Woodstock

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Joni Mitchel wrote the song without even going to the first and only Real Woodstock festival. Most people who were alive then and still above ground now have a memory of the first time they heard Joni’s lilting yet haunting song. I was in Key West playing at “The Great Escape Lounge” a night club in the Key West Airport which closed at sunset everyday then Dieter, a West German National and his Miami Beach JAP wife would open the club while constantly arguing with each other about the decor in their small club that catered to the secretive denizen of the night around the desolate airstrip. The lights were off in the airport terminal, the old African American gentleman swept the terrazzo floor like he had done for eons as the strangest people appeared out of the jungle, and the nighttime air. Our band had a horn section as well as the rhythm section, let by Christian, a jazz genius piano player originally from Jairpur, India by way of Harlem. We had worked up an arrangement of Joni’s song and were giving it a go. My drumset positioned at the rear of the bandstand gave me an unobstructed view of the unlit tarmac landing strip. As we played through the song, I glanced out of the fifties slanted picture windows and watched a piper cub float down out of the night sky. No lights. It landed, and an old Ford station wagon surreptitiously approached out of the dark jungle foliage, stopping next to the piper cub. The doors opened on both vehicles and night business was conducted discretely.
By the end of the song their transactions were done and the plane slipped back up into the night sky and the station wagon went on its way. Such is the business of Key West. Standing in the humid night air during our break a drunk patron sidled up to me complimenting my playing and asked my name which I provided to him. He then mentioned that his boss had the same last name as me and were we related. I told him that we were distantly related. I asked about his vocation and he replied that the he was a pilot, having come to the Caribbean to develop new business partnerships. I surmised he was flying for Air America which surprised him. “That’s not public knowledge he murmured. “It is if you want to know.” I returned inside the Great Escape lounge bandstand for our last set.g Posts

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