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Don Piper Situation in NYC
Left the house at 7:30 to swing by the bank and get cash, I was taking my time, because even though I knew it would be a better idea if I took the train in, it would be a lot more convenient to drive the hour or so to the city and I was purposely dawdling so I would get to the train station and miss the train leaving me no choice. However, when I got to Ronkonkoma station, the train was still there, and I decided to park and get on (still thinking it might leave me there on the platform and then I would still be able to drive in with a clear conciense). The doors began to close just as I got onto the platform, and I figured it was fate so I hopped on.
Found a seat with a pile of New York Times and Wall St. Journal sections and read more news than I have since Emily was born! George W. has slashed funding for DOE, NSF and the space program. Amazon.com may go under this year.
Pulled into Penn at around 9, found my way to a southbound A train, took that to 14th and 8th Ave station where I caught an L going across town to the East Village. When I emerged from the dank and faintly unine scented subway, it was about 10pm. I made my way to Ave A and down a couple blocks to 10th. Brownies is a typical village music club, not enough seats and too many people. A bottle of Bass was $4.50. I had two over the next hour and a half.
A Don Piper Situation opened with Just Checkin In and then I didn't recognize another tune till midnight when they announced they only had one more tune left and played Song for Joy. I called out for TheFinger, but they didnt play it (that song has been haunting me). Their trademark spinning quadrants were rotating behind them in the dark and little multicolored pine-cones of red and green and blue twirled along the edge of the stage. The crowd of mostly white, urban professionals mostly in their late twenties sporting dark 50's Kerowak glasses had thinned a bit when the first band ended, but the place was still packed. I was pretty impressed overall, these guys are quite tight, and their melancholy, almost depressing tone is punctuated by the occassional ripping vamp that can build to a deafening trance-like repeating mantra. The lead man (Don?) played a Gretsch that looked like it cost more money than Ill ever see in one place, and he liked to use the whammy bar for a little vibrato (rarely over-doing it). The guy who played lead looked like a strung-out George Harrison and handed out a consistenly low-key dose of counter-melodies instead of what you might expect from a lead guitarist. The bassist reminded me of Woody Allen, always keeping the tunes together. The drummer reminded me a bit of Todd, and he liked to use tympani sticks (sticks with padded ends) to create an 'ethereal' feeling, using the wooden handles to hit the sides of the sticks occassionally to ring the cymbals like bells. Overall, it was a good performance, though Don needs to work on communicating with his audience a bit more, saying "thanks" three times and "we have CD's for sale" was about the extent of his dialouge on stage.
Repeating my travels in reverse, I caught the 1:18 to Ronkonkoma read my "Maximum PC" and drank a beer on the ride home. Got in at 3.