Feeling The Blues

One of the few things that we have missed since being here is good live music. A lot of our weekends back in the states are filled with live music either in Atlanta, Nashville, New Orleans, etc. One of the first few nights we were here we read about about a place that had good live music, so we went to check it out. The first and only song we heard was Karma Chameleon, which had us pretty disappointed (sorry Mickey - we know you love the 80's). Anyway, we had read about a local jazz club that had blues every Tuesday night and decided to give the live music scene another run. We both love the blues and frequent Blind Willie's back in Atlanta, so why not, right? I was totally not expecting anything like the blues that you might see in Atlanta, Mississippi, Louisiana, or anywhere else in the delta, but man was I surprised. I had no idea what these Italians were going to think the blues were, but to my surprise, the first song that we heard walking through the door was A Change is Gonna Come (one of my favorite songs). Things were starting to look a little better than the Karma Chameleon experience described earlier. The venue was a small, quaint place that wasn't very crowded as we sat down right up front. After watching the first few songs, we noticed that it is sort of an open-mic setting as several different people came on stage to play together that we could tell didn't even know each other. Although, they didn't know each other every song sounded as if these guys have jammed together for years. Directly after Sam Cooke was two songs by Stevie Ray Vaughan (how much better does it get). We were both more and more amazed with every song until finally we were absolutely blown away by a big ole woman who walked on stage, grabbed the mic, and belted out Got My Mojo Working. Needless to say, the Jazz Club was a success and well worth the 5 euro year long membership that we had to purchase. I can't wait to take Big Wyly there since he loves the blues more than anyone I know. I am pretty confident that he will be as impressed as I was.


- WN