August 2nd:: tel.aviv

Ok, its hot. I’m of course tired as hell::as usual. Its crazy. The airport is incredible. Everything is marble. There is this dope fountain on the goddamn ceiling???? I didn’t expect all this I must admit. I thought this place wouldn’t be so modern. OOOPs. So I drag myself to customs. I thought it was kind of fishy that we didn’t have to fill out any of those embarkment cards or wuteva. Usually when flying to another country you have to fill out these cards explaining wut the hell you are doing in another country blah blah blah. So they can keep track of who is coming in and out of their country. I never have a pen to fill these out and I’m always trying to ask people who don’t speak English to borrow a pen. (I was that kid in school who always borrowed pens and pencils). So no paper to fill out, I drag myself to customs. Its packed as hell of course. I take my place in line. Ronald is in the line next to me. He gets up to the customs window and he passes easily. My turn…….not so fast negro. This lady grills the hell out of me. She asks me anything you could think of:::::

“….so why are you here?”==> I’m on business, a musician…. “where is your instrument” … ==>I’m using one here…… “what do you play?”==> … Tuba …. “where are you staying?” ===>….I don’t know …. “ You come all the way here and you have no place to stay..?” …===>I do, but I don’t know… Look I travel with a band and a tour manager. The tour manager has all that arranged. I have done this for like three years. Don’t you see all the countries in my passport? ……”where is this band u speak of?” … All the black people you just saw in line. That’s the band. …”where are they now?” ….they went through already. …”who is picking you up…” ===> I don’t know somebody form the club we are playing at. “What club”===> I think its called the Goldstar Zappa… “really? What city is this in?” ….wait!!!

So I pull my laptop out with the itinerary on it. I ‘m waiting for it to come on and I glance back behind me at the huge line that I’m..well She is holding up. So tell them. SORRY, I’m BLACK!!! This will only take a minute!!! This guy who I could tell was American smiled and laffed. SO I turn back to her and Im like ok shoot…I mean ask the questions I got the cliff notes. So she asks all the questions, and Im answering them. Half way through I think, does this really matter??? Will this somehow stop a crazy person from getting into this country? So I start makin up answers. And she accepts them all. WUTDAHELL?? So next time I guess I don’t say “I dunno”. I will just make a bunch of shit up and get in. WOW. Ahh, all this security I feel so safe. BULLSHIT!!!

Leave customs and I hear this lady callin my name. Who in the hell in Israel??!?!?! So there is this chick holding a Kenny Garrett sign. Apparently she is the person from the club. So we hop in the van and dip. ITS HOT (did I say that already?)

The first hotel we get to..Whoa, its like 1970 vibe. Like some shit off the Jeffersons. I know we aren’t staying here. This spot aint up to Kenny standards. So 15 minute nap, and the phone rings. We are dipping…………….

We hit the hotel right up the street. The David Intercontinental. This spot was super jiggy. I think there are a bunch of embassy’s here (bad idea). I look at the rate on my door 245 dollars a night before taxes. OUCH. Ah well. Keep it pimpin. Hit the room and unpack. The bed is huge. Call Ronald and we grab some grub , and you guess it… zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.

 

August 3rd

Don’t get up ‘til soundcheck. 4pm. Im hurt (as usual). Ride to the club. Israel reminds me a lot of Brasil. We are staying right on the beach. It just feels exactly like Brasil, except in Hebrew. The driver of the van’s name is Usher. Im not making this shit up. Get to the club for sound check…It’s a nice club. Sound check is long as hell. Kenny couldn’t seem to get his sax sounding the way he wanted. I don’t care what I sound like anymore. Its gonna sound fucked up anyway, so sound check is never a challenge for me,lol. Im tired as hell typing this….lol. I want to go to sleep. Ehem..

Lemme skip to the show. The show was dope. Apparently there is a huge jazz scene in tel aviv. The club was sardine packed. People cheering like crazy. Mostly at Ronald’s antics. Clown. This night there is only one show. The rest of the nites are two shows. I’m beat after the first song. Lol. We get done and the crowd is clapping for an encore. Kennny dips to the hotel.lol. Cold dude. WE kick it at the club all nite. The people are really nice. THeh women that work there must have been hired by a dude. They all look like models. The lady that picked us up from the airport is crazy cool. I kick it with her. Drinking scotch. I couldn’t let her out drink me. She was talking major shit about how she drinks after every show. I beat her 4 to 3. I paid for it tho. Talking to the people who worked there I learned a lot. The Israeli army takes everyone that comes out of high school and puts themin the army for two years…WUT>!?!?! Could you imagine that?? Lol. I ask, who the hell are yall fighting that you need an army that big. To take every kidout of high school, I would think the army would be huge. They say they are in a constant mode of emergency. I’m like wutever. Im like you guys have the dopest army in the middle east. I mean yall have tanks planes, NUCLEAR.! What is the point? And you have the United States in your back pocket. I stop right there, before they start lookin at me like Farrakhan. Soo……Most of the people here aren’t that religious. Jewish people living everywhere but tel aviv are more religious. This one guy said Jews in Brooklyn are more religious than jews in Israel. Lol. WQE asked of places to go see and places to stay away from. Ronald, who claims to be religious, despite the way he lives his life, starts naming places from the bible that he wasn’t to see. Most of the people didn’t know these places, because they aren’t too religious. It was refreshing to see that the majority of the people weren’t caught iup in the whole Israeli Palestinian conflict. I thought that would consume people here, but it seems that thy just see it as extremists form one side fighting extremists from the other side. No one was too passionate about it. That was refreshing. The ease at which they talked about suicide bombings kind of frightened me.

Turns out the club right across from our hotel was bombed a month ago. Somebody went in there strapped with explosives when it was crowded, and blew it up. Its sick to think how much it took to strap on one person because the club is wrecked. There is also a mosque next to our hotel, where it is said that the guy who blew himself up slept there the night before he went in the club. They seem to talk about it with ease. I guess when you think about it, it makes sense. I mean here they probably don’t have things like car jackings, muggings, drive by shootings, shootings, random bullets, car accidents, they have suicide bombings. And they don’t happen that often. Its just part of their way of life I guess. The first ride in the van, my head was on a swivel. Its not like I would see it coming anyway…... ON the way to the gig, the driver started talking about the suicide bombings. He said that its just the muslims. No one in the world is bombing anything but the muslims. It makes no sense. I sit in the back like WHUT!?!?!? Ibrahim is in the front seat next to him. Ibrahim is a muslim. I sense he wants to say something, but I can feel his hesitation. So im like fuck it, I ssy ::: Are you serious??? George Bush has bombed a whole goddamn nation, he ain’t muslim::: The guy laffs, the response I didn’t want. It means that he thinks im joking.lol. Ibrahim then jumps in:: It’s the only weapon they have. When you take people out of their homes and force them into poverty and exploit their land’s natural resources, how else are they supposed to fight?:: DEEP.:: No where in the Kuran does it say anything about suicide bombing. It in fact condemns taking anyone’s life. IThas nothing to do with islam….its survival. Well enuff of the politics …I’m hitting the sack..zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

August 4th

Ok, we stayed up too late. We stayed in the lobby til 7am using the free wireless. Ate breakfast and went to sleep at like 930am. Well I woke up at 730pm. Thirty minutes until the ride picks us up for the gig. I hustle in the shower and dip wit my jheri curl drippin. Ronald wouldn’t wake up. I think he got docked.lol. We get to the club at 8:50. The show starts at 8:45. LOL. The people seem cool tho. The club is packed again. We do the show. Tonite it’s two shows. DAMMIT. I feel like I’m sleep walking through all of this. The second show was cool, and we were trying to hit the club…minus the bombs. The so the guy whose drums Ronald was using offered to take us around. We rolled with like 5 of his homies. They were all drummer…which sucked. ME and Carlos rolled with this chick while Ronald rolled in the car full of drummers. SO many musicians in one car, with so little music ….never mind lol. Anyway the first club…the vox. WACK!!! IT was a really nice club with really nice lookin women, but they were blastin like Electronica. I don’t know what to do with that music. I was amazed at the number of colored people that were walkin around in this area. It was crackin. The chick was talking about how a lot of bombings happed here. WUT>!>!>! but she said they are always in the day time. When there are a lot of people coming from work, never at nite. RIGHT. Ummmm yall trying to dip?? So we leave the club and head to the beach… Banana Beach..PAUSE!!. Now the beach is crackackalackin. Its like 3am. This is nice. Yittta deee. I must admit that Im not a fan of white meat, but these Israeli women are dope!!!! I almost thought about goin O.J. for a minute…SIKE! Anyways we are hungry, and Carlos is tired as hell. WE drop Carlos off and hit the Hummus spot. OOO this shit looked disgusting!!! But I ate it anyway. It was cool. I never saw hummus like this. Shit had eggs in it all kinds of shit. This guy taps me on the back. “are you guys from the states?” Im like yea.==> “Im from Houston.” I can sense this fake as American accent he turns on. LOL. Im like o ok you born here? ==> “yea, but I live in Houston for 15 years.” I ask what he did in Houston and his friends yell “He spent the whole time there eating pussy”. These cats were funny. Kicked it with them for a minute. They told me that Israel is a very beautiful place and you have to go see the dead sea. I don’t think I will make that its supposedly 2 hours away.

Anyway. The convo at the table was mostly about drumming, and drummers I had never heard of, or couldn’t stand. lol. Im form the jazz school..these guys, including Ronald weren’t. That Fusion bullshit. Im not hip. The guy asks me that it must be hard playing with Ronald cuz he is playing all this unpredictable stuff. I agree, but then I say, no this isn’t hard. Its different. HE says no that’s not the right word. I’m like yea it is. I play jazz. He is form a different angle. Its like jazz drumming is more accommodating. More team playing. Takes more intelligence then chops. Fusion is all chops. Anybody can bash on some drums and play fast shit. But who will know WHEN to play it? A jazz drummer. Sah. But anyway, I have lost this battle for the last three years. He tells me I am a brilliant player, and I just say no not really. I just show up work hard get my check and pay my rent. He says don’t be so humble. I just say, look, If im not up there counting, this hsit falls the hell apart. Im not being humble. Im just doing my job. HE laffs and hugs me. I think I love jazz too much. I mean..all this time. Coming home from high school. Shedding in the corner of my mom’s dinig roomon a beat up bass with my cd player. I finally make it. And its this shit.lol. Something totally different, than what I love. I enjoy it yes, but I feel like I wasted my time. Learning everything, when I would just be playing fast songs and pocket tunes with like 4 chord changes. Ahh well. It was crazy. After one show this little kid no older than ten, cameinto the dressing room. He was talking to Kenny about jazz. I sat there laffing. This kid knew his shit. HE was like me back in the day. He played piano and was talking to Kenny about Horace Silver and Art Blakey. THIS KID KNEW MORE ABOUT JAZZ THEN RONALD. LOL.

WE leave the Hummus spot and hit the hotel…..ZZZZZZZZZ!!! WE are supposed to hook up with the same people tomorrow and hit the beach. I don’t think we are gonna get iup in time honestly.

 

August 5th