70 hrs of music in Chicago

I arrived at the airport Thursday morning at 7 o'clock a.m. for my 8:45 flight to Chicago. I fly somewhere about once or twice a year, so I do not fly that often, which means that sometimes I forget that it is a pretty brutal thing for someone as tall as me to be slammed into a typical airplane seat. I was excited I got the window seat, but this was quickly counter-acted by the two year old toddler sitting in front of me with her grandparents, and the infant sitting directly behind me. While one small child would cry (the one in front) the one behind me was busy trying to pull my hair. When I sit in an airplane seat, and recline it, I am still too tall for the seat, so my head hangs back further over the seat than the average person. This made it easy for the curious baby to reach out and grab and yank, or to just caress the back of my head.

There were two things that I noticed immediately about Illinois from the plane. There are a lot of lakes, and Lake Michigan is one big mother of a lake. I got off the plane, said goodbye to my young friends, and went out into the humidity to meet Clark in our new home... the black 2002 Dodge Durango. We dropped off our stuff at a cheap hotel just outside of town and jumped in the car at four o'clock on a Thursday evening and started the drive into Chicago. People think that we have bad traffic in Seattle... oh boy are they in for a treat. It took us about two hours to travel twenty miles into town, and then another hour to find a legal parking spot inside the city. Four hour plane ride + Three hour, twenty mile drive = we better have some fun.

Chicago is a great city - it makes Seattle look like the sticks. The downtown area is huge, there are people of all nationalities all over the place, and it sounds like a 'real' city. You always hear trains, subways, people talking or yelling, sirens, horns... then the smells (good and bad). It was slightly overwhelming at first. It reminded me of cartoons I used to watch when I was a kid, and how the cities would be portrayed. It really is like that! The parks and public spaces are kept really clean downtown, and all along Lake Michigan is a giant park that stretches miles and miles - as far as I could tell it bordered the whole lake. The weather was nice - reminded me of Seattle. The city is right on the lake, so it keeps it kind of cool and windy.

We grabbed a bite at a Potbelly Deli (sandwich chain) and then headed out to see some music. The first thing we went and saw was at the "Jazz Showcase" right downtown. The DePaul University Jazz Ensemble was playing, it was their top big band, and their special guest was Phil Woods. The Jazz Showcase is a pretty cool club, kind of reminds me of a lot of other jazz clubs that I have been in. The big band opened up with a few charts, and then called out the Phil Woods Quartet. I forget who was playing bass and drums, but I know Jim McNeely was playing piano. So the big band and the Phil Woods Quartet finished out the set. Phil is a nasty alto player, but he is getting pretty sick. It was happy to see him still playing, but he had to take a couple breaks to catch his breath while the rest of the band played. The highlight of the show that night was a student arrangement of a Phil Woods tune. This trumpet player (2nd trumpet) wrote an arrangement and won the "Downbeat Best Student Arranger" award. It kicked ass. The big band in general just seemed like a good college band to me, they were not as exceptional as Chicago musicians had been built up in my mind. Freaking outstanding vibes player though - best player in the band, and he only got to play on a handful of tunes.

Then we rolled over to the Green Mill - Al Capone's old hang, it was once owned by "Machine Gun" Jack McGum. We were meeting a friend of Chad Mccullough's. We walked into the Green Mill and it was the most bizarre experience ever. It was like we were in the 30's. The act for the night was a swing band, and man they were exceptional. It was another big band, and they played a bunch of traditional swing charts, had a guy and girl singer, and an announcer. It was a large band, a eighteen pieces or so. Stylistically everything sounded exactly like those old recordings of swing bands you hear, except their was no poor sound quality! All the soloists sounded like swing players, nobody was showing off or playing any crazy shit - just pocket playing, and it was great! Not to mention that it was standing room only (200+ peeps), there was swing dancing on the dance floor in front of the band, and between every song they either had the announcer speak to the audience and make jokes/announce the next songs, or they had the singers do these comical thirty second commercials. It was a blast! One more funny thing... Pabst Blue Ribbon is brewed in Milwaukee, which is just north of Chicago. It is a much more respected beer in the mid-west. After this we went back to the hotel and crashed hard.

Next day we visited the University of Illinois, near Champagne. It was a long drive, through very flat farm lands. I was surprised at how green this part of the midwest was though, granted it was May and not August when I am sure everything was brown and burnt. The school reminded me a bit of WSU - except in a bigger town. Everything was perfectly flat also - that was really weird being born and raised in western washington, where everything is a hill. Ate some food, bought some groceries. Clark was supposed to have a meeting with the department chair, but we got stood up (after traveling how far..?) so that was a bummer. On the ride home it started to rain real hard. It rains a lot in Washington, but it rains hard in Illinois.

After getting back into town, we went back to the Green Mill to check out the Victor Goines quartet who was playing that night. Victor was the leader of the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra for a while, and also was head of the department at Juliard. Now he is the head of the department at Northwestern University in Chicago (which has a jazz program of 9 students total). This show kicked ass. I mean, they were playing hard, it was great. They just called tunes the whole night, but they could all play at a level which just made it incredible. Dana Hall, the drummer, teaches at the University of Illinois, and is possibly one of the best drummers I have ever seen. Marlene Rosenberg was the bassist, great player and she could groove hard with the drummer. She kind of reminded me of Margie Pos at cornish. The piano player was the weakest link, still great, but I felt he was not at the same level as the rest of the band. Ryan Cohen was his name. Actually, I take it back, he did sound great at first. But half way through the 2nd of 3 sets he did not know the tune All of You, that a special guest singer from New Orleans was singing with the band. From that point on, he was not doing so hot, he lost his confidence.

They played Jitterbug Waltz - it was awesome, I am going to learn that tune.

Their gig got over at 1 in the morning, and at 2 in the morning a jam session started. We stuck around long enough to play, and then split. It is led by a DJ from the local jazz radio station - and although they were a good band, after hearing the best shit I have heard in years they sounded like shit. Me and Clark were sitting in at the same time as some chick singer, which meant we had to play There Will Never Be (in the key of Ab) and There is No Greater Love. Plain. (I did feel kind of at fault though, she wanted to play s'marvelous, but I did not know it. If that is that tune from the musical that goes "Swonderful, S'marvelous, .... " then I am glad I did not know it, that song sucks bad.) Ran into a friend of Dan Kramlich out there, a killin' alto player. Dan if you are reading this, he says hi! I forget his name, but he went to school in Michigan with you, shaggy brown hair, shorter.

We hung out til about 3:30 am (another glorious thing about Chicago - clubs/bars are open til four, serve til four, then open again at six!) and decided to save some money on a hotel, and just start the drive (16 hours) right then... Dundun duh........! Will they make it? Will they survive or will they get lost and wake up naked somewhere in the middle of a cornfield in Iowa, or will both happen?

(pics - 1. Inside the Green Mill, famous club. 2. Everywhere in Illinois outside chicago. 3. Chicago. 4. Definitely not Starbucks out here!