DISQUS

Interesting. When I got my copy of Acousticity, I knew I'd be a life-long Grisman fan. As opposed to you, I also really love horn sections though. :-)

Thanks Alan. I am a long-time Grisman fan (we have tickets to see him next month!) and a life-long Garcia/Dead fan, so that one sounds like a must have. I'm intrigued by the other one as well, so I'll check that out too. Thanks again.

Thank you so much! I felt terrible that I didn't remember the names (I'm getting older) and that I couldn't easily find them. As I mentioned in the post, they were all great, and Kentric Morris was simply amazing!

As for the acoustics, they were wonderful! They were wonderful for the Al Jarreau set as well.

I've been to the Beacon now four times in the past 13 months. The Dave Koz show was the only one with bad acoustics, so I'm blaming it entirely on the sound board / sound person.

The Allman Brothers Band was perfect. Alison Krauss and Union Station was excellent, with the sole exception of her microphone, which on occasion made her a little too loud relative to the band, when she powered through some high notes.

Thanks again for taking the time to let me (and everyone else!) know the names of these wonderful and talented musicians!

I just realized that I could relatively easily fix the problem of having lost the past Disqus comments in this thread.

It's a "cheat", in that it won't have them indexed by search engines, but at least anyone who cares to read more comments on this post can easily do so...

Here is a direct link to the comments that are still stored on the Disqus server:

http://opticality.disqus.com/al_jarreau_and_naj...

Mudflap, thanks for the comment. I see that you posted directly to Wordpress, which means that "Disqus" (the system I've been using for commenting) must be down. That's why none of the other comments are currently visible.

I'm considering switching back to native WP, as Disqus isn't progressing as fast as I'd have liked... :-(

OK, that leaves Lois out in the cold. ;-)

I too am a VC based in NY. I only blog about personal stuff though, so nothing in my blog comes even close to being as interesting as the stuff in yours, bravo!

This morning, I was pointed to your blog by the CTO of the first company that I invested in, nearly 10 years ago. I am now subscribed, thanks!

My posts are way too long, as would be my full comment here. I'll spare anyone who isn't interested in hearing my full comment on this post by not putting it here in line. For those who are curious, I just posted my "comment" on my own blog. ;-)

Hint, the title gives it away, so you don't have to click if that doesn't interest you. :-)

http://www.opticality.com/blog/2007/12/18/round...

OK, fair enough. In fact, if pressed, I would have pegged you as "second in line" in terms of liking the movie. Don't know if the rest will weigh in, but if I subtract you from the "cumulative" score of the others, then my original prediction still stands. ;-)

Also, short haired french teenagers shouldn't look like they're 35, IMNSHO. :-)

LOL. For sure, none of them seem to graduate to the "Vienna Mens Choir". ;-)

Jamie, sorry to hear that, but at least you can pin your iPhone up on the seat in front of you, and watch a movie. ;-)

Bob, that's quite a change from the 70's you've been experiencing. Still, cold is better than white out.

Good luck Jamie!

Last comment (for now). I mis-spelled Brian's last name, it's Kiley, not Kylie. So, now I have his website too:

http://www.briankiley.com/

I'll start another tiny post to correct both of these names, since many people don't subscribe to the comments...

Holy Moly, I just realized that you are the Jamie that I couldn't remember the last name of!

Thank you so much for posting, and I'm now checking out your site as well (for those that didn't see it linked in your name, it's http://www.jamielissow.com/).

My wife was nuts about you and your act. Like I said in the post itself, she's a very tough critic, so you really "done good"!

Thanks for letting me know! We live up here, and Brian supposedly lives in Irvington, not far away, so perhaps we'll bump into him one day in a local store. He was extremely funny (as you know). :-)

In addition to Acoustic Sketches (which I posted about), I've now ordered both Freehand - Acoustic Sketches II and Beyond Nature. I'll report back when they arrive...

Eric, thank you very much for the detailed response!

I had no idea about the 4 fingers on the right hand. Amazing!

I definitely like the album, and I think he's amazing, so we're not disagreeing there. I just find some other "compositions" more interesting, at least when considering the entire album.

I am interested in hearing more of him, so I'll check out Acoustic Sketches.

Also, I never heard of Michael Hedges and Kaki King, so I have some more research to do now. :-)

Thanks again!

That makes a lot of sense! Even without NC, some people wildly prefer over-the-ear, others on-the-ear, etc., not always just because of comfort on the ear, sometimes because of pressure, etc.

Basically, I've used the NC in planes (many, many times), and on rare occasions at home, mostly if Lois was watching TV, or on the phone. I never really had any problems with them (including three different pairs of Sony's), so I suspect that you had a bad pair!

That said, I am shocked at how poor the Bose are (not at NC, which they do well!, but at delivering a nice sound), so I would likely go for some of the lower-end models that I've read reviews of (under $100), if I were buying new NC headphones.

This is just a test. I received a complaint that since I added some new plugins, people can't leave comments. I'm trying to simulate that...

OK, here I am again, commenting on my own posts. I may have to find a better way to accomplish this...

First, I meant to say that they didn't play One Voice during the show, and we were surprised and disappointed. But, I said to Lois that there was no way they wouldn't sing it during the encore.

When they came out for the encore, they sang an a cappella song (beautiful), so we got really nervous that this would be the end.

Thankfully, after a few seconds, they said: "Hey, we'll play one more!". Of course, thankfully, that one more was One Voice. What a tasty way to end the evening.

The only other thing I wanted to mention was that we got out at 9:30pm, which made the concert 2:15, but that included a 20-25 intermission. Still, a nice length. We were back in the hotel at 11pm, which was also nice.

OK, that's really it for this post. :-)

Commenting on my own entry...

I added the P.S. above this morning (the post went up last night). So, on the off chance that you read the posting before the postscript was included, you can now read the P.S., which I really meant to include (as the ultimate point) the first time around...

Thank you, thank you. :-)

As for the cash, it will (at least) offset an otherwise unstellar November of online poker playing...

You are indeed correct on all fronts! That first "Nutty Angel" (which is a chocolate martini with frangelico as well) was a slightly terrifying gamble for me, considering how much I like straight up martinis with olives. The rest is now history! :-)

OK, even if I'm wrong, making that bold statement may have moved me further along the path to finding "the guy". I'll definitely have to check out Phil Keaggy. I also need to buy both of Bill Cooley's CDs now, to see what he does when he's not in the shadow of a star like Kathy.

Thanks Eric!

Thanks Cathy! It's hard to know whether our words will ever reach the artists themselves, and hopefully, through you, ours will! :-)

Wow, this is very interesting Kathy. I'm surprised that they used different understudies over such a short span of time. I'm glad to hear that she was so impressive, it gives hope for Wicked continuing its very successful run!