Neil Shah - Pianist/Vocalist/Composer

I went to John Coltrane’s birthday party on friday night. Coltrane’s been dead since 1967, so he couldn’t make it, but many living jazz and avante-garde elite were in attendance. The hosts were Mop-kid, Charlie, and the Hopple. The evening started off with a rotating “jam session”, followed by consumption of food and drink, and ended with bubble blowing. The theme of the party, aside from Coltrane’s birthday, was the word “Tonight”, as used in the language of the Modern Poet. It was pretty out.

Just got back from another gig with drummer George Bragg at St. Nicks Pub. Rob Roberts was back on bass. Things are actually starting to click pretty well with this group. There were varying degrees of semi-psychic musical interaction taking place. Not sure when I’ll be back there, but it’s been a fun a gig.

Duke Elington would have been proud—I took the A train home tonight. As I was riding the subway engrossed in The Grapes of Wrath, I half-notice a dirty drunken guy sit down pretty close to me. After a few minutes I notice a stream of piss on the ground. In a shocked daze I stare in disgust as it streams past my feet. I notice that it’s bubbly and when I notice the bottle of beer in the drunk guy’s hand I was relieved (that the stream was actually beer). So this beer started encrouching upon my feet. I couldn’t take it any more so I got up and sat in the nearest safe spot on the train. I found myself sitting with a group of lovely ladies, who had been watching this scenario in-depthly.

Once I observed the drunk from afar, it was easier to see the humor in the situation. This was one of those trains with seats that sometimes face perpendicular to others, thereby blocking people into certain seats. So I realize that although I was able to escape the disaster, there was a woman blocked into her seat by this dirty drunken man. The lovely ladies and I speculated on what would happen next: would he fall asleep on the woman? would he puke on her? was she secretely staying in her seat on purpose because this was a fetish of hers?

Unspectacularly, the seemingly trapped woman squeezed by the subway drunk and exited the train at her stop. A couple stops later the drunk left. A few stops after that I said goodnight to the lovely ladies—”watch out for the piss.” The beer started to dry and people had begun setting their bags down where it had run on the floor. I watched a woman in a skirt sit down in the same place where the dirty drunken man was sitting. You never know who had the seat before you, so you might want to think twice before having your bare thighs touch the subway seat. Oh well, she’ll probably wake up tomorrow wondering why her legs itch.

This entry was posted on Sunday, September 25th, 2005 at 1:09 am and is tagged music, events, shows. Follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed and Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.