms soon after we moved here, but actually it only takes about a hour and a bit to get there. It's a folk-jazz-blues-Irish-singer/songwriter kind of venue, at which people playing in Manhattan tend to stop, the day before or after their show in the city. It's set up restaurant/caberet style, and besides great music, they also serve overstuffed burritos and deep dish foccacia pizzas (which we skipped) and giant pieces of cake (which we did not skip). The overall impression is kind of hippy-organic and yuppie at the same time, sort of Ithaca meets metro New York.
Anyway, the musicians playing were The Larry Coryell Trio, which currently contains Paul Wertigo and Mark Egan, formerly of the Pat Metheny group. Apparently, the three of them put together a live album in Chicago, and are now touring with it. They were wonderful, and I was very happy to have seen them. But I was personally more amused by the opening act. They called themselves Green Eggs and Graham, and they had come to an open mike at the Towne Crier earlier that week and impressed the owner. There were six of them, ranging in age from about thirteen to seventeen. They were quite listenable, and they were amazing fun to watch. I think “Graham” was the sax player, who I think also did the arrangements. He never got the staff to do what he wanted with the monitors (can we have more bass, please? I can't hear the sax up here!), although the staff has worked with music professionals for decades. The guitarist stared at his hands very intently the whole time, as if they would do something evil if not thoroughly monitored. The bass player, who was almost certainly the oldest, swayed and nodded and rocked and grinned through the music, in something that might ultimately become a personal style but hadn't gelled yet. The keyboard player took a lot of solos, but hid behind the rest of the group, back to the audience, which was in part due to the setup of the instruments, but I never saw his face coming on or off stage either. The two drummers, clearly the youngest, switched off between pieces. I'm guessing the first one was the little brother of the guitarist, by facial structure. He struck me as very unconnected and lonely, as if his mom has made him learn to play with his brother, so that he'd have some friends. He certainly kept the rhythm, but was uninspired. I felt for him. The second one was probably the little brother of the bassist, and he gelled much better with the others, occassionally even looking at them.
Two of the parents were videotaping in the back of the room. Graham and Co. stayed on for the main show. The staff let them drink beer. A polished performance is all well and good, but give me a bunch of awkward, quirky kids with dreams in their eyes to really make me smile.
Anyway, the musicians playing were The Larry Coryell Trio, which currently contains Paul Wertigo and Mark Egan, formerly of the Pat Metheny group. Apparently, the three of them put together a live album in Chicago, and are now touring with it. They were wonderful, and I was very happy to have seen them. But I was personally more amused by the opening act. They called themselves Green Eggs and Graham, and they had come to an open mike at the Towne Crier earlier that week and impressed the owner. There were six of them, ranging in age from about thirteen to seventeen. They were quite listenable, and they were amazing fun to watch. I think “Graham” was the sax player, who I think also did the arrangements. He never got the staff to do what he wanted with the monitors (can we have more bass, please? I can't hear the sax up here!), although the staff has worked with music professionals for decades. The guitarist stared at his hands very intently the whole time, as if they would do something evil if not thoroughly monitored. The bass player, who was almost certainly the oldest, swayed and nodded and rocked and grinned through the music, in something that might ultimately become a personal style but hadn't gelled yet. The keyboard player took a lot of solos, but hid behind the rest of the group, back to the audience, which was in part due to the setup of the instruments, but I never saw his face coming on or off stage either. The two drummers, clearly the youngest, switched off between pieces. I'm guessing the first one was the little brother of the guitarist, by facial structure. He struck me as very unconnected and lonely, as if his mom has made him learn to play with his brother, so that he'd have some friends. He certainly kept the rhythm, but was uninspired. I felt for him. The second one was probably the little brother of the bassist, and he gelled much better with the others, occassionally even looking at them.
Two of the parents were videotaping in the back of the room. Graham and Co. stayed on for the main show. The staff let them drink beer. A polished performance is all well and good, but give me a bunch of awkward, quirky kids with dreams in their eyes to really make me smile.
