On Friday night, Jason and I went to the Majestic Jazz Club with Jami, Mike and Sarah for some good music...underground! Apparently, some of the best things in Kansas City are things that are "hidden" underground, like how the jazz club at the Majestic is under the restaurant. And one of our favorite art galleries to visit on First Fridays is below street level. And a bakery that we've been wanting to visit (the Upper Crust) is underneath a kitchen gadget emporium.
In the underground of The Majestic, we enjoyed a few hours of jazz music and a few drinks. During the first set, we were seated at tables directly in front of the band due to the size of our group and limited seating (the chairs in the picture below were our front-and-center seats). That wasn't awkward at all: Mike had the trumpet being played directly into his face, the back of my head kept getting bumped by patrons' armpits as they tried to reach over me to leave a tip for the band, and Sarah got a dirty look from the trumpet player for talking too loudly right under his nose. Ha!
We were able to move to a couple of tables farther back during the second set, which helped us feel less awkward and take in the music. We were also able to take in some of the band members' interesting indiosyncrasies: The drummer was an adorable, older grandpa-type man who played very well, but looked like he was dozing through the entire set. The bass player moved his mouth ("be doo boom boom doo be doom") along with the notes he played. The pianist looked calm and slightly aloof until his solos, where he had this talking-out-of-one-side-of-his-open-mouthed-half-smirk look on his face. And the trumpet player continued to give people who talked dirty looks, but then had a friend join him on stage and talked about his trumpet's mouthpiece while the rest of the band was playing a song. Silly stuff, but good music.
Overall it was a pretty good evening. We had been wanting to visit The Majestic for a long time, and it was good to cross it off our to do list. Now we're excited to move on to underground pie at the Upper Crust!
 |
| The jazz band...and our awkward seats |
By the way, here is a link to an article about the underground entertainment in KC: http://www.kansascity.com/2012/02/10/3419605/underworlds-of-fun.html
wow, you weren't kidding about your seats being close to the band!
ReplyDeleteThe drummer looks kind of asleep in the picture, haha! Great post, sounds like fun. When I want to get my jazz on I have to turn on pandora... we don't have a cool underground scene in Kirksville.
ReplyDelete