Day 5

I was a little concerned today because Alana agreed to come out to The Princeton Record Exchange with me. I was concerned because searching through thousands of records is not Alana's idea of a good time but she was doing it because she loves me....isn't that just the sweetest :) We asked Jim Rotondi if there was much to do in NJ and his response was " well I would never recommend anyone to go out there!" Oh well. We headed down to 42nd St. and transferred to the NJ Transit Train. An hour long ride to Princeton Junction and then we hoped on the DINKY to get into downtown Princeton. WOW! What an incredible place. I don't know what Rotondi was talking about. Princeton University is hands down the most beautiful collection of buildings I have ever seen. The campus is breathtakingly beautiful and Alana and I were in awe! We cruised around there for a bit until we finally made our way over to Tulane St. and the Princeton Record Xchange. Luckily for me there were a ton of little quaint shops in the area so Alana let me be and she cruised around the town. I spent a good hour in the store and found some very cool things all for a very very good price. I wont list them here but I will post another blog entry when I have listened to them but a quick synopsis: Sonny Rollins with the MJG, Horace Silver - Finger Poppin, Art Farmer - The Art of Art with Charles McPherson. There are a few more but will tell you about them later. After an hour I was clearly overwhelmed and realized if I spent much longer in there I was going to go broke. We left and took another leisurely walk around the campus before heading back to the DINKY and back to NYC.

We got home around 830 and then it was straight back out the door to Birdland where we had to guest tix waiting for us at the door for Lovano, Harrell, Jimmy Cobb and Cameron Brown. It was a fantastic show with Lovano really tearing it up. Harrell sounded better and better as the night went on but the highlight for me was hearing the powerful Jimmy Cobb. Wow, he was really smoking. I was hoping to meet him after the show but he was eating and I didn't want to bug him. I said hello to Joe Lovano and he was very very nice. The food was great at Birdland. Pricy but great. Alana had the Catfish burger and I had the Crab Cake burger.

After the show we walked around Times Square again! This time however it was cool because it was night time and it is really something to see at night. The amount of people is incredible. Packed with people spending money!