September 25, 2005 Jewzapalooza, Riverside Park, New York City

This was the first stop on a week long adventure under the Porcupine Tree for us. Six shows in seven days. A free show with Blackfield headlining was hosted at a Jewish cultural and musical festival called "Jewzapalooza" on a reasonably warm Sunday September. We left home at about 1:30pm and got to New York City at about 5pm. We met up with Moonloop and her husband who we had met on the Blackfield tour last March and Lucsam and Linda who we had met on the PT tour last spring. We also met another Linda who Moonloop had previously met on the PT forum. She was there for her first Blackfield show. We walked around the festival and checked out what was going on. There is a band on stage, but I'm not sure who it was. There was also going to be a special mystery guest who was to play, but I don't know if this is them or not. I got a kosher turkey sandwich and found a place to hang for a while. The band onstage sounded like a cool, middle eastern prog band with a female singer. My Blackfield t-shirt got some attention from a few people who asked if there is a table where they were selling them. I told them no, that I had gotten it at another show in Boston and there were only a few left from the European leg of the tour. I was lucky.

The Eastern prog band finished their set, and that's when I made my move. Even though there was another band coming on before Blackfield called Soul Farm, while the crowd was dispersing from around the stage, we all moved in and up to the fence right in front of the stage. No problem. The crowd was pretty sparse. Soul Farm came on, and they were not as good as the eastern Prog band, but some of the crowd was liking them. Then, after they cleared the stage of the Soul Farm's gear, Blackfield came on. Daniel Salomon started with those first few keyboard notes and we were all going back out into that field, so dark. Sometimes, you can take a small thing like a free show and it just seems so special. This show was like that for me. The whole band was finally together on U.S. soil.


The show was not without it's glitches though. In fact, I asked Steven how he liked it and he thought it was pretty disappointing. So, that can give you an idea of a fan and an artist's different perspectives on the same thing. Steven first started out playing a guitar that I had never seen him play before for the first few songs including "Open Mind" which had not been played on the tour last March. Then, during "Glow", someone brought SW his green PRS and he spent most of the song tuning it while Aviv sung. The guitar had apparently forgotten it had a show to do. It hadn't made it onto the flight to New York, so it arrived late. After the guitar arrived, SW seemed much happier and there were a few moments like in "Epidemic" where the band was really on and Aviv was very energetic jumping off Tomer Z's bass drum in a long winter coat. The crowd seemed to be liking it too and a lot of them sang "Cloudy Now" in Hebrew. They played the other new song "Miss U" as well. It was cool to hear the new songs with real drums behind them. Tomer Z was intense. We stood right between Seffy and Steven. Jason took some pictures. It was a free show after all and open to the public. Why didn't I remember to bring the camcorder? Then, all at once, it was over .


The stage hands were nice enough to give Lucsam and me the set lists. I got the one with the Steven Wilson's shoe mark on it. Yes, he wore shoes for this show. Even though the list has ‘Lullaby" written onit, it wasn't played that night. After the show, Steven came out and chatted with some of us and signed stuff. I told him that he would see a lot of us over the next week, and he seemed pleased. Then, it was time for the long ride home back to Baltimore. I wasn't too worried since I knew that I would be seeing Blackfield again in a few days in Providence.


SET LIST
Blackfield
Open Mind
Hole In Me
Glow
Pain
Epidemic
Miss U
Hello
Cloudy Now