a free form jazz odyssey in front of a festival crowd

well, my associate…lets just call her Sharon-Torum recently said to me “If you weren’t a jew, I’d read your blog much more”

Thats one of those instances where you kind of just go “…” ya know? exactly. Well blogosphere, today I became an official hipster, like it or not:

http://www.stereogum.com/archives/003930.html#more

There it is, I’ve made 2 of my top 3 blogs, which started when I wrote a letter to Jason Mulgrew about being stuck in an Ohio Hell Hole Airport. They even threw in a little comment about my Ryan Adams note, how lovely. Really, I’m very happy about it. I’m an idiot though, because i did not link them to this blog. Well, there goes a possible few hundred billion hits for the ols S.A.W.C (stevenaustinweiss.com- the last dot is implied)

For those of you who do not follow the internet link rule, which I wrote extensively about in my last post, here is a synopsis. Last night, I went to a benefit Bob Dylan tribute show at Lincoln Center. It was truly an amazing night, 21 serious musicians on a bill, plus Clap Your Hands Say Yeah (really, who let those half ass hipster fucks in anyway?) I took my dad, as his birthday present.
So, we meet on the upper west side for dinner, because thats how we roll, yo. So, as fate would have it, i waited on a center island by Lincoln Center at 64th street waiting for the Senior Weiss to show up, and looked down, only to find a 100$ bill folded on the ground! I paused for about a minute, thinking if i was on hidden camera or something- who carries a 100$ bill? So i looked around, no one there, so i picked it up. I justified it this way- If you carry that large of a bill, you probably have several of them, and there is a 55% chance youre a douchebag, so its ok that you dropped it- it won’t hurt you too much.

I wasn’t jumping up and down all psyched, i just kind of pondered the situation. Then I took the two of us out to dinner, because i’m a badass playa like that. Exactly. I still had 30$ left after dinner and beverages (it was a nice meal) so I figure this- I’m going to drop 2 singles on the ground, and make someones day a little better. Why not a 20? Because I can’t afford to just drop a 20, idiot! The DB that dropped this Hundo treated it like i treat 1$ so thats how this will work. Got it? ok, on we go.

We saw Dustin Hoffman in a restaurant on the walk to the show, that is neither here nor there, my dad was incredibly excited about it. Now, onto the show. It blew my damn mind for 80% of the night. It was just hit after hit. Full of unexpected highlights. Namely Allan Toussant. Have you heard him? I only vaugely know his work, but really, it almost brought tears to my eyes- a solo New Orleans style “Mama You Been On My Mind”. Jill sobule was wonderful doing “ring them bells” with cyndi lauper on backup vocals. MMW Tore it up acoustic style, with billy martin just playing a shaker, medeski on Melodica doing “Buckets of Rain” badass. Patti Smith might have been my favorite, a very minimal performance, but she put this “i’ll rip your damn head off” soul into it. Wonderful.

So altogether a wonderful night. I bought a Ryan Adams ticket for his NY shows in December, he impressed me. November/december will be the live music time of year, thats always how it works. MMW are doing some touring with John Scofield, and i’ll be a monkey’s uncle if i miss that shit (what does that even mean?)

Also, the First Annual Challah Back Channuka is happening, dont miss it man, big stuff. BIG.