Last Friday was the Dave Brubeck and Ramsey Lewis concert at the Paramount. The show was phenomenal, just as expected. I was a bit surprised that the legendary Brubeck performed first. Although, in retrospect, it made the most sense. The guy is…well, old; He’s about the age of Charlie’s GREAT Grandpa and if there’s any correlation there, he should have been asleep in his easy-chair midway through his set. Given the fact that his biggest songs were released almost FIFTY years ago, I expected the average age of Brubeck’s audience to also be on the older side. And, while I was righter than I thought, I was amazed by how energized the folks around us became during the performance. Especially the woman sitting next to me—I’m not sure she realized the noises that she was making, but I’ll just say they made us youngsters a liiittle uncomfortable.

"The Great Performer", Ramsay Lewis and his Trio were incredible. Although also not a group of youngsters, they brought a lot of liveliness to the evening that made me glad they closed the show.

In order to get the tickets to Brubeck as early as I did, I had to purchase a Seattle Theater Group package, which means I had to buy tickets to at least two other shows. One of those other shows happened to be Dan Zanes on Saturday. We knew Charlie was a little young to truly appreciate it, but we figured he’d enjoy watching the lights and shiny instruments. We stayed in our seats the entire time, but it didn’t take long for the aisles and area in front of the stage to become saturated with sub-five-year-olds. As the kids became excited by songs they were familiar with, they’d jump up and down making the room look like giant baby mosh-pit. I thought about crowd-surfing Charlie, but Andrea didn’t seem to think it was a good idea.

photo courtesy: Brian Romero

While I’m on the subject of music, ZooTunes released their line-up and it includes Andrew Bird and the Avett Brothers—two of the artists on my top-ten of 2007! I just saw the Avett Brothers at Neumos—a local venue—a couple of weeks ago and they were magnificent—more than worth seeing again. We’ll be in line for tickets on Monday AM. And lastly, I had lunch with Duff McKagen from G&R and Velvet Revolver last week. He’s friends with a co-worker (and also former-rock-star) and now officially sits on our advisory board. He was extremely nice and surprisingly down-to-earth.

I know you probably wanted to hear some details regarding Andrea and ‘Betababy’, but I figured I’d let her fill you all in on the gory details, cravings, and so forth. She’s been more-or-less out of commission, but as soon she’s able to open the lap-top and type without barfing on the keyboard, I’m sure she’ll tell you more than you want to hear. Or…perhaps I already did.