March 22 – Tin Pan at Union Square / Shanghai Mermaid – Clifton Hyde – guitar, Stefan Zeniuk – reeds, Tuba Joe – Tuba, Jesse Selengut – trumpet,vocals
We did a little hit in Union Square subway stop to get our rehearse on. It was a good feeling running through tunes. We actually made alright money at it too. The Hypnotic Brass dudes came by and they were surprisingly friendly to us, talking about the primacy of brass and how it is a fading art. Keep brass alive.
Fast forward to 9pm over at Shanghai Mermaid. The usual pre-show chaos of sound-checks and last minute dance rehearsals. Rehearsing our tune with Juliette. Rehearsing our number with Veronica Varlow. The chatter in the room is that the security guards had communicated with “Jacob” the landlord’s agent and had been told to shut the party down.
We did our first set. Super fun. The place is ultra-mobbed! While the Cangelosi Cards are doing their thing the fire department shows up. Everyone is scurrying around blowing out candles. Imagine everyone dressed up all classy and about 11 burly axe-and-crowbar-carrying FDNY dudes striding through. OK but the show must go on. The fire marshall himself (white hat and all) says that its ok and we can finish our show.
Then the cops come and shut the whole thing down! Picture Tin Pan on stage while Veronica V. is doing the wonderful number that we put together when a Fireman and a Cop jump on stage and start waving at us to stop. I am hoping that somewhere out in the world there is a photo of exactly that scene so I can post it here!! If you have it – let me know!!
Everyone had to leave very quickly. Stefan stayed on stage after the curtain had closed and continued to play slow, bluesy tenor sax while everyone was filing out. It was a beautiful and sad sound. Eventually, a cop parted the curtains and told Stefan that he needed to stop.
We made it up to the street with the plan to rendez-nous over at Super-Fine. I was a little dejected. This was our CD release party. I didn’t get a chance to talk about the disc or tell stories about my Aunt. We sold only 2. Veronicas Act got stopped before it really got started. Clifton mugged up some feelings for this shot:
We went over to Super Fine where Tanya was nice enough to honor our drink tickets. The plan was to wait a little bit until the cop action out front calmed down and then we’d do a set. About 70 people from the party had made it to Super Fine and it was fun to see the dressy-dressy types scattered in among the DUMBO set. We did have a substantial presence their eventually. When Veronica and Juliette entered there was much cheering, hooting and applause.
A DJ was doing his thing and then we heard Stefan playing his tenor along with some mo-town track. He comes closer to the bar. He sounded great. Time to do it. As we were heading to the back to get our horns folks started cheering us on! It was a trip! “Are you going to play? Please play?”
We assembled near the ramp over by the bar and played a 30 minute set of loud, brash, brassy, bluesy music replete with made up lyrics about cops and full tilt screaming. Stefan is jumping on and off tables and railings. Joe is making up completely different chord changes to tunes. I was playing as high and as loud as I ever have ever with that band. Folks were going nuts for us. Many dancers had set up right next to us and were swinging each other around. It was a scene.
At the end Tanya made an announcement about this being our CD release party and Sister Kate and Stefan went around hawking the discs to good effect!! I hung out drinking Gin and Tonics with Clifton and crew. Wound up in my bed to get exactly 2 hours of sleep before getting ready to play classical brass music for Easter Sunday the next morning.