Guest List

I noticed a few weeks ago that jazz guitar god Pat Metheny was scheduled to give a concert at the Wiltern Theater this evening. This peaked my interest not only because Metheny is phenomenal and I'd love to see him love but because his bassist of late has been none other than the brilliant Christian McBride whom I regularly gush about on this very blog. As you may recall I actually know Christian and helped him out for his performance with James Brown a couple of years ago. So I emailed him and subtly mentioned that I'd like to go to the show but I never heard back from him (he's not so great about emailing sometimes).

I still wanted to go to the show so my buddy Jeff and I decided we'd check it out. Well, tickets were upwards of $60 and seeing as how this is my son's birthday week I really didn't feel like dropping that much bread. I spoke to Jeff earlier this afternoon and we agreed that it was a bit much and we would go another time.

Then lo and behold I get a voicemail from Christian saying he'd like to leave me a couple of tickets for the show.

Hot Damn! I called Jeff up and we made a plan. When we got to the show we not only had tickets waiting for us, we had tickets to the After Party as well. The show was amazing, Metheny is just fantastic live. His guitar gets such an amazing a pure tone. And Christian is of course the most formidable bassist on the planet and he proves it time and time again when I see him live. Ironically the highly-regarded actor Don Cheadle was sitting a couple of seats down from us. While I wasn't sure if he had attended the Oscars earlier in the afternoon after the show I shook his hand and said to him "Don Cheadle knows where the real shit in Hollywood is tonight!" He just smiled. I'm not sure he heard me.

The After Party wasn't much of a party. Drummer Antonio Sanchez (who lit up some crazy drum solos) and Metheny came in chit-chatting with the folks. I finally see Christian and he gives me a big hug and thanks me for coming. After talking to a few more people he says to me "come back to the VIP area, I got something to show you." So we head back to his dressing room where a mutual drummer friend from L.A. is hanging out with none other than Don Cheadle. Christian shows us this James Brown video on his MacBook (James in 1968 dancing his ass off). Afterwards me and Christian talk football for a few minutes. Don Cheadle said goodbye and I left not long after. Jeff and I had come with another friend of his and they were next door at Denny's waiting for me.

It's been a great night and great weekend.


p.s.
How about the Oscars giving all the love to No Country? I love it.