I figure I’ll post a short review of the concert last night.

Ryan Adams was good, he was wasted and was not very well organized on stage - I do think that I will purchase a few of his albums. I no longer am happy just having a single album from an artist as it doesn’t seem long enough, 2 - 3 is the sweet spot, I can just put the iPod on play and I have 2 - 3 hours of the same artist - when I have 6 albums like I do for Pearl Jam - I listen to them less as there is no easy way to select 2 - 3 of the albums and 6 is too much.. I’m weird.

The concert hall was stunning. It was at the Beacon Theater on the Upper West Side. Here is a little description of the Theater:

“Opened in 1928, the Beacon Theater was originally a vaudeville hall. Then it became a “movie palace” with the advent of talkies. Now a nationally registered Art Deco landmark, the theater presents both stage and music performances for almost three decades. It’s an ideal place to catch national rock acts before they play arenas, as well as dramatists and rap, gospel and world music acts.”

The interior was stunning and bold - I wish we had more courage in the buildings and theaters that we put up today - they simply don’t seem to have the impact… I wonder if that is what folks said in 1928 about the Beacon.

The crowd covered an amazing cross section of demographics, generations, and incomes. There were young 18 year old punkers in the crowd with noise rings to seemingly wealthy seniors out for a nice evening to sit and watch Willie and everything in between - from a Willie Nelson look a like, to the hipster sitting beside me with his sunglasses on through the whole show and smelling of enough pot that I almost felt high.

The crowd went nuts, each in there own way, when Willie came onto the stage. I had no expectation other than he would be an old dude and sitting 4 rows from the stage I knew I would get a close look. The other thing that I was really excited to see was the famous hole in his guitar (remember I’m wierd).

Well Willie came on stage looking like a bit different than my stereotype of him, he was more plump. He was sporting a black cowboy hat, black jeans worn like a 70 year old man wears his jeans (he appears to have missed the low rises jean fad - he prefers them nice and high). Willie pounded through the first 5 songs and did not seem into it. By the time his second set rolled around he was in a groove and putting on quite a show, he impressed me with his dexterity and the ability to hammer out solo’s on his guitar. He hit lots of his popular songs, including Crazy (DeAnn, it was early on so he did just an okay job of it).

Overall it was a good show, he could have been more into it and could have played for longer, but what he did play was done well and it was a good experience to get to watch him from so close.

One of the things that I am beginning to really enjoy about NYC is just being able to go and see entertainment at a whim that in other areas you would wait and look forward to for months. This is good for someone who doesn’t like to plan too much.

I’m not sure I’ll have much more of an update before I head back to Calgary at the end of the month - I’ll try and do something interesting and post about it.