Jazz Festival! (Detroit, Wayne, Hancock: loans, college, live)

[Coldjensens]

Just a reminder - starts tonight (technically last night, but the star performances start tonight). I guess it is an amazing lineup. I just recognize jazz I like when I hear it, I do not know one person form another, but my son who is deciding whether to go to college to study Jazz Trumpet or something more stable and lucrative, says it is an amazing bunch of superstars (at least one of whom plays trumpet)

[Coldjensens]

Well Wayne Shorter and HErbie Hancoock were great. Both a bit odd, but still great. There was a guy between them who was very good too, but we missed most of his performance.

The First National Building has pop elevator music blaring over the outside loudspeakers competing with Wayne Shorter. Sine the speaker was just below the Roasting Plant coffee shop sign, everyone thought it was them playing the music. They are going to get roasted on social media, and they said it was not them, but the First National Building. Hundreds of people were taking pictures of their sign and posting it, calling them, etc They will have to do soem damage control to salvage their reputation. If they were telling the truch however, First National Building - owned by Dan Gibbert was drowining out the Detroit Jazz Festival sponsored by Quicken Loans - owned by Dan Gilbert. Ooops

[mgkeith]

Was the same problem going on during the Hancock set?

[jaynarie]

Music plays in the lobby of the FNB. I've never paid attention to whether or not there are speakers outside playing the same music, but it wouldn't surprise me.

I left work at 9 and tried to fight through the crowd to my car. It took forever and I had my toes stomped on a few times. I was exhausted and just wanted to get home, so I wasn't even thinking that I should have went waaayyyy around.

I felt there were less people last night that on Friday nights in year's past. Maybe because it was cooler. There was still a large crowd.

[Coldjensens]

Originally Posted by mgkeith

Was the same problem going on during the Hancock set?

No. By the last few minutes of Shorter, someone finally turned it off.

The shorter crowd was not too bad, the in between guy was aslo reasonable, for hancock the crowd was big enough you could nto see the stage from any place we could get to, and it took 15 minutes of begging people to move and pushin them gently to get out. We did nto go back for the remaining nighits, my son was bothered by being surrounded on all sides by people smoking pot (and something else Opium or Hash maybe?) There were a lot of people drinking hard liquor from the bottle as well and getting pretty unruly. We left a little early and some emergency vehicles came just as we were leaving, not sure why.

My son decided he would rather watch the live streaming on the computer than go back and stand in a mob where you cannot see the stage, and have to breathe pot, cigarrette and other smoke coming up from other people's lungs.
His teacehr was sitting about 5 feet from the stage. I am not sure what those tickets cost, but it was be pretty awesome. (Just to be sitting would be nice).

There was a free area where you could put chairs, but it was pretty small and packed well before we got there. They did nto do a very good jjob with the layout. Much of the area was cordoned off so no one could go there, and lots of area was reserved for a really wide pathway for VIP people. IN the back the view of the stage was blocked on one side by hot dog vendors, in the middle by a big black screen of some kind, so the mob was mostly over near the first national building. The police tried to force people to keep moving along the sidewalk in front of first national, which they really had no hope of accomplishing, so they finally gave up and just watched the performance.

The whole layout was not very well thought out. Yes it is free, but in the free areas, only about 200 - 300 people at the most could actually see the stage at all. Next year maybe we will spring for VIP tickets. I think they are $100 for the entire weekend, but the really close seats (like his teacher had) are more I think. For $100 if you can go to four or five awesome shows, that is a great deal.