Blue Note – Prior to arriving in New York, we toyed with the idea of visiting the Blue Note by attending a concert featuring Manhattan Transfer. Neither Mrs. S nor I, however, are huge MT fans, and the $65 price tag seemed prohibitive. Not to mention, the Blue Note website makes it sound like seating is pretty haphazard, and we didn’t really want our first jazz club experience to be something that we had to leave to chance even while paying through the nose for, so we decided we would just drop in to the club on our first night, time and energy levels allowing, and listen to whatever they had going on that night. Arriving in New York on a Tuesday and with rain coming down steady, we played it conservative and had dinner at a hole in the wall Japanese place first (not really being thrilled with the burger-and-fry fare on the Blue Note menu on their website). Hagi (name of the Japanese place) was tasty and expensive. From there, we managed to figure out how to ride the subway (computers were down, so buying a Metro Card was tricky), but we sorted that out and got to the Blue Note about fifteen minutes before the 8:00 show time.
There was already a pretty good crowd inside, but there were still plenty of seats. Problem was they were spread around and we didn’t have any way of judging which would be good or bad seats. When in doubt, the best seats are usually right in front, so that’s where we went. Mrs. S was right on the main aisle, I ended up across the table from her under the guitar player’s music stand, next to a Russian tourist drinking a nice bottle of red wine by himself (more about that later). I literally had to climb to get to my seat. The picture below shows approximately the kind of view I had, which is to say, the picture shows that I could hardly see much of anything despite sitting in the front row.
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| $5 minimum?!?! So one martini and I'm good for the night, right? Screw it! Get Chris Botti out here. NOW! |
The show was a Christmas gala with a bunch of competent, not-famous musicians. They played some fancy arrangements of familiar tunes, nothing too exciting. We drank wine and enjoyed the show. Funny thing was, one-fourth of the Manhattan Transfer, Janis Siegel, sang one song, so we really made out good getting to see her and not paying $65 for the privilege. (She's the one with big funky glasses if you Google or YouTube "Manhattan Transfer Jeannine". Awesome!)
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| Ms. Janis Siegel, center, performing "Deck The Halls" |
When our wine ran out and the show was winding down, the Russian tourist shared his bottle of wine with us. He was drinking the good stuff: a bottle of something Sicilian, very scintillating on the tongue, smooth on the palate, that left a faint grapey currant wash on the gums. Really stunning and all the more unfortunate that I can't remember what it was called. And more unfortunately, his English was completely non-existent, and my Russian from my college days was only a little better, so we couldn't really chat with the guy. (We did try.) Once we got outside, Mrs. S wanted to take my picture, which is generally a bad idea most of the time, and a terrible idea late at night after I've been drinking. No surprise then we ended up with this "deer in the headlights" shot with the Blue Note as background.
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| No. I mean, yes. What was the question? Leave me alone! |
My conclusion after visiting the club is the Blue Note is the Mount Fuji of jazz clubs: Everyone should definitely visit once, but unless you are a local or there is a real headliner playing there, it’s probably not worth a second trip.
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