You know when you pay to see someone and it wasn’t as good as you hoped and you don’t want to sound like the Grumpy Old Raver but you have to speak? This is that time. We expected a great show like the Sander Kleinenberg gig a couple months ago. What we got were three uncohesive and disjointed sets with some technical difficulties thrown in. Acosta was especially uninspired, and I won’t waste time picking it apart but it was not there. Nor was the half and half in my drink, instead being replaced by some International fucking Coffee sweet vanilla fake-ass creamer. Did we not all see The Big Lebowski? A $10.50 Grey Goose white Russian deserves half and half.

I also take exception to moving the artists from the semicircle glass-paneled booth to the stage. The table didn’t seem high enough and the whole table/tarp combo didn’t show as well as playing where the soundman sat. Do whatever you have to do but get the talent back in that booth. It will create a better vibe and look more cosmopolitan anyway. My two cents.

The best part really was when a sax player came up and busted it freestyle for a bit. He could smell the drum fills coming and played accordingly. The sad part came when he played a few bars ‘a capella’ and the beat never came back in to rescue him. I was like, “drop a beat, drop a beat!”

Finally, the guys with the video cameras have to go. I get letting in ONE photographer to take some shots, maybe letting someone shoot a little footage, using common courtesy. Maybe. But not these cats shoving camcorders in my face. Take a page from the old playbook: if you weren’t there, you weren’t meant to see it.

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