A beautiful Sunday, sunny day, sweeping the clouds away. Washington Street started putting up its vendor booths. Many people out and about either fleeing town or coming in for the Art and Music Festival. The street was blocked off already at 9:00 AM so traffic slowed on every other street. Despite the fact that Juan and I had quite a few Stella Artois last night I didn’t wake up hurting or hung over.

Juan and I tried watching Junebug, which my sister suggested, but it required too much attention so we watched Mystery Men instead. A daffy movie with Ben Stiller and William H. Macy amongst others. Pretty funny. Juan enjoyed it and we both laughed while Bill sat at the kitchen table mapping out his routes for his bus trip to Foxwoods in Connecticut. He had to pick up people in Mount Vernon and Yonkers and a few other places and he has to be prepared.

Occasionally he’d laugh from what he heard from the TV. It was definitely fun to have Juan back hanging around. His latest music for me is by Cake Bake Betty who he saw sing at his school. He downloaded the cd for me and from what I’ve heard so far she’s pretty good.

Juan left around midnight and I went to bed not long after, since Saturday Night Live wasn’t hitting it like it sometimes does. I even missed Tina Fey saying fuck on live TV.
Red Hot Chili Peppers were the usual mediocre stuff. It’s hard to believe they’ve been around for 20 years.

I wanted to see 2 members of the Feelies play and they started at 1:00 this afternoon. My brother and sister in law were coming to town to see Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes. Elaine, my sister in law came with 2 people she works with and Frank was driven down by his daughter Corinne who definitely didn’t want to stay.

I met up with Elaine and her friends on the street before I headed down to see Glenn Mercer play. He used to be in the Feelies. The other guy was Vinny De Nunzio who was the original drummer. They sounded great, like the Feelies never split up. Of course they weren’t as frantic as they used to be and Glenn Mercer is as anti-social as ever. Not in a mean way, just doesn’t really speak with anyone. I think he misses his ex-partner, Bill Million.

I liked the Feelies, but can’t say I was madly in love with them. It’s funny though because my rhythm guitar style is very similar to the Feelies. Very fast and choppy. Caffeine is the usual culprit behind that. A few faces I hadn’t seen in years, including Clara Korman, nee Suarez. I ran into her husband Mike last week on the street who told me she always talks about me, after fifteen years. So I walked up and said hi. She was happy to see me, as was Mike. They introduced me to their child who’s 16 months old, Harrison. Good looking lad, likes his animal crackers.

Oddly enough I talked to Mike for longer than I ever did in all the time I’ve known him. We talked about Gutbank, his old band and how good they were. I told him he had such a cool presence onstage back then and he seemed surprised. He told me he liked Tia, their 16 year old drummer. So did Karen, the leader of the band, but Tia liked Heroin more. Stupid kid.

Mike said he was starting to play guitar again and he had jammed with a friend. I mentioned that I had jammed yesterday, but stopped short of offering to jam again. I think he would be too intimidating and I’m one for no clear rules with regards to jamming, whatever happens happens and keep it simple. A few riffs, see where it goes from there.

They split and I caught up with Frank and Elaine and their friends. A few faces from McSwells drifted past, Michael Hill, Guy Ewald, Glenn Morrow. Nice guys all. They see me all the time on the streets of Hoboken, and since they don’t see Frank too often, they chewed his ears off.

Me and oldest brother

I also ran into Mike Natoli who used to change the lightbulbs I at Wanker Banker. He quit working a few months before I did. It was good to see him again. Also met his wife Maria, who he always used to complain about. She seemed nice. Mike is such a cutie. And also a little guy, maybe touching 5 feet evenly. Maybe. He took my number and suggested meeting up for a drink, to which I amost receptive.

After Majorette, a band from Brooklyn played, Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes started up with ‘Happy’ by the Rolling Stones, a very cool song by the way, followed by ‘Gin Soaked Boy’ by Tom Waits. Hipster cache.

Southside Johnny and the Asbury Jukes

I’ve never seen Southside live and he is quite the entertainer. A lot of fun, a dynamic presence. A good set finishing with his three sort of big hits, ‘The Fever’, ‘I Don’t Want to Go Home’ and ‘Talk to Me’. For an encore it was Sam Cooke’s ‘We’re Having a Party’.

Still a good bar band in the classic sense, with R&B and Rock and Roll. Nice job if you can get it.

After Southside and the band finished it cleared out fast. Not too many people sticking around for Cyro Baptista and Beat the Donkey. Bad scheduling I guess. I was going to stay and see some of it, but it was shady and chilly, me with high beams. Frank and Elaine split with their friends and I ran into Charlie Charas and talked with him for a while.

I wound up walking up the street on the sidewalk since there were a lot of people in the middle of the street. I did buy a nice piece of art for 15 dollars in front of city hall. After that I was hungry and decided to go indoors. All in all, a pretty good day.

Saturday. I did have plans to wake up at around 7:00 but woke up at 8:30 instead which set everything back a bit in my mind. Not easy getting started. I was really tired emotionally and physically last night or most of the night. Bill was the same way. What a pair we were. Things got better when Law and Order was on. Then we watched Bill Maher who seemed a bit off last night and then we crashed. Slept the sleep of the dead. And still woke up tired.

Today we had plans to go to e119th Street to jam with Tom, a friend of Bill’s who works in his building. Tom had keyboards, a guitar that would never stay in anything close to in tune, and a drum kit. Just getting motivated was a chore. I was keen for a postponement but Bill had postponed many times already. We had to go today. So we trucked off to the bus, me carrying my Fender Acoustic. I looked like a musician I thought.

We walked to Grand Central once we hit the street. Then a quick jaunt on the 6 train to 116th Street. We walked to Tom’s apartment where everything was set up. I started playing some simple chords to start things up. Tom joined in on the drums and then Bill followed. It was a simple little thing a warm up. I then played ‘All My Loving’ by the Beatles which Tom figured out was a Beatles song once I started singing.

It was fun. Tom kept cramping up occasionally after not playing drums for so long. I switched to his electric and tried to tune it to no avail. I just played the top E string with little bass type sounds. It was fun and we tried to maintain that groove. I suggested to Tom who was hurting somewhat that he play guitar and I’d play drums. So we switched and Bill was surprised to see me handing brushes on a snare drum. I tried to use the high hat, which took some coordination.

I was surprised that I was able to do what I did. I never really ever played the drums before. The rare occasions that I did it was usually with the owner of the drum kit over my shoulder reminding me that I’m not holding the drum sticks properly. That wasn’t happening now since Tom was concentrating on the guitar. It was a fun time. I was able to hold a beat most of the time. I definitely thought it was a good idea to switch instruments, especially since I couldn’t figure out how to play Tom’s song properly on the guitar and since he wrote it on guitar it made sense for him to play it on the acoustic.

After awhile Tom moved back to drums as his fingers were hurting from the acoustic and I suggested that Bill mess around with the guitar and I played keys somewhat. Bill never played guitar and I told him to concentrate on the top string since it’s closest in tune on the electric. We played around like that for some time until my forearms started to ache from playing the keys. Two and a half hours had passed with jamming which was just enough. Bill had to see his folks and I had to go to run some errands and get a haircut in Hoboken.