Bo Diddley
In 1993, my father had a job in "Beth Israel Medical Center" for 6 months. I joined him for 3 of those months, which were my summer vacation between 8th and 9th grade. We lived in 17th on 1st, and I was a young drummer at the time. since I did not want to stop my studies I turned to the The Drummer's Collective in 14th on 6th. This is a place where you can rent a room for practicing or buy lessons from teachers, and so I started taking lessons with Sandy Gennaro. He's a very nice guy, who I became friends with not only because of his good nature and his awesome drumming, but also because he played for Craft which were the opening act for Queen on their 1986 "Magic Tour" (People who know me well enough, also know that I was a Huge Queen fan). We had so much fun - he taught me how to play some queen songs, gave me some good pointers, and in the end even after I left NYC we still kept in touch through emails and such.
Now that I came to visit, I gave him a call and he invited me to see him perform.
"Your name will be on the guest list." he said, "if there's any trouble, let them call me, I'll get you in personally." and that's how I got to see a Bo Diddley show at B. B. King's Blues Club & Grill.
The show was so cool. Before I tell you about Bo, let me first tell you about the band (which you can see a picture of, at Bo Diddley's site given above): They were, of course, top notch players. Apart from my biased opinion on Sandy who rocked, I can whole heartedly say that they had a cool bass player, whom I talked to a bit and she seems like a great lady I'd really love to get to know more. They had a rockin'-mama-of-a-keyboard-player, and a kick-ass guitar player who has a lot of guts playing on the same stage with someone as big as Bo, but also has a good reason for doing so - he Bluesed the stage real good.
About Bo. He's almost 80 years old, and he's funny and lovable. He sits in the front of the stage with his custom hand (self?) made guitar - and F$%king OWNs the place!
His guitar playing is minimal and with a lot of effects, but his singing is priceless. A great voice that catches you and lyrics that make you sad on the inside while you laugh on the outside. Plus, it's always good to hear an 80YO black guy singin' about the way his woman's pussy smells.