concertNY

JO'S ACCOUNT OF GOING TO RUSSELL'S CONCERT IN NEW YORK CITY

MAY 2006

We (husband Carl and I) left Pittsburgh at 7 heading east for New York...about an 8 hour drive. I was driving at 70 MPH in a pouring rain over the Allegheny Mountains with huge trucks surrounding me like unto a Roman turtle formation. And me in a little green rollerskate of a car. But you hafta drive that fast as the trucks pick you up and blow you along with them almost without your tires touching the road. Carl is sleeping in the front seat beside me and I'm gripping the wheel for dear life...literally...which is a new experience for me since half of my left hand has gone numb...but, evidently, I got us over the mountains because here I am typing away!!

Anyway, all in one piece and completely uncoated by chocolate or terrorized by a single giant or even small bat, we headed into the Holland Tunnel. They make you pay to get INTO New York but not to leave. I wonder if there be some message in that? SIX bucks to get into the city! Sheesh! We sorta expected them to pay us to leave. But they declined. Shame on them! So I have my wittle directions from MapQuest all printed so very nicely out and they send us down Canal Street and say, in all caps, LEFT on Bowery...only you get to Bowery and there are barricades everywhere and huge signs warning of imminent impalement should you even CONSIDER turning left on Bowery and there are about 45 taxi cabs all on the right at various and sundry diagonal angles completely blocking any way to go right...and the light is changing and a good and even probably a bad 3/4 of lower Manhattan all begins to honk at us to MOVE the &^%$# out of there...and the only place to go is , gulp, forward...which, gulp, takes one up onto the Manhattan Bridge and OUT of Manhattan and INTO Brooklyn.

Well, I am here to tell you that once entered by the unwary, Brooklyn will not let you out! It absolutely refuses. It wants you to stay...unlike Manhattan where you have to pay to enter and then they immediately shoot you over to Brooklyn just for spite. So we, once sucked into the bowels of Brooklyn, spend a good or possibly not so good half hour to 45 minutes trying to figger out how to get BACK onto the Manhattan Bridge. Well, they won't let you. They simply will not let you. They don't want you to leave. Why, I have no idea. But that is just the truth of it. They keep whoever falls into their gaping maw. I think they intend to use you atop pizza later...or possibly something worse. And so they have devised streets that go nowhere all of which go nowhere in a one way sort of manner. And then they tempt you with green signs that mean nothing but are only lures to lead you to the pepperoni chopping factory. I hate to say that people from Brooklyn lie, especially as my dear husband was born there but escaped at 5 and so cannot truly be held responsible for the lack in his nativity, but in the space of a quarter of a block which we couldn't really get down because of the white truck sitting diagonally across it I asked one woman which way and she pointed to the right and a few wheel turns later asked another and she pointed left. So even those IN Brooklyn have no idea how to get out of Brooklyn which is, obviously, why they are still there.

But, being clever souls, we foiled their evil plottings and actually, after only about 45 near fender benders, made our way back ONTO the Manhattan Bridge and immediately began to wonder if that were actually a good idea as cars came at us from every direction like we were some green magnet in their space, but we finally found Broome St. where our hotel was, um, supposedly, to be found. On Monday we had found out the hotel we had been registered at had us for completely the wrong days and it only took, oh, about 10 hours of constant stress to find that there were two hotels in Manhattan that were not already booked. The first actually had a picture of a room with the mattresses on the floor and the drug dealers going out the door past the bullet holes. We almost booked it so desperate were we to find a place to stay. Then we came up with the Sohotel in Soho...so there we are driving down Broome looking for the Sohotel and wouldn't ya know its corner sign is yellow words painted on a yellow background and for SOME reason neither Carl nor I saw it??? Strange. So we're making our way down this street in Chinatown into Little Italy never actually having seen vehicles move down city streets sideways like they tend to do in lower Manhattan. It's actually very interesting watching them relate to one another...getting out of their vehicles and pounding on other folks', shouting, waving, um, fingers...that sort of thing. So we manage finally to circle around through the maze of one way streets, almost always one way in the opposite direction from what one currently needs, and SEE the hotel...only, of course, there is no place to pull up and drop off luggage...so we go past it and around the corner and find what laughingly passes as a garage and which if we promise them our first born son, our house, and our future earnings for the next 10 years, they will let us park in for 2 days, warning that 10 minutes past that and it will be another whole day. So we unload our green roller skate and this guy whips it around and parks it on the sidewalk. I say to Carl, "Do you suppose he'll...lock... it?" and we stagger off with all our possessions down the block, around the corner, down another block, across the street and to the door of the hotel. "AH," I say, "We are here!" One opens the door and is faced with a looooong flight of steps. The hotel starts on the second floor. So we stagger up and go to register, finding out that Gena, who has flown in from Phoenix and will have her own tales to tell, has checked in but that Bridgid and Butch will not be coming due to sickness. We stagger up another long flight to our room and find Gena.

I had had dinner at the HOB in LA with Gena and her husband, Ralph, and stood next to them during the concert, so we already knew one another in person from that. We walked to Little Italy and had dinner in the open front of the Lunella Restaurant, discussing things Russelly at great length, then walked some blocks more and took the subway north...waaay north...as close as we could get to the concert site. I accosted an innocent man on the subway, being one who will talk to any one at any time, who adopted us and not only showed us where to get off, but guided us up the stairs and pointed us in the right direction. When we got to the site...and I cannot remember the name of this place except is has something to do with unethical Strombolians...we could hear them onstage warming up. The lobby is wide and narrow with double doors that lead up a short flight of stairs to the auditorium. I was glad I'd seen pictures of it before and knew what it looked like. Was a much larger space than the HOB in LA and can hold 800. The seats are pews, all in a semi-circle curving about the stage. But the Strombolian Mafia chased us back out onto the street in a rather unkindly manner. There were large blocky areas on either side of the front entrance so I sat on one of those and looked across the street at the yellow brick building where Madonna lives whilst in NYC.

Across the street to the side lay Central Park. Gena stood up close to the door listening to them rehearse. Then various and sundry band members came out and just came out and stood around like actual human beings, which I found rather endearing of them. Then Dean came out and, well, Gena likes Dean, you see, and he stood not far away for quite some while talking with people he knew...some gal who'd been in the Texas video, I think. Julie came up...this is our Boston Julie...and she was such a sweetheart and we talked a lot and she asked about Meri and about Carl's heart... everybody knows about my dog and my hubs, heh heh! And Luella came up and passed around her light sticks. I took a yellow one, surprise, surprise. And Patty joined us. And there was a new gal, Betty, who became part of it all. And I recognized women I'd seen at the HOB in LA. So it was a nice, chatty group we had going there...which was good as we were there for an hour and a half at least.

We knew Gena would love to meet Dean but was too shy to go over to him...so Carl guides her over, followed by Luella and her camera...and pretty soon I am sitting on my blocky thing grinning as Gena is getting photographed with BOTH Carl and Dean...and then just with Dean...very close, arm around kinda thingie. Dean hangs around and Gena mentions she wishes he knew about the new Crowe'sMagik site, so we get her to write the url on a piece of paper and Carl walks it right over to him...heh heh heh...and talks to him about it. Carl is having a good time. He's talking with all the women and everybody likes him...'cause, well, he's just so durn likable!!! And we're hearing all Luella's tales of train travel and she's showing us her two cameras and I have left mine back in the Sohotel because the camera police were so alert in LA that I figgered, hey, this is NYC...they will be even MORE alert here!!! But they did no purse checks nor wandings of our persons...not at all. You just never know! But Luella was very, very gracious with her cameras and were it not for that, there would have been no record of Gena and Dean. So...many, many thanks to you, Luella! You are most truly appreciated.

Once they let us in, there was no mad stampede like in LA since everybody had assigned seats. They were selling new T-shirts, old TOFOG caps, CDs, etc. there in the lobby. At the other end was a bar and Carl bought Luella a drink to thank her for taking the pictures. I'd been a bit concerned about the seats we had as they were rather far over to the right, but with the sharp curve to the seating arrangements, it was fine and I had a great view of his profile during the concert. I'd been right in front in LA, so didn't mind the different vantage point at all. We had gotten our tickets at random through Ticketmaster and, strange as it seems, Gena ended up with the seat directly in front of mine and Murph with the seat directly behind mine. I was on a 4th row aisle. I kept going over to H on the far side looking for Beth but didn't see her. Carol (realgoldenager) had been out front passing out free goodies to folks. It was nice to see her and know who she was now. We had talked in LA, but I didn't know she was herself. So now we kept passing by one another and hugged each time, getting in a good 7 or 8 hugs as we passed and repassed.

It sort of became our "thing"..the hug exchange. She had a seat front row center...but of course!!! Luella had a second row seat, but the ushers moved her up to the front...which was really neat! I recognized Murph and introduced myself and she knew right away who I was. We chatted a bit and I found out Dani and Charlie are not with him on this current trip. I introduced Carl to her and they talked and talked...and talked. She liked him. Of course. After the show they ended up hugging each other. He's like that. They talked a LOT! It was neat! I was pleased. I introduced Gena and Murph said nice things about the site and about wanting to keep on posting updates about it. Not long before the show started this lovely dark-haired lady comes up beside my pew and says, "Jo?" and it is my Beth I've been looking for and she is more wonderful than I'd always already thought she would be. Murph's daughter is sitting beside Murph and she and Carl have long talks, too. I'm just getting sucha charge outta the whole thing, I am, I am! Carl can talk easily and well about things Russellish...a perfect husband to bring to a concert!!

Then the opening act starts...Jen Chapin, Harry's daughter...and she's good, has her husband on bass...and she goes over well with the audience. After the show Carl talks with her in the lobby (surprise, surprise) and buys her CD. Then there is the wait between the opening act and the Russell act...and it's not so long as in LA. Also, unlike in LA, there is no way for a curtain to be closed and so the band's set up is still all right out there. The 3 stained glass window panels are there in back and this time they are backlit...which is neat and gives them a greater windowish appearance. Then you hear "Stand By Your Man" playing and you know...soon...soon...soon!

Carl is to my right and there are no dividing arms as, well, the seats ARE pews, so I can lean against him...which is neat. I'm waiting for his first sight of Russell, actually more interested in seeing the look on his face than in the walk-out itself. He gets this great big grin when he sees Russ for the first time and then I can turn and look for myself. Dean is right there just a hop, skip, and half a jump in front of us. The stage is lower than the one in LA. If folks were standing, you couldn't lean on it, way too low for that. Gosh...Russ is wearing...pinstripes! Who would ever have thunk it??? Heh, heh! He starts right out with Mickey.

This concert was a whole different experience for me from LA. Not only were my feet not ground hamburger this go-round during it because, well, I got to sit...but having Carl there made it such a different thing. He is a trained singer himself and I love to watch him watch singers as he knows what's involved in a way I don't. I've watched Carl sing for over an hour at a time at some event and it's so neat just to be aware of his awarenesss of what's going on with the mike, for instance. Russ had mike problems again and kept switching mikes, even completely leaving the stage at one point to fetch another. I don't know if it's for his role as an older cop in Tenderness or what, but he was a little heavier than he was in LA. And he's letting his hair grow. It bordered on being almost Cortish in length and did this nice little happy flip across the back. I like that even tho he probably has it styled carefully before he comes out, once he IS out he ceases to care about it altogether and runs his hands through it tossing it this way and that. He also has a short beard now. His patter was briefer than in LA, too. The woman with the camera who kept coming down the aisle interrupted his train of thought with one of his stories and after he took the time to get the two pictures with her, he said there wasn't time left to finish the story so he just began the song. That was the Land of the Second Chance story. Then when he launched into the Shelly Winters, he seemed to feel a bit awkward about it and stopped and said something about telling that story in THIS place, which was, of course, a church, and he didn't do the whole thing. He also seemed fascinated by the tall plexiglass surround for the drums and went up to it toward the beginning and pressed his hands and face on it and did something to make Dave laugh, then later he was on the side of it doing things with it again.

Having seen him do this same show three times so recently, I would have to say that he seemed at his happiest, most "on" on the Friday night one in LA. Maybe because Dani was there, I don't know. But he had some extra spark that night that went beyond the LA Thurs show or this one. Not that he was bad in any way. He gives you your money's worth and more every time. And you can always tell he enjoys the singing and the being with the band and he giggled a couple of times...but there was just something in him that was on a higher level of happiness during that Friday show in LA. If you hadn't seen that one, you wouldn't have been aware of it at all on Wednesday because he was really good. And I was very happy to be there. I leaned into Carl, who had his arm draped around me, and I held his hand and had my eyes filled with Russell singing his guts out. Hey...life like that is durn good!

After he did Folsom at the end of one of the encores, the band walked off except for the keyboard and him...and he did My Hand My Heart nice'n slow, then picked up his cup and raised it to the audience and said, "Cheers!" It seemed a perfect ending for the show. When it was over, we hung around a while inside and talked more with Murph. She had a bag of goodies for him and for Charlie. People came up to her and a couple asked for her autograph. Then the Strombolian Mafia began chasing everybody out of the building. The night was nice and about 40 or 50 intrepid souls hung around for a while. We were in no hurry and it wasn't terribly late as he had started singing much earlier than he had either night in LA...around 9. So we watched them bring out all the equipment and load it into vans. And it was fun just standing there talking with one another. A lot of the women talked with Carl and I just enjoyed watching him interact so much. We had a good deal of time and were getting to know each other more fully than before, sharing stories and talking about all sorts of things, not just Russ. Band members filtered out and various folk got various of them to sign various things. Then Patty came around the corner said Russ had been seen looking out the window by that entrance, which was part of the Strombolian school and not the actual concert hall. We had wondered about the crowd thinning rather dramatically and it turned out they had melted away from the 64th Street side and reformed on the Central Park West side. I couldn't help thinking that the poor guy had probably been looking out the window hoping against hope that everyone would magically disappear, but such was not to be his luck. He came out at the top of the steps and Carl said he saw him open his eyes really wide for a second and then gird his loins and wade into the crowd of about 40 rather sweaty, tired people.

Just north of Pittsburgh there is a place where large fish gather so closely together that there is no space between them and you could practically walk across the lake atop them. This was like that. And Russ waded out into the center of it. You knew he did not want to do that. No sane person and few of the insane would want to do that. It has to be...miserable. But there were 40 or more folk between him and his car. And if he was not graciousness personified! I watched him from the edge of the fishtank for a while, just studying how he turned from woman to woman, signing autographs, smiling for close-up picture takings. He was so neat! Then about 4 women behind me began to push toward him and I was sort of carried along like a piece of flotsam in a lava flow. But I was flowing toward him and so did not protest. And then I was near enough that I couldn't possibly be THAT near and not, well, nearer. You know? So I writhed and squirmed a bit and fit my way between huge purses and larger backpacks actually losing sight of him because of the effort it took just to survive in the milling mass of hot humanity. Gena and Luella, being tiny folk, didn't stand a chance!

Then as I curved around a particularly large black canvas thing some woman had that obviously contained the state of Nebraska, I found myself about three inches to his left. How I got there I'll never know. But there I was and he was posing for a photograph with some woman who was on his right side and I could see Carl standing out in the street just a bit with this absolutely gloriously happy expression on his face that I WAS standing three inches to Russell's left. I had not really expected this to happen and had only brought one little thing with me that I might have gotten signed...a small copy of one of my pictures in which Russell is pointing out a galaxy to Braddock. But Murph had seen it and liked it and I had given it to her. I fished in my purse and came up with a small printout of my sketch of Maximus. I had for some years wondered what, if I ever had the chance to speak to Russell, what I might actually SAY...you know what I mean? Well, there I was and so I reached out my right hand and very, very lightly rested it high on his left arm. He turned toward me and I presented the little sketch and I said, glorious first words, "This is all I have." He scribbled his name on it and we both stood there a second looking down at it and then I said, "You are being very gracious tonight. Thank you." And he looked in my face and flashed one of those almost little-boyish smiles he can do.

Then I sort of faded back in the crowd as there were so many others still wanting autographs, etc. He was moving steadily as he signed, getting further down the side walk and closer to his car... the black SUV with the darkened windows. I circled around and found Gena and Luella. Somehow Gena had had an encounter with him as he passed near her and had shaken hands with him, looked him right in the eye, and he had called her "Luv." I'll let her tell about that. Julie had gotten a picture of herself with him with her camera. Carl, being taller than anybody else there, had Luella's camera and was holding it up high taking pictures of him for her. She was struggling with her cane and all not to get knocked over and trampled. Then somehow, again I'm not sure just how, I came out on his left side again and I could see Carl still out a bit in the street with the camera and I said, "My husband is trying to take a picture." And when he finished with the gal he was being currently photographed with, he turned to me again and leaned really close, putting his left cheek against my right and I slid my arm, wicked lady that I be, around his back, and we smiled. But the neatest thing for me was the look on Carl's face...his utter delight that I was there with Russell . I just looked at him as he held that camera and I loved him so much that he felt that way...that his joy FOR me was so totally pure. And the whole moment was over so quickly, but the main thing I will always remember is the look on Carl's face. And I like that! Then he said, "Well, I got half of you and half of him," and Russell frowned at him. Heh heh! I don't really care...it was the moment that counted anyway. (He actually

got all of Russell.)

Later, Gena, Carl and I were walking toward the subway... only we'd got ourselves sort of on the wrong street somehow...and there we were...3 obviously out-of-towners strolling down the sidewalks of Manhattan at 1:15 AM looking in vain for the subway. We passed by the Met, across the street from us, and there was this line of NYPD standing there shoulder to shoulder in full uniform. Musta been at least 60 of them, just standing there, facing the street, watching us walk by. So I waved. Finally we asked a guy for directions and he pointed us toward Columbus Circle and we got a subway but got off on the wrong stop, asked some cops there who told us where to get back on and where to get off, which we did, and then when we got back up to the sidewalk again there were two black workers of some sort in orange vests and hardhats and we asked them how to get to the corner of Broome and Bowery and they were horrified and said we could NOT walk there, especially this time of night...as it was 2 by then...and one of them went out into the street and hailed a cab for us.

Then at 8 the next morning I was awakened by what I thought were children screaming but turned out to be power saws biting into metal about 6 feet outside our room door. I am continuing this tale, I'll have you know, because I'm not done with Russell talk yet. Nope, not yet. Not yet! So we wearily get out of bed, downed juice and oatmeal bars I have brought, and head down Broome toward the subway again and went uptown, getting off by Madison Square Gardens, taking a picture in honor of our good Mr. Braddock.

Thence walked down 33rd St. to the Empire State Building and went up that, which sounds easy, but which is not due to all the waiting in long lines and the payings of moneys and the waitings in more long lines and the stuffings of many bodies into small elevators. But it was neat to be back up there...had been 31 years for me...and lots of picture-taking ensued.

Then we got back on the subway and went to the lower left hand corner of Central Park, walked up to 64th and took pictures of the sacred spot of Russell wherein we had encountered him on the sidewalk the night before,

went around the corner to photograph the front of the building, then went inside where we, well, played for a while. We were all, well, Gena and I, in a silly mood and took pictures of everything. I got up on the stage and took a picture of the floor where Russ had stood, chortle, chortle, chortle. Then Gena found the playlist Dean had left.

She'd seen him leave it but gotten too distracted and forgot to get it Wed night...but it was there where she'd seen him put it, just waiting for her. Then we got, um, really silly and I suggested she pull up the yellow tape that marked Dean's spot...and she did...feeling like she'd sunk about as low as one can get...until I found two partially smoked cigarettes lying on the stage and offered to share one with her. She wouldn't take it, for SOME reason, so I popped them both in my purse and we giggled and giggled. After all, only ONE person smoked on the stage!!! And I mainly did it so I could WRITE about the doing of it!!! The we went past the place where this huge stick of incense had burned all during the performance for some reason and down the hall they went down when they left the stage...which led toward the door he had to go through to get OUT the side entrance, but some woman, Strombolian by the look of her, chased us away.

Then we walked up so Gena could pose in the middle of Strawberry Fields and cut over to the glorious, white Bow Bridge, which was the one thing in all of NY that both Gena and I had wanted to see...it being in so many movies and all. We actually found bridges all through the lower half of the Park that had been in tons of movies, the Home Alone II bridge, the Kate and Leopold one, the Nicole Kidman in Birth one, the King Kong on his butt on the iced pond one, but especially the Bow Bridge which we both photographed endlessly. And we went to the Bethesda Fountain because of it's also being in so many movies...like Godspell and all...the one with the huge angel up top.

When we left the park we walked along Central Park South on the park side, looking across at all the limos and darkened SUV's pulling up at the exclusive hotels and figgered Russ was probably at the Ritz Carlton

there, so we took pictures of that, too. It was getting cloudy by then and we took the subway waaaay downtown again, getting off in a pouring rain by the World Trade Center.

It was that kinda rain that soaks through in about 10 seconds of being out in it and we had no umbrellas or coats as it had been completely blue when we left the Sohotel that morning. We took the subway back up closer to the hotel, but still many many blocks from it and tried to get a cab, but everyone wanted a cab and so we huddled under this little overhang and nice black car pulled up and an Indian man got out and we asked him which way was the hotel as we'd gotten ourselves turned around again and my map had melted in the rain and was in about 5 sodden pieces. He turned out to be a limo driver and took us right there because, he said, we are all related and all here to do good to one another. I was so impressed with how nice the New Yorkers we had personal contact with were...the man on the subway, the guy who hailed the cab, the Indian chauffer, and then this morning it was still pouring rain and I was waiting by the front door of the Sohotel with the luggage while Carl ran around to the garage to get the car, and when he pulled up a young Chinese woman carried the bags and put them in the car for me and held her umbrella over me while I got in the car. It was good to see how genuinely nice they are one on one like that.

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SPECIAL THANKS TO LUELLA AND OTHERS FOR THE RUSSELL AND DEAN PICTURES!!