Listen to the Rain

Classic example of Man Suffers Through 30 Minutes of Jazz Before Realizing He Just Likes Cowboy Bebop.

(That's a lie, I like Bohren & der Club of Gore too)

Last night was the Cowboy Bebop Big Band concert at the Athenaeum! I heard about it thanks to the anime club and immediately went out and bought tickets up on the balcony (at sashagee's request) and my parents came and picked up Laila after her gymnastics class so we could go. When I got home she wasn't feeling well and had apparently been napping for four hours until right before I got home, but she had gotten ready in going-out clothes and after I sat down and drank a glass of water, we called a Lyft and went to Farm Bar.


I've never been there but I heard good things. sashagee had also never been there but had heard bad things, because they were located in the former location of Land and Lake which was...mediocre. I had looked it up and it was just a different restaurant in the same location, so I convinced her to go, and it's good that we did.


This was the first thing I mentioned to sashagee when we looked at the menu and so it was the first thing we ordered. It reminded her of a dip she had made herself, though her dip had goat cheese on top and was sweeter. This was savory and came with hard crackers instead of pita--they claim it was lavash up there but it was more like matzah--and some vegetables. It was good, sure, but to be honest...I wouldn't get it again. It was fine, but the other flavors overwhelmed the hummus flavors for me without adding enough to make up the difference. sashagee also said she wouldn't get it again, but because she preferred the sweet version she made. I feel bad, because the waitress said that they had just added it to the menu that day, but on the other hand, we did eat the whole thing.


The thing about keeping mostly kosher is that there isn't actually a lot I can eat in most restaurants. I get vegetarian or pescatarian food and there's more availability than there would have been thirty years ago, but this is America so there's still a lot of secret bacon in things, and the reason I don't get meat dishes is because there's a lot of secret milk in things (can't get a hamburger when most of them come on a brioche bun). A lot of fish in restaurants is...well, if it's not bad, it's just fine. This was crispy which already pushed it above a lot of the competition, and the Brussels sprouts and purée added a delicious flavor to the whole thing. The only miss for me was the salad--it turns out that pea tendrils sound exotic but looks and tastes very similar to watercress salad, a.k.a. nothing much.


Not a good picture but blame the mood lighting. This was cheesecake and it was delicious. I was joking with sashagee that every single restaurant in Chicago has cheesecake/tiramisu, crème brûlèe, and chocolate cake, and I always get the cheesecake/tiramisu and sashagee always gets the crème brûlèe and everything is right with the world.


We finished with twenty minutes left and a five-minute walk before our show, thanks to Farm Bar actually implementing interesting functionality into their QR code menu instead of just uploading an annoying-to-navigate PDF of the menu and calling it a day. The menu lets you thumbs-up, thumbs-down, or heart items and you can even leave reviews on them. Relevant to the topic, you can always pay through the website, and that's what we did so we weren't stuck there like when I've been to the Gage in the past before going to the symphony and had to wait half an hour or longer for the check.

We walked over the Athenaeum, took our seats, and then waited twenty minutes for the show to start, around fifteen minutes past the start time. That's jazz, I guess. But it was worth the wait:

I was initially worried when they started with actual audio from the screen, since I was used to Distant Worlds where they just played silent video to accompany the music, but they did it for a reason--they had a progression to the video through the main story of Cowboy Bebop and played the songs to accompany them. They started with "Tank!" of course, did character introductions for each member of the Bebop's crew, like "Bad Dog No Biscuits" for Ein and "Too Good Too Bad" for Jet Black, and then songs for some of the crew's escapades. Through it, some people came out and did some of the songs--the host sang "Call Me Call Me", Wendee Lee (original voice actress for Faye Valentine) came out on stage to sing "Don't Bother None", and one of the saxophone players sang "The Real Folk Blues", though sadly they did not have a full chorus to sing "Green Bird" so they just played it on the screen. They ended with "What Planet is This?" as the encore and then we left. It had much more flow to it than Distant Worlds or Symphony of the Goddesses, where they just kind of play some of the greatest his songs in whatever order the program designer thinks they need to be played.

Shout out to the lead saxophonist for doing most of "Space Lion" as a solo with computer-added reverb.

At intermission I was actually sad that we were up on the balcony, because while we had a great view of everyone, there were some interactions between the host and members of the band (particularly the drummer on the left) that we couldn't see. We had a good view of the screen, but if I wanted to watch Cowboy Bebop I could just watch it--I can't get the interaction at home. What we did see was fun, though, and I'd recommend the show if they come to your city. I'm not sure how long they've been around, though they said this was the first time they'd ever been in Chicago. Hopefully we can see them again, maybe with a better location.