North Beach Jazz Festival

Not much sleep, yesterday was a little crazy. A lotta planes, trains, and automobiles to get us out of Spain and into Rotterdam for the North Beach Jazz Festival. From the moment we got in, there was a lot of buzzing from the cats in the band (I ain’t mentioning no names) about the famous Dutch decriminalization of a certain herb, known in the Bay as “That Purp”. When we finally got to the hotel, several of the guys darted off the shuttle and I ain’t seen ‘em since….
When I got up this morning I saw two of my heroes in the lobby, jazz legends Lou Donaldson and Dr. Lonnie Smith. Mr. Smith was rockin’ the turban and errythang, as he has been for the past 30 yrs. I had actually seen Lou in Japan about 15 yrs ago performing with Bernard Purdie, Chuck Rainey, and David T. Walker, and it was inspiring to see those guys still touring. I was talking to him, and he did start to nod off on me, however.
Stanton and I had Japanese food on the street (5.5/10, but I’ll take it where I can out here), then I got ready for the gig. Caught a little bit of Naturally Seven, a seven-man vocal group from NYC, who absolutely destroyed it. Imagine 7 Rahzels who can fuckin’ sang on top of that! We went on a little after that, smashed as usual, and then I headed for catering. I’ve never played this festy, and as I walked thru the “site”, I noticed it was a tad different from other festies. It was indoors, clean, raaaaahther gourmet, and refreshingly mmm-civilized. Shit felt more like a well-run convention, as opposed to a muddy-ass drunken festival. As much as I like to party, that was kinda cool for a change.
Met up with Joost, the Godfather of Solesides.com, which is always cool. He’s always got a lot of ideas and is open to anything. Big up, Joost. He’s dedicated a tremendous amount of time and talent to turning that site and message board into what it is today. We chopped it for a good minute, had a couple mojitos, and discussed some plans for the fall. Dude is very solid, we’re linking up again in Amsterdam next week.
Next was the afterparty at the Hilton, which was kind of a snoozer. Alicia Keys and Mark Ronson were the headliners for the night, both of whom I’m a huge fan of. “Teenage Love Ah-ffair-aa –a air, aa –ah-ah ah-air.” I love that shit. I would have kept that old-school dialogue going in the break a little longer, but that is my shit! Being that George Benson showed up at the afterparty the nite before, people were hoping they’d show up tonite. No such luck. Instead it was some lady who looked like my 10th grade English teacher singing standards.
At least I got to see my dude Thomas Pridgeon, former drummer for the Coup, who now plays for The Mars Volta. Also bumped into Ryan Shaw and band. We kicked for a second, but the party was in slow motion, so I went back to the hotel, texted my lady “Goodnite” and wrote this bloggie. It’s 3am and I got a 3:30 lobby call for a 6 am flite. In a minute.
LB