Boy Heidy
WOW, THIS HAS BEEN AN INCREDIBLE EVENING!!! Yes, I really am yelling it! Judith & I ate at Sunset Grill and the food and service was great as usual. I had the pan seared duck with blackberry sauce and tomatoes and bree cheese, with okra as a side, and she had the sorghum basted pork tenderloin. Since there was room left for dessert we had the crème brulee, chocolate bombe and butterscotch habanera bread pudding. The bread pudding was an extremely unique combination of butterscotch and habanera peppers. The bread had a touch of the pepper in it and it was a really neat combination of flavors, quite possibly the best bread pudding evar. BUT, the crème brulee was the best of the three. It’s just hard to beat an awesome combination of milk, cream, eggs and sugar, especially when it’s topped off with some fresh strawberries.
But that was just the meal, the best was yet to come!! We headed down to TPAC to catch the Jamie Cullum show, and the Gabe Dixon Band opened. I had no idea that I would know so many of the opening band’s music. I’ve heard quite a bit of it, but I never realized who sang it. They did a great remake of ‘Hey Joe’, the Jimi Hendrix tune, that I had not heard before and it was really, really cool.
I’m so glad the PIANO had become fashionable in pop music again!! I really like the sounds a piano makes and in the right hands, it’s an incredible instrument. Leading into Jamie Cullum, who’s primary instrument is, o come on, guess…. a piano! He had four supporting musicians, a bass player, drummer, and two other guys, one played guitar and trumpet and the other played saxophone, keyboards and percussion. It was an incredible show. We were taking bets before hand on what he would look like, and both lost! He was in holey jeans and a shirt and tie, with shirt untucked and unbuttoned with a blue blazer over. The jacket didn’t last long, and the button-up shirt soon followed. It was really cool to see him go from stomping on the piano (literally), then jumping off the top of it to playing some incredible solo pieces and singing some really soulful ballads. Gabe Dixon came back out and the two of them sang Elton John’s ‘Rocketman’ which was really well done. Towards the end of the show, Jamie started making a loop of voice and percussion on the microphone and stacked eight or nine layers in what seemed like less than thirty seconds, then used that to sing a wonderful version of the White Strips ‘Seven Nation Army’. I don’t know, if it is allowed to say wonderful and seven nation army in the same breath? Talk about running the gamut of musical experience… breadth wise he went from that to ‘I Could Have Danced All Night’ from the musical ‘My Fair Lady’, to the ‘don’t ‘cha wish your girlfriend was a freak like me’ song ( I have no idea who sings that one). I don’t think you can say consummate showman about someone who looked like they just rolled out of bed, but he did put on an awesome show. Not very many concerts can I say that I would go back and do it again, but I would do this one even if the tickets were twice as much.
Also, experiences like that one are always best shared with someone with whom you can later talk about it and laugh with, and I had the best companion possible for the evening. There was so much entertainment going on in the seats as well, like the usher lady chasing down the 11 year old looking girl because she had some life-savers candies (no food allowed), and everyone around laughing at her (the usher, not the girl), as well as the comment of ‘you can drink ‘till you fall out of the balcony, but don’t bring any food!’, which was made even more funny by the few stumbling drunk folks hanging out dangerously near the edge. Some evenings are just too great for words, but now you’ve read a few that vainly attempt to recreate one of the best experiences I’ve had in a very long time.