Of New Releases and their Live Performances in NYC

Friday, 26th August, started off as a regular day with no plans to write home about. I walked past Rockefeller Center on my way to work, hoping to catch someone interesting on the Today Show’s Summer Concert series. Found out it was Mickey Guyton, not an artist I am familiar with, but I am a sucker for live music of any kind so of course I stayed on to watch her sing. Best decision ever as she announced she was going to sing her new single that had dropped just that morning, Something ‘Bout You! This was definitely a first for me, another one of those New York moments that just happen to you as I have never heard a song sung live the day that it dropped. Here it is –

This was the song she sang before –

On the way home from work, I meandered through Times Square – I know, I know, Times Square is a place all New Yorkers steer clear of that I happen to love and catch a lot of live events at – and was suprised to see someone singing live at 7pm as the live acts usually end at 6pm. I looked up the schedule on my phone and it said surprise concert, and sucker for live music that I am, I of course joined the group of people that were listening to this band without knowing who it was. The singer then went on to say that he had dropped a new single that morning, and he was going to sing it in Times Square now. That made it two new singles I heard live on the day that they dropped!!

There was suddenly a lot of excitement with people looking up to a billboard, and it had the name of the artist and his new single, Leave Me by Anees, which is when I figured out who I was listening to. I actually had to cross the street after the concert to get a picture of the billboard, it isn’t the clearest but you can his name is on the left in the picture below –

Here is Anees –

And another one of his songs that a lot of people there knew –

The day wasn’t quite over yet, as my parents are visiting and I am constantly on the lookout for last minute Broadway tickets that you can often get for crazy discounts on Stubhub. So I checked on my phone for the show Funny Girl, which was sold out, and then I headed over to see if there were any tickets for the Michael Jackson show on Broadway. And lo and behold I found 3 tickets that together cost me less than the price of a Thai meal, which I pounced on. Called home with the good news as we had 10 minutes in which I had to get home and leave with my parents, but dad was out for a walk so we had to bide our time till he got home. So we waited and waited, and got to the show about 5 minutes after it began which was not too bad after all. So my musical journey continued with the fabulous ensemble of MJ the Musican that hit it out of the park despite the stand in playing the lead role for the evening, and despite my misgivings about MJ in general as the show was a celebration of his music.

So for a day that started out with no plans at all, it turned out to be just another amazing day in New York.

My musical journey continued into Saturday with a trip to Marcus Garvey Park in Harlem for the Charlie Parker Jazz Festival, which you can read about here.

#gottalovenewyork