Up For Air
Back to Seattle late Friday night. I’m going to have to change how I manage the end of these trips. It doesn’t help that my plane usually arrives around midnight, but all too often I hit Friday night like I’m crossing a finish line, and spend the weekend catching my breath. I need to make definite plans for the weekend after I’m on the road, starting like Thursday, so I’m not feeling disappointed Sunday night. Especially since I realized this was the last weekend of summer.
Saturday, for instance, was mostly wasted watching a dull-as-dirt OSU football game, but I’d ponied up $20 for ESPN Gameplan, so I felt obligated to watch it, plus surf to the surfeit of other games. Two exciting overtime games, Michigan State-Notre Dame and Miami-Clemson, sorta made up for it. Got my butt out of the house for a run before the Florida-Tennessee game came on. It’s never satisfying for me watching SEC games, I’m always flummoxed and annoyed when I realize (again) that it’s impossible for them both to lose.
Saturday evening, we walked up to the Seamonster Lounge on 45th to hear one of our son’s high school friends play guitar in a quartet that featured a drummer, bass guitar and a Hammond B3 organ. We’ve slithered into the Seamonster on a couple of other occasions to hear bands we like and shake it a little, but it felt like it would be vaguely incestuous to get up and boogie when it’s your kid’s friends playing. May have to get over that, as I’v had to get over seeing doctors much younger than I. I love the Hammond B3, with its retro look and its improbable electromechanical construction (it has a separate unit from the keyboard, a spinning spindle spinner thing, that produces its signature tremolo). You wonder how they can still get parts for them.
We’d heard the guy playing the Hammond, Ron Weinstein, a couple of other times. He’s graying and grizzled, probably nearer 60 than 50, and he’s a virtuoso. I’m not sure how he came to form this band with younger musicians. I believe this is our friend’s first real band, and he’s playing more like funk than the jazz sound we’ve heard from him before. It will be interesting to see where this leads. The crowd was mostly his school friends, plus his mom, and a couple of women who came in to dance, not realizing it was a family recital. With cover charge.
Yesterday, I did bestir myself to get a kayak paddle - nothing ambitious, just noodling around down by the University of Washington.
