Not Perfect But Damn Near Close

Last night was the perfect night for my final Hollywood Bowl show for this summer series. The weather was perfect. We were a little late and missed the opener. I did hear her on my trek up to the nosebleed section but I was a little bummed that I missed Angie Stone’s set. Amazing to see James Brown perform though. I still am amazed that I can literally see musical legends under the stars with my own food and wine with a Hollywood Hills backdrop all for the price of one dollar! And now that I can take the train there roundtrip and get dropped off all the way up the hill at the box office for three bucks, what more could anyone ask for? It’s almost wrong! So, this summer I add to my growing list of Hollywood Bowl performances James Brown, Angie Stone (kind of), Herbie Hancock, Joshua Redman, The Christian McBride Band (badass bass player!), Al Green, Sergio Mendes and Brazil ’66. Because of my seemingly unrelenting schedule this summer between directing LEAGUE and serving on my condo Co-op Board I had to miss some of the performers that I had tickets to see: George Benson, Al Jarreau, Thievery Corp., Flaming Lips and Os Mutantes (supposedly some amazing Brazilian band that reunited for this one show after many years). If I had to miss these performers though, there couldn’t have been a better consolation. My two cheap seats for Thievery Corp/Flaming Lips/Os Mutantes cost me a whopping five dollars each. The show subsequently sold out and became a hot ticket. I sold mine on Craigslist for $100 in the matter of an hour! That alone paid for all my summer series tickets, the train rides to and from and probably even my wine! Can’t complain about that. Back to last night. There was this great group of older black people sitting directly in front of us. I say sitting loosely because more than half the time they were on their feet movin’. We struck up a little exchange over why we didn’t like that James Brown started his set singing everyone else’s songs. He didn’t disappoint though as the second half was all his. The last song had the entire audience on its feet. In all the shows I’ve seen there I have never seen that happen. It was a great night. Even though I had very little sleep I woke up this morning feeling great, energetic and enthusiastic about coming in and punching through some tough work I have sitting on my desk. I’m sure the short work week plays some part but I’m just happy with the mood I’m in today. I have a theory about why I’m currently in this state of mind but I’ll have to save that for another lengthy entry.