Thursday, February 14, 2008

Greatest View in the Greatest City


We've been finding ourselves in the city quite a bit these last couple of months, most recently last Thursday, when we went to see Joe Henry. (Don't everybody ask "who?" at once.) Henry doesn't get out much, rarely performing live and almost never on the East coast, but he's been in the business more than twenty years, making albums, scoring films, and producing the likes of Solomon Burke, Aimee Mann, Elvis Costello, and so much more. I first heard Joe Henry in 1997 or 1998, when my friend Alan offered me a free ticket to a filming of David Byrne's Sessions at West 54th Street. We didn't know who the guy was (and we couldn't hear music for free on the Internet yet) but Al's friends said the guy was good. They were wrong. He was brilliantly, heart-breakingly great, and I was hooked.
So I was really looking forward to this concert; on top of it being Joe, it was part of the Lincoln Center American Songbook series, held in the Frederick P. Rose Hall in the Time-Warner Center, which we'd not seen before, so there was much glitter and swank to take in as we ascended the escalators. He performed in The Allen Room, a 250-seat piece of heaven that is now My Favorite Music Venue. (There's no photography allowed, so that's a hastily-sketched watercolor you see above, not a surreptitious pre-show photo.) The stage backdrop is just a wall of glass, overlooking Central Park and, what is that, 60th Street? 57th? I'm sure someone will tell me. Anyway, it was a great show, and I hope it isn't another decade before the next one. And y'all should go look up Joe now that it's 2008 and you can, y'know, listen to music for free on the Internet.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

What a beautiful view.
ken