Election Special!

Green Day--er, Night

Samoa/Scott MX Turner//Rocky Sullivan's//10/23/05

It's good to know that when your team is fucking up badly, there's still hope. I don't mean this in any baseball kinda way, (yeah, I started writing this around the end of October but was busy with shows and H'ween and all that) though I am a Mets fan (Mr. Met was voted Best Met in the Press's Best Of issue; I'm sure even Yanx fans might think I'm talking about their team as well) I mean it in a political way, as evidenced by the fact that it seems that Tweedledumber and Tweedledumbest are the top 2 choices for office--any office--lately. So last nite was a big ole triple threat: a fundraiser organized for Ms. Gloria Mattera who's running for Brooklyn Borough Prez as the Green Party candidate, organized by Ms. Rebecca White (who once ran for senate!) held at Rocky Sullivan's, and Scott MX Turner played.

I planned to make a pitstop @ the Knit since I was told the box office is only open after 4 which is such a pain in the ass since I work right on the 1 line and could easily get there on my lunch break, not to mention that I've done that many times before. Now that I know when the shower isn't, I need to pick up the tix that have been onsale for the longest. At Jackson Heights a rat was chasing another all over the express tracks and that's something that I've never seen before, which led me to think that we all know what's coming next. Subway rats doing it! Huh huh huh. The whole problem was that the uptown F wasn't stopping at 14th. So the plan was to hit the Knit, take the 1 to 14th, get pizza on 7th Ave, and walk over to Union Square for the 6 so I could be there at 6 when the bands start. Walking through the transfer on the L platform, I pass a woman playing some weird instrument. It looks like she's got a guitar on her lap but she's turning a crank on the bottom and the sounds coming out of it are incredible--like you can hear every coil of a guitar string--but I have to run and can't linger. On the stairway down to the 1 the woman in front of me comes to a screeching halt and I almost bump into her. She takes out her cellphone and answers it right there. Moron. I went around her and she's still on the stairs talking, blocking other people. The 1 takes a while to come and it's 5:45. The benefit is supposed to start at 6. So I give up on the Knit and try to find pizza. I get out at 7th Ave. to find the pizza place that used to be right there has closed down. So I walk down 14th looking for another one and settle on the one near Irving Plaza and take the 6 up to Rocky's.

Only to get there a little after 6 and finding that the 1st act canceled (With good reason, not that they were being total flakes) and everything is behind schedule. Standard benefit rules apply. So to kill time and make myself useful I end up highlighting things on donation forms, manning the fort while Rebecca went to pee, and loading up the jukebox and not repeating any artist in my 18 picks. The pressure was tremendous. But it's business as usual, Rebecca says. Lefties are always late. Guess I'd make a terrible Lefty.

Rebecca loaned me her digital camera and I'm always worried when people give me their cameras because it takes so long for the shutter to go off and I can't tell how things are gonna come out by looking at that little screen and I don't want to screw the pix up for people who need the pix and there's all that pressure, not to mention that I don't know how to use a digital camera at all. I hope I didn't do too badly--I mean, I don't think I did because Samoa and Scott were performing solo. But you never know with me. Samoa, of Lonely Samoans, rocked a top hat and acoustic guitar with songs about a corporate job he once had and wearing khakis and going to Starbucks. And that he really wanted to vote but had to become a citizen 1st and after he did, he got a letter of welcome from George Bush.

Scott started his set with The Devil In The Water and though I usually prefer the simpler the better when it comes to live music, I liked the version he did backed by all the Freddy's Folk slightly more because that version really made the song more 3-dimensional. From there he was off and running. It made me think 2 things: That I wish he would give his solo material more of a chance to be aired and heard. And that the last time I saw Dan Bern play, it was pretty freakin painful. Maybe it was because Scott was playing his black guitar, maybe it was because he was playing it @ Rocky Sullivan's, but his intensity was off the charts on Snipers in Derelict Houses classics such as Slán Abhaile and the bodhrán-rockin' 1 Para. I wanted to request The Town That I Loved So Well but I figured that Scott knew what he was doing and I didn't want to interfere. Though he forgot to say that if anybody's free on a Friday or Saturday nite to come to Rocky's to see Seanchaí & the Unity Squad. But that's ok cuz he had a lot of things to remember to say, like reminding us to check out the literature table--and his lyrics.
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So Fox 5 is promising all-day coverage of the mayoral "marathon." Watch your vote count! Fuck that. House is gonna be on. (Yeah, big surprise I'm a fan of the sarcastic curmudgeon on Fox.) Why don't they just hold off 'til they tally everything up and then tell us (as if we don't already know). After 10:00, of course.

And PS: Y'know how I always put song titles in quotes cuz I thought that's how they're supposed to be? I was reading this thing in preview mode and the titles look ridiculous that way. Maybe it's because of the dumb quotes, which I've been meaning to fix. So, henceforth: Album titles in itals; song titles, as is. Hey, I ain't doublechecking with the Chicago Manual Of Style. That book makes no sense. I'd rather be wrong than check that book. I can only go so far, peeps.