Tag Archives: Ian Hunter

I Am Mine

Monday Monday, Can’t trust that day. And here I am on a Monday and it hasn’t been so undeserving of trust. Yesterday was quite an interesting day, much more so than today.

For one thing, it was a Sunday and it was a day off. I requested it earlier at the beginning of April. I had plans to visit Hyman Gross in the hospital, first visit post-surgery. His bone density was enough that the surgeon felt setting a pin in his leg/foot/ankle would suffice.

I only expected to be there for an hour but it turned into 2 hours. Hyman had an ultrasound on Friday pre-surgery and while he was waiting there was an alarm in the hospital causing most of the staff to abandon Hyman on a gurney in the hallway, leaving him to holler in vain as he heard the scurrying of mice around the wheels of the gurney.

I hung in there with Hyman, and even offered to move the gurney back to his room so I could get moving along myself, but it was advised to have an orderly do it. I figured it was no big deal since 20 years ago I carried dear Harpy from one floor to another when he was in the hospital.

Luckily Harpy weighed less than the 98 pounds he usually weighs and carried him in my arms down a flight of steps. It all went well with Hyman and I was able to head to the Hoboken Art & Music Festival, a little later than I expected but really it was no big deal.

My main goal was to see Ian Hunter and the Rant Band playing featuring Mr. Wonderful Jim Mastro. And with Jim involved that meant it was more than likely that Lily, Ruby & the funniest girl alive, Meghan would be there. And they were. As was Chaz!

I met Ivan Julian who I have seen on stage a few times. Ivan played with Richard Hell & the Voidoids as well as the Outsets. He looked great then and hasn’t aged one bit, looking as sexy as ever these days. Steve Fallon was around as were several other people from the Maxwells days. I kept mainly to myself though, after saying hello to Steve.

I missed the Steve Wynn & Peter Buck thing, the Baseball Project but I didn’t really know they were playing until about an hour or two before I left the apartment. It was great to see Meghan and the girls, Lily off to Bard, Ruby to be a sophomore next semester and Meghan maintaining her reign as funniest girl alive.

Ian Hunter took the stage, opening with All the Way from Memphis, and doing Mott the Hoople and solo hits, Cleveland Rocks, Once Bitten Twice Shy among others like Somewhere from West Side Story, finishing off with a sing along of All the Young Dudes.

It had gotten cooler and after saying my goodbyes to Meghan and Lily & Ruby and the Jack of Hearts I started for home. Ran into Rand & Lisa, and then the three of us ran into RoDa & Elly with Logan and Autumn in tow.

RoDa, born & raised in Hoboken knows everyone and we lost track of him. Rand & Lisa walked me to the corner of my block before they headed to their home. I came upstairs, quite slowly since once again I was standing on concrete for a few hours, though wearing Airwalks helped.

I turned on the TV and noticed there was no audio. Instead I watched a DVD via Netflix. An Australian movie, Animal Kingdom. I heard it was like the Australian version of Goodfellas and this was way more intense than how I remember Goodfellas to be.

It was so good, nicely paced and so intense that at one point I thought about turning off the movie, it had gotten that far under my skin. Jacki Weaver who plays the matriarch was nominated for a best supporting actress Oscar, but went home empty handed. This movie was bound to give her more notice, worldwide if not the States.

Bill came home in the last 20 minutes of the movie and I told him about the cable audio being out so he called the cable company as I watched the extras on the DVD. The woman on the other end of the line instructed Bill who instructed me to unplug the cable box and plug it in again so the box would reboot.

Fair enough. But before that I had turned on the TV to show Bill how it was not working when we saw the Osama Bin Laden had been killed. Big news indeed and here we were without any TV News.

The NY Times website had the info and Bill relayed the news to the woman on the phone who was understandably excited. We eventually got the audio back and watched the news being repeated eventually deciding on the BBC and waiting for President Obama to make the announcement regarding Osama Bin Laden being killed.

Bill went to bed after a little while, I stayed up late watching and not getting anything but the basic information. Tomorrow I have off from work. Bill is taking a half day since he is singing the National Anthem at CitiField before the NY Mets/ San Francisco Giants game tomorrow night. Very exciting and we are understandably nervous.

Bill more so than I am, but still I will probably catch up eventually.

Ian Hunter's Back!


Ian Hunter & Jim Mastro



Baby, It WAS You


Hymn for the Dudes

It’s Wednesday and once again it’s raining out. Well, not at this very moment but it’s been pouring then stopping then pouring again.

My plan to see Ian Hunter (featuring Mr. Nice Guy Jim Mastro) has been literally washed out. I signed up to receive a text from River to River which is the organization that puts on these shows, but no response regarding the show.

If you go to the River to River website it doesn’t say anything about the show being moved, canceled or rescheduled.

Many people have posted on how much rain is falling, but as of 17 minutes before show time, nothing. I was planning on meeting Meghan and her daughters at the show, but things being the way they are, I called a few times and left messages.

No response at all. Oh well.

I held up my end. Tomorrow, provided it doesn’t rain is another opportunity to see Jim Mastro and the Guitar Bar All Stars but no Ian Hunter. C’est la vie.

Today I was a bit busy. Running errands for myself. Since Bill, Juan and I are planning on going out on Friday night, I bought tickets for Blow Off. That’s what it’s called.

It’s a DJ thing with Rich Morel and Mr Happy Go Lucky himself, Bob Mould. That was sarcastic. Calling Jim Mastro ‘Mr. Wonderful’ is not sarcastic.

I remember hanging around Bob Mould at McSwells back in the day with Husker Du as well as during his solo stuff. Wouldn’t say he was a grump but not much fun to be around. He had too many demons I reckon.

Things were slow enough in the office that I hopped on a train to go to Chelsea and pick up the tickets at a charming establishment called The Nasty Pig. It was $10.00 cheaper if you bought the tickets in advance.

I asked for 3 tickets and of course the guy behind the counter didn’t have change. ‘There’s a deli around the corner so you could get change there’ said the twink.

I walked around the corner and wound up buying a bottle of seltzer, mocking the twink’s tone of voice to myself which brought me some enjoyment. Actually I sounded like Pedro making fun of me, which made me laugh to myself.

The twink was apologetic, but all I could think of was when I was in a similar position I made do with what I had, but then again I was never caught short when selling tickets for McSwells or whatever.

Now it is overcast and it looks like it will rain again. It’s too bad. I was hoping to make it to the show. Meghan did call this morning, she was getting me backstage so that would have been fun. But I made my mind up and now I’m home drying out and comfortable.

Whatever happened to my Rock and Roll? The sun is shining now, the show is probably going on as planned. I need TV but I got T Rex.

The show is in Tribeca. Bowie lives in Tribeca. Bowie and Ian Hunter are friends. Hmmm.