Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2010 September 08 • Wednesday

Twenty years and two weeks have passed since I moved to New York. I was digging around for some relics of that time and found a bunch of ticket stubs.

This is the oldest one.

My friend Nas, who was really into Latin Jazz, took me to that one. Tito Puente came out with his band and yelled, "Is this a concert or is this a DANCE!?" I think there were arguments on both sides.

I went to several other gigs but I didn't start saving the tickets for a while, and even then I don't think I saved all of them. Here's (probably) the next oldest one, from the second time I saw John Zorn's Naked City.

They played at the Marquee in April of 1991 also, which would have been the first time I saw them. I went to both Marquee shows with my brother, who was responsible for getting me into jazz and avantgarde music when we were teenagers.

He drove me from Massachusetts to New York to see Spy vs. Spy (with guest David Sanborn as alto sax #3 and Ted Epstein of Blind Idiot God as one of the drummers) at the Knitting Factory when I was still in high school.

Speaking of the Knitting Factory, this was when it was at its original location on East Houston Street. In 1992 their What Is Jazz? Festival was at Town Hall in the theatre district.

Syd Straw played, I remember, as did Sun Ra. That was the only time I ever saw him. He died not too long after that.

Blind Idiot God, another band my brother got me into, played that night also. They went on last and only played a few songs before they either blew fuses or had the plug pulled on them. They were very, very loud. But great!

Eight or ten or twelve dollars for a show and a free drink thrown in. You could usually stay for the second set for free if you were at the first.

I think this was the first performance of Zorn's "Kristallnacht".

I'm glad I kept this one:

That's Mr. Dorgon's handwriting. He worked the door at the Knitting Factory. My brother and I got to know him a little bit just from standing in line for so many shows. If only Dorgon and I had known what adventures we'd end up having together! We could have had some interesting conversations.

That one is from the first performance, I think, of a band that only played a few gigs. It was called Can't Copy and was Chris Cochrane (guitar), Marc Ribot (guitar), Sebastian Steinberg (electric bass), David Shea (sampler) and Ed Ware (drums). I really liked them.

Chris Cochrane was in No Safety with Zeena Parkins, Ann Rupel, Doug Seidel and Pippin Barnett. I saw them several times. On this occasion they're sharing the bill with Marc Ribot's Jazzbeens, an organ trio. If that band every played more than once, it's news to me.

I remember another obscure Ribot band that might have only played once, called Marc Ribot's Bad Luck. I didn't see that one, though.

This midnight Boredoms show was shortly after the band's excellent performance at The Grand, a club just a block or two away from my apartment on East 13th Street.

My brother and I saw Blind Idiot God at The Grand a few times (including one show where they called themselves Logan and had an inaudible singer), and we caught the Boredoms show also. Painkiller also played on that bill, I think.

The show at the Knitting Factory was really good, too, but I was right up front and getting a bit too moshed, so I ended up getting on to the stage and leaving via the door to the stage, accidentally stepping on Thurston Moore's hand as I passed through. (He was sitting on the floor back stage.)

Here's a special one, maybe from the first time I ever saw this band, soon to become one of my favorites.

I saw them last week and they're still one of my favorites!