Jason's World Class Blues Cruise 2003
This page last modified on September 12, 2003.
I finally made it to a Blues Cruise! I had been going to
Jason's Jazz and Blues Club for nearly six years, but hadn't been to
even one of these events. Mel Hood, the proprietor of Jason's, had
been running these Blues Cruises for years (decades?), and he and Charlie Cox,
a regular at Jason's and a long-standing member of
The Jersey Shore Jazz & Blues Foundation, organized this one.
So on Sunday, September 7, many of the old Jason's regulars and even more of
the previous Blues Cruise alumni boarded the
Seastreak catamaran "New York" for a four hour, catered cruise around Manhattan.
Three of my favorite bands that used to play at Jason's were there:
The Black Widow Band,
The VooDudes, and
The Billy Hector Band. We left at
7 pm, just before sunset. The weather was perfect, and the sun set into a
beautiful blue and pink sky over the New Jersey coast. Surely, it was bound to be a
great night.
Sadly, I broke out my camera just a little too late to capture that sunset,
but I did catch this image of lower Manhattan shortly after we set sail:
And, unfortunately, my older digital camera doesn't do very well with dark images,
so I didn't get a particularly great shot of Miss Liberty:
But I did catch this one of Miss Canada, with Miss Liberty in the background:
And this one of the Empire State Building came out (barely):
I'll have to spend some money before next year's cruise, and get a new digital camera
that can handle low light conditions better than this one can. I tossed out so many
pictures! I'm sure glad digital pictures are virtually free.
But this one's a keeper! (hmmm... dual meaning? me???) ;)
Along side The Intrepid. We had a full moon
that night!
But it wasn't all sight-seeing. There was dancing...
... as inspired by the Black Widow Band.
Here's Mel, along with "The Original Mustang Sally," Mary Ann Roper:
And more dancing, to the music of The VooDudes:
He he... he said "prolific." (Mel always says "prolific.")
How could there be a Blues Cruise without Big Al?
And finally, Billy Hector rocked the night away...
... but not without another round of Mustang Sally!
Billy was scorching -- so what else is new! -- and Winston and Richie
were right there with him. How three guys can pack so much power into a tune
the way they do every single time is just beyond me. Winston was
typically animated, adding to the fun of watching these
guys play, until a few moments when the boat starting rocking, literally. That's
when Winston anchored himself to the floor.
The dancing went on for an extra hour that night, so we docked at midnight. What a great time!
