Mezzrow

He had the same baby face, only with a full beard and long dreads, and his big eyes widened as he scanned the room and saw me sitting at one of the little tables. It was pianist Victor Gould’s gig at the new venue Mezzrow and the late set Friday was the first that I had really heard him play since we graduated from the arts high school in Los Angeles.

At the end of the night, Victor introduced me to his sweetheart as having been the student director for the vocal jazz ensemble back in high school. I had all but forgotten and was dumbfounded that this was what my classmate would remember about me nearly a decade later. What I remember about Victor was that he walked slowly and had a nut allergy but I’m sure that he has not forgotten about his allergy.

I was always amazed that he made the two-hour train ride commute each way from Simi Valley to school. I lived ten minutes away and got placed in detention, affectionately called Lunch Bunch, for being tardy every day. I thought about these things, listening to the duo and taking sips of my tea. All the musicians hanging out and the fact that my tea came in a San Antonio mug painted with red peppers and flames made Mezzrow an endearing venue and I felt moved to donate a mug to their collection.

The bathroom is located to the right of the bar with the door framed by bead curtains. If you pull the hot water faucet forward in the conventional fashion, you will get an anemic trickle of not-quite-hot water. To get an adequate flow of water going, push the cold water faucet away from you. And please press down on the tank lever to ensure that the toilet flushes completely. I heard through the grapevine that there is a secret bathroom in addition to this one.

Mezzrow is a piano room so I didn’t quite understand why it was named after a clarinetist. I looked up Mezz Mezzrow and read on Wikipedia that he insisted on being put in the colored section of the prison while incarcerated. Do you recall what happens to One-Sixteenth Black of The Mau Maus in the film Bamboozled?

Victor called standards as they went and when he called “Easy to Remember,” bassist Eric Wheeler couldn’t remember it so they segued to “Con Alma.” For the second set, a saxophonist joined them. This tenor player had a way of making you trust him through his playing—when he played out, you didn’t feel that he would abandon you for cerebral nonsense and when he played in, you knew that he wouldn’t resort to clichés. I was like—who is this guy? It turned out he was Tivon Pennicott and I was glad to catch him again at a house concert Sunday with the Smalls Monday night quinet, one of the few truly enthralling bands I’ve heard. Anyway, if you want to hear jazz piano, go see Victor Gould, go to Mezzrow.

Today’s translation of “Where’s the restroom?” comes from Sheng from Malaysia. Sheng, who is ethnically Chinese, told me his Malay sucks but that he did receive an A+ in Malay class. If you trust grades to be an accurate reflection of one’s abilities, then say this —

Di mana tandas?

55 Bar

After an earlier round of hot cocoa at Caffe Reggio, I walked over a few blocks to the 55 Bar.  Greeted by the plethora of “2 DRINK MINIMUM PER SET” signs, I dutifully ordered grapefruit juice, which came in a heavy glass beer mug with a straw.  After that, I didn’t feel that I could handle any more beverages and also didn’t want to run out to the ATM to make sure I had enough cash for the tip jar so I asked to purchase a bottle of water.  The bartender replied, “we don’t sell bottled water—keep jazz alive.”

Keep jazz alive.  I hardly think that the two-drink minimum is keeping jazz alive.  If anything, it may be elongating a slow and painful death.  Sure, the minimum is allowing the 55 Bar to stay open on a month-to-month basis but sustaining jazz through an IV drip is not the answer.  A fundamental restructuring of the organization seems necessary to resuscitate the jazz economy, though I’m not sure what that would look like.  I thought about this between sips of ginger ale, which the bartender poured into the beer mug I was using previously.  I must have contributed a few more cents into the “keep jazz alive” jar by forgoing the labor cost required to wash an extra mug.  Someone please give me a bumper sticker.

I don’t mean to get dark on 55 Bar—it’s a good venue, especially if you remember to sit along the bar so that you can get a full view of the band.  There’s a somewhat festive atmosphere with icicle lights strung all around and a Christmas bow and a St. Patrick’s Day clover cutout behind the bar.  The walls are adorned with many posters, album covers and a charming old clock that displays the wrong time.  With a case of Samuel Adams and a box of Swiss Miss in plain view, it can feel like you are in a giant pantry, decorated by Christmas lights.  This may be the closest you get to understanding how the Indian in the Cupboard felt.

While waiting in line for the ladies room, I couldn’t help but peek into the men’s room to see the urinal filled with ice.  I wonder what that’s about.  Both restrooms are sufficient in size for one person to use.  The ladies has two trash bins and several rolls of toilet paper readily available.

When I visited two Wednesdays ago, percussionist Rogério Boccato’s quartet with Nando Michelin (keyboard), Jay Anderson (bass) and Dan Blake (sax) played sets of music from the post Bossa Nova generation.  In between listening to this ensemble led by the ethnically Italian percussionist from Brazil, I talked to my ethnically Japanese friend Yumi from France about her life back home and in the city.  She mentioned that while she never identified as an Asian in France, she thinks about it all the time here.  On the other hand, while French peers requested an explanation as to how she can be both fully French and Asian simultaneously, New Yorkers don’t require an explanation of her Asian-ness, perceiving her simply as a foreigner.

As I recall looking upon the Japanese façade of a McDonald’s in Liberdade, a subset of São Paulo, Brazil, I wonder if national sentiment and sense of identity will shift on a global level as cultures clash and merge giving birth to things like kogi tacos and cream cheese wontons.  Gulli from Iceland, who is taking Rogério’s Brazilian music class in New York tells us how to say, “Where’s the restroom?” in Icelandic –

Hvar er klósettið? (Kvar er klosettith)

Bar Next Door

After having gotten lost inside Macy’s and having been accosted by a large, unruly dog on my walk down 6th Ave., I almost passed the place when I turned on my heels at a sound that registered as jazz, to see a plaque that said “Next Door.”  I hurried inside and balked at the sight of the cave-like room, until the polite waitress seated me in a corner.  Then, I pondered if I could touch the ceiling and why the table was sticky.

The clearance must have been 6’10” at most.  I know this to be a fact because a guy who said he was between 6’7” and 6’8” nearly scuffed the ceiling with his hair.  I gradually settled into this dark, cozy room and tried to look like a normal person, having vichyssoise with a side of bread.  Unfortunately, I couldn’t suppress my smirk at the sight of two of my favorite boys playing music.  The group was led by Benny Benack III, who is usually a trumpeter, sometimes a singer, and always a ham.

“I’ve had too much ham today,” said Mark, refusing pizza that Benny offered him.  Mark Whitfield Jr. (drums) also declined chocolate mudd cake.  He does like cranberry ginger ale, dolphins, Duke Pearson’s ballad “You Know I Care” and purple.

Benny is a self-proclaimed legendary ping pong champ, avid golfer, former high school junior varsity baseball player, fantastically imaginative yarn spinner and the ultimate middle school sleepover talent.  And that’s just in his own words, from an unsolicited interview.  I think we can safely add narcissistic to his list of traits.

Raviv Markovitz (bass), the only one without a generational suffix in his name, rounded out the trio.  I hadn’t met Raviv before this but I quickly gathered that his name backwards is Ztivokram Vivar and that he roots for the Red Sox and likes watching Sports Center.  Also, according to other sources, he is the sweetest guy ever and can rattle off a long list of chick flicks to watch, if you’re in the mood.

You may be wondering why this matters.  Why does it matter that Coltrane loved to eat sweet potato pie?  Or that Miles Davis wore Brooks Brothers suits?  When these twenty-somethings just barely of drinking age step into their roles as the next jazz legends, you can say that you heard it here first.

There is a bathroom each for women and men at the Bar Next Door, down an unlit and narrow hallway (see the first photo).  A very fat person would not be able to squeeze through to get to the bathroom, nor a would a very tall person be able to fit under the ceiling.  Being a short and petite person, I was able to make it to the women’s bathroom at the end of the hall.  It was similarly dimly lit and grungy, but not without flourishes, like a nice round mirror and an advertisement for tarot readings by Janet.

Benny did tell us how to say, “Where’s the restroom,” in what he claimed passed for native speech in France.  Not because I was incredulous, but because I’m a good journalist, I cross-checked the information with Lucas from France.  I learned that it should be “Où sont les wc,” not “Où est le wc,” but will give Benny the benefit of the doubt and include his French below, followed by that of Lucas.  Perhaps his translation is some local variation on Canadian French.

Où sont les wc?

Village Vanguard

This blog was largely inspired by my first visit to the legendary Village Vanguard.  I had gone last October for the opening night of Fabian Almazan’s album release show and just returned this weekend for the Mark Turner Quartet.

There are two tiny stalls with just enough room for the toilets in each.  They are smaller than those little closets converted into an extra shower/toilet/sink in Korean apartments and smaller than ones on aircrafts.  My short legs somehow fit in there but if you’re average height or taller, I’m not sure that you could sit on the toilet.   The stall would have been way more functional if they just made one larger stall (which would still be a small stall), rather than two claustrophobic ones.  I would avoid using the restroom here.  But they did have large mirrors and sinks with soap so it’s great to wash your hands.  I’m a bit frustrated because the photos above don’t really give you a sense of how cramped they really are.

The men’s room correspondent, Kevin Mac, gives us the inside scoop on the male bathroom.  The stall seems a lot more spacious than the ones in the ladies room.  Plus, as KMac mentioned repeatedly with a tinge of awe, Elvin Jones shat in there.  I did not know that “shat” was even a word, and the past tense of a vulgar word at that, until I looked it up just now.

Fabian Almazan’s show back in October featured his trio with string quartet.  I would sit near the back and not on the side, close to the stage, so that I could get a better balance and hear the entire ensemble next time.  When I met Fabian a few years ago, he told me to look down for graffiti on the red line between 86th to 96th if I’m ever in New York, and used the red candle on the table as a mnemonic so that I would remember.  Funny—I didn’t know then that I would be living here, going on that very metro line regularly.

Mark Turner’s quartet of Avishai Cohen (trpt), Joe Martin (bass) and Marcus Gilmore (drums) is already a blur in my mind but I recall that it could be described as sounding somewhat meditative and the openness of the sax/trpt harmonies, without a comping instrument, was beautiful.

We had some time to kill before the show and didn’t want to be out in the rain so we got gelato across the street from the Vanguard.  It’s the best gelato I’ve had!  I also went to Smalls that night so I’ll make a post on that later this week.  And now, here’s how to say, “Where is the restroom?” in Portuguese.  Click the link below to listen to the phrase —

Onde fica o banheiro?