Brisk walk back home with carrot juice and anxiety re my appointment with the Mingus band set for later that night. I shed for an hour or two, then it's 9pm and we're off to Fez to kill or be killed. (All this on a day that's supposed to be my day off - in fact, the first in 9 DAYS!)

Anxious cab ride downtown. And then, in line, Suzanna, Sue Mingus' daughter, is taking the bread at the door. She welcomes me, hands me a Mingus fake book, wishes me luck & tells me how excited people are to have me come down to sing. Is this for real? Schmoozing? A come-on? I'm a nobody singer from Chicago - whence all the fuss?

Now it seems to me that it IS a pretty big honor and sign of respect even for regular cats to get to sit in with this band - at least SOMEBODY high up takes you for a cat, a pro, you rock, etc. But for a SINGER and as a featured guest (why can't there be some other way for a singer to sit in?), well, you just better come ready to throw down. I mean, it's a band of CATS - a large junket of heavy New York working musician CATS. It's a SCENE with regulars, visitors & stand-ins who know each other (or at least know OF one another). This can be the toughest kind of tribunal from an anxiety standpoint. It's not the critics, who are really only important from a business standpoint. It's not the audience, who certainly ARE important but who can be fooled. It's THE CATS. (Or, it's at least it's a big group of them.) Plus, just to put some more zing into it, Bruce Lundvall & Tom Evered are here from Blue Note and full of gleeful anticipation, also the reporter I met in DC from Reuters, assorted and expectant friends and a super-crowded house amid the mirrored pillars and red velvet curtains. And here's Sue Mingus at the last minute, excitedly: "I won't even TELL you who's here to hear YOU tonight!"Good. Don't.

I get Pony Girl situated in a booth, and then it's time to meet w/ the band leader pro tempore.

"So, man, what do you want to play on?"

"Well I've got some lyrics to So Long Eric, but Sue said that she didn't want me to use something that I was prepared to do or pre-written. I'm not sure what's going on with that - she said she wanted to put my feet to the fire . . ."

"Spoken like a true non-musician. Well, we can do whatever you want . . "

But just then Sue comes up and announces: "You'll do Nostalgia In Times Square and it'll be GREAT."

I spend the set warming up backstage at the same time as Craig Handy & brainstorming ideas with myself. The band spends the set kicking the audience's ass. All too soon it's Sue Mingus at the mike: ". . . special event. . . great singer . . .fantastic talent. . .nothing like it. . .actually MAKES UP LYRICS and is a young genius," etc. Nothing like high expectations to wreck yer night, I always say.

Then it's a blur - I shake hands with cats, Andy Mckee with lion-headed bass and maybe two other cats. 9/10 of the band has never laid eyes on me before. We count off and BAM! I'm blowing - plowing, actually. Work into my ranting no monitor, work in wacked NY energy - then on to notes: ribbons, I hope, of musical merriment (that actually come from personal harriment) and keeping me from too much embarrassment because of my predicament. Work in, "just then the Mingus band rolls by like a terrific swinging train." Then "blow, Blow, BLOW your boat, bursting at the seams!" Digging in for sounds I'm gonna' BASH myself through this electric current - crashing and slamming. The people are with me now and calling out "Go a'head, man!" and clapping in bursts as I go. people are standing up to get a better look and one girl is standing on a chair yelling "WoOOOOOO!!" But I'm getting worried 'cause I haven't heard from the cats yet. I can tell Andy's into it - He's pulling hard and slamming out the changes with surprised smiles, and the rest of the rhythm section, too - the energy's up and climbing as I reach for the next chorus (praying and glossalailing all the while).

But it's not until Godsend Kuumbwa Frank Lacy stokes it up for me with a simple and sincere, "Blow Man!" that I feel the tide turn. The two of us lock eyes, my life saver & me, so I play to HIM. Then back to the crowd. To the band. Now things are really cooking. The bounce is bumping and the sound is thumping and all the cats are in mid humping and I'm just about to jump into the way SUPER gonasphere when I hear "THANK YOU".

Smack. Thunk. Wall.

It's that universally recognized commanding voice that tells a guest he's overstayed his welcome, and I barely hear it from all the concentrating I'm doing on the SOUND. But somebody in charge isn't having it. I'm getting the hook. Maybe I HAVE gone on too long - but, Christ, it's a FEATURE. I'm the INVITED guest and I'm only 2/3 done!

"THANK YOU". - Again the voice of doom. Ok. Ok. No problem. Finish the chorus & sit down, lowly eyed. Except the crowd goes NUTS with wild applause - yelling Frank Lacy, too, standing up with shouts from Andy Mckee. I sit down to surprising back slaps and extremely good vibe.

Bari solo.

Then great crazy long Craig Handy solo to close the set. (Later, the Bari player tells me he "just wanted to get to Craig's solo" & I can see why. But I guess he said it to me as apology 'cause all the cats were vibing him for cutting me off, and Sue Mingus REALLY vibed him right in front of me with, "yeah - if Bari-Boy hadn't been such an ASSHOLE by cutting you off! Wha'd you DO that for, you prick?! He sounded GREAT!?")

Plus Jeff "Tain" Watts comes up, both of us sweating in fraternity hugs, etc. Also Frank Lacy, who sent the love when I needed it most. We hung & dug each other. And Evered comes over all smiles now & others, too. But I've reached the end. I've held my mud as long as I've had to.

"Double vodka. Neat." Thanks to a few more cats then. But it's escape I'm after - enough of stress & days & nights. Quick goodbyes. Then cab it home with Pony girl to a refill and relief. I made it. Thank God. Safe on the other side.

Ok, so Fortissimo: It's a neon-lit beer joint @ 2nd av & 14th St. that's unique of all the joints I've ever played in, in that it features a pretty wide selection of video games just as you enter the joint ("Uh oh," says I). It's got Beavis & Butthead on the behind-the-bar and Harley-patched leather rubbing on the stools. It's got a cramped black-walled smoky aisle that leads back to an all-purpose cabaret room in beat-up black bent wood chairs & tables with a similarly dented & doomed baby grand.

About 45 before us hopeful Charlotte Spark sings and plays nervously, hem trembling @ first in fishnet stockings & rosebud tattoos under a torn slip of a dress. She's trying to get it together, so you gotta' respect that. Plus she's REAL - open hearted, honest fear and grateful and bashful when applause comes. People are kind, and she's done in 1/2 an hour anyway (good thing, w/ compassion-less LH smirking and scowling obviously and kindless-ly in the foreground).

Then, on with the show: Ugonna's swinging beat surviving well in bad house sound, LH's excellence overflowing the possibilities of the sad, bashed-on piano, me ranting about toast & Marian McPartland in a full room - loose & funny segues & joking all around. Cool gig, all told, plus $195 for us in free will offering after they pass the hat.

Beat empty flaccid droning flat dreary dull lifeless pale wasted days of gray woolly skies and stillborn waiting for green and golden days full of lilacs and summer lake swimming with trees and laughing. It won't come to you THIS spring in NYC under ground in pounded pavement and screeching subway brakes. Today I play the uptown stop of the 1 & the 9 train at Columbus Circle with my man Sayyd (he of the blessed spirit and late of the Duke Ellington Orchestra) and Sun Ra guitarist Bruce Edwards. We're doing a benefit at the Fez tomorrow night for Subplay discs and Share Our Strength, a city charity. But even with all our hearts showing clear in the underground fluorescent lights the people pass by without hearing - somnambulists on city streets all dreaming in the great dream space of the hopeless day. All of them want what comes next from the mouth of the void to be a thrill or love or a forgetting or at least a laugh or a smile and not just some other dreary hopelessness.

One man I see - so hopeless and lost - he kerbels his way through the turnstiles to buy magazine and gum @ the kiosk in high heels and worn-out girl's designer jeans - blush and beard crowding the same cheek with yellow butterfly barrettes and orange lipstick. Who loves him? And the woman coming now off the train, middle aged and round in her gray open coat and a mustache of tears - gold ringed fingers clutching a sagging gray purse in front of her as she walks. What can we give to her? What? A Train? Yardbird Suite? She's not even here. It is June 3rd and there's a pavement-colored sky and only 65 degrees. Who could be happy in the cold urban Diaspora?

After somber day of rain and cold sad conversations I shed for the gig and read. "The Times" is finally supposed to come tonight, but it seems kinda' anticlimactic because of all we've been through and all the notes we've already played since we came on the scene. I guess that may be likely for the best. I'm too tired to stress about it.

So, after celebration Chinese dinner with Jen & LH we train up to the upper west side to play at the Starlight Lounge. Now, the Starlight vibe reminds me right off of a joint in Chicago called Milt Trenier's (owned by the youngest of the famed Trenier Bros., late of Las Vegas) - except that the Starlight is trying really hard to be what Milt Trenier's is: the last of the rat pack's hide-aways. There are framed pictures of Sammy Davis, Jr on the wall right alongside some "vintage" Playboy pinups. There are faux leopard-skin couches and wacky old lighting fixtures. They're trying hard to be retro-loungy for the 90's. I meet the owners and they're excited and glad to have us there. Nice people. They DO have a real piano and a good sound system, but it's lounge lizardy, all right.

By now, I have learned the one should never underestimate a tour's ability to throw you some curve balls. Tonight the curve ball is that we have a 10.00 hit and it's now a 10.15 full house and no drummer. (It's the story of my professional-critical life: the most important gig w/critic on-the-way & the situation gets screwed up. Even for my first review ever anywhere I'm in the middle of my first solo in the first tune of the first set and the duct-taped sound system (no kiddin'!) blows out & I have to play the rest of the night w/out!)

So no drummer this time. Ok. Fine. We'll play it like we play trio gigs in enlightened restaurants: less punch & more pleasant. Of course, Laurence is a strong enough player to make orchestral sounds, and Ugonna by now knows all of our charts, so he's good to go. Nevertheless, I'd give anything if only some other drummer would show up, say, Victor Lewis. (It's not impossible - he's done four or five hits with us now, and he didn't hate it. Talk about fun - here's a guy who combines all the different kinds of fun - from sandbox to hard knocks to paradox - with virtuoso chops and a teenager's energy. Who's your lucky dance partner tonight, oh Victor-ious one?)