The Rock-N-Roll Show Podcast - Episode 014 - Jeff Greenblatt

Join us on this week's episode  as we sit down with Jeff Greenblatt, who takes us through his early musical experiences shaped by his parents' love for oldies, doo-wop, and Broadway show tunes. Jeff also shares how his initial interests in video games and sports eventually gave way to a burgeoning passion for music, thanks to his older brother and the iconic New York rock stations. From Billy Joel's quintessential New York soundtracks to the irresistible pull of the Grateful Dead and the rising jam band scene, Jeff's evolution in musical taste is both fascinating and relatable.

We will venture into Jeff’s remarkable concert experiences and the festivals that have profoundly shaped his life. From Phish and the Dead to Wilco, Deer Tick, and the Avett Brothers, we cover a lot of ground, and  we focus on the special allure of the Newport Folk Festival, its commitment to balancing legendary acts with fresh talent, and the charm of discovering new artists in unexpected places. Tune in for a heartfelt celebration of live music and the bands that keep us coming back for more.

Transcript

Alex Gadd: 0:20

Welcome to the Rock-N-Roll Show podcast. We're here to share the thrill of experiencing live music together with strangers and with friends, and to get to know our guests a little bit better through their concert experience. I'm your host. Alex Gadd, and I have had conversations like the ones we have here on the podcast countless times, when meeting people both personally and professionally, finding out what bands someone likes, what shows they've been to, allows us to get to know and understand one another a little bit better. And, hey, just fun to swap stories about shows we've seen over the years.

Alex Gadd: 0:51

Today's conversation is a long time coming. It should be a really good one. Our guest is Jeff Greenblatt, a longtime friend of mine, former member of my rotisserie baseball league. Most importantly, though, he's a prodigious concert goer. We've got a lot of ground to cover, so let's get started. Jeff, thank you for joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me. So I mentioned that you're a prodigious concert goer. How did you get into music at the beginning? Was music something that was in your house? Were your parents way into music? How did you first find music on your own?

Jeff Greenblatt: 1:21

I think music was just sort of a constant in car trips, right, just growing up traveling from place to place. My parents, I wouldn't say, had the coolest taste in music. There's a lot of oldies radio station and I think early on the stuff that I remember really gravitating to was doo-wop music and you know, early rock and roll, that kind of stuff, cbs FM, that was what we listened to in the car. My parents, they got married in 1966. So you know they were about 20 and 22 years old, like in that area, so they sort of missed out. They're not quite like the Woodstock generation, they're sort of that like Elvis generation, right. So that's the stuff that we would listen to in the car and those were sort of my early music memories. And my mom was a big Neil Diamond fan and there was a lot of that in the car and Broadway show tunes and stuff like that.

Jeff Greenblatt: 2:17

I think it sort of took me a really a while to find my own taste and things that I sort of wasn't really that interested in music In my early teen years. I was more into like video games and sports and comic books and stuff like that and music was sort of like an afterthought and I think, like Billy Joel, is probably the thing I gravitated towards early on. I have an older brother and I think some of his tastes were inherited a little bit but from like being in the car with him and listening to 1027, wnew, a famous New York rock station, but they also were exposing people to classic rock and new music, and so I think a lot of my tastes sort of developed out of that. I think I'm sort of of that generation of classic rock was still so very influential. But then you had a lot of other things sort of creeping in around that time of my senior high school.

Jeff Greenblatt: 3:07

I graduated high school in 1994. So things that are starting to creep in around that time you have the early jam band scene and you have some of that stuff. Some of those bands start to creep in a little bit, until I sort of fell in love with some other bands. But you still had Grateful Dead were still omnipresent, huge draw. But also like there were so many classic rock bands that were still touring at that time too.

Alex Gadd: 3:27

You know it's funny, I was a DJ at a rock and roll station in Vermont in 90, 91, 92 into 93. And we were just starting to use the term classic rock in 1990. Before then it was just rock, and rock was heavy metal and punk and heartland rock and it was just rock and it was everywhere. And I remember new had been around from the very beginning. They were a freeform fm station in new york early on and plj was the big rock station when it was just rock and then when it faded over to classic rock when I was in high school in the mid 80s, plj got switched to a different format and NEW arose at the preeminent rock station. So I had the same basic experience as you Did. You have a first favorite band. Do you remember the first band you really fell in love with?

Jeff Greenblatt: 4:22

You know I want to say Billy Joel. That was the one that I listened to a lot when I was in high school. My parents liked him and they had gone to see him in concert. You know, you grew up in the in the New York tri-state area as a Jewish kid. Billy Joel is just like that, that is sort of like spoon fed it.

Alex Gadd: 4:37

Right, they're the guys.

Jeff Greenblatt: 4:39

Yeah, and Neil Diamond for me too Well, yeah, and Neil Diamond for me too Well, of course, yeah, uh, but yeah, so I moved to California by then. So he wasn't a New Yorker anymore. It was very surface levels, like Billy Joel's greatest hits, and maybe a storm front had come out around that time it came out while I was in college and like river dreams came out around that time I probably listened to those a lot.

Jeff Greenblatt: 5:00

But even then I don't know if I was that super passionate about music. I really wasn't watching MTV Really interesting and I also like I really didn't really gravitate towards any of those grunge bands like Pearl Jam, nirvana, like Soundgourd, all that stuff. My friends talk about that stuff now and they hold it inside so high reverence and you know, sure I'm familiar with the hits but for the most part I just really didn't, wasn't into it, I just wasn't paying attention to it at all. But I think the band that that I would say two things was deciding. I wanted to like the Grateful Dead just out of the fact that like it was cool at the time when I was in high school, like that just seemed like the kid that I went to high school with everybody was like wearing a Grateful Dead tie, dye or whatever it was and I was like I don't really know what this is, but it seemed like all the cooler kids were sort of into it. So that was like just dipping my toe into the water of that.

Jeff Greenblatt: 5:56

And then Fish was probably the other one that was really like a formative band in my falling in love with music and all kinds of music and really digging in on stuff. That one I discovered from WNEW, like they played Down With Disease on the radio and I just heard that song and I was in high school and you have some disposable cash and you go over to Tower Records and you just buy the CD because you heard it on the radio. So those were probably the two bands that sort of shifted me into really become like a live music fan. But I still really didn't know too much about either one of them. To be perfectly honest, like the grateful dead, obviously big cultural band, even if you didn't know anything about them, I probably had heard the name for a bunch of years just because it was just in the ether and you probably heard some of their songs on even easy listening radio stations, because casey jones got played on all kinds of stations and yeah although they mentioned the word cocaine, so maybe the oldie station wouldn't play them.

Alex Gadd: 6:55

But a lot of stations played some older yeah, like trucking friend of the devil.

Alex Gadd: 7:01

Touch of gray, obviously yeah so the other interesting thing about those two bands is they both covered songs from so many different musical backgrounds that they are actually great gateway bands. If you're not a big music fan but you get into them. You end up invariably getting into funk music If you're a fish fan, bluegrass music if you're a Dead fan, folk music from both those bands and country music from both those bands and all kinds of things. Heavy rock Phish loves heavy rock and roll and we'll do some really great covers there. What was the first show you ever went to?

Jeff Greenblatt: 7:38

I think the first concert I remember going to was Neil Diamond at Bassett Square Garden. When I was I must've been somewhere between seven and nine my parents took us off to go see him at Madison Square Garden. The one that I bought a ticket for on my own was ZZ Top at Madison Square Garden in 1994 with George Surgut and the Destroyers opening up, and I think it was just one of those things like we heard about on the radio and I just thought, as I said before, I didn't really watch a lot of MTV, but you know, zz Top had so many MTV videos they were hard to avoid in that period of the 80s 90s. They just had so many sort of iconic music videos at the time and then they were still getting played on the radio. And again, it's like a thing when you're in high school and you have the ability to then go to a concert without your parents. It landed on that for some. That's cool.

Alex Gadd: 8:30

I love, zz Top, love, and it was a great show. It was a great show.

Jeff Greenblatt: 8:35

Yeah, great show. It was a fantastic show. And then that summer then I saw Billy Joel and Elton John at Giant Stadium. I saw the Grateful Dead at Giant Stadium. With Traffic opening, that sort of like started me going to concert.

Alex Gadd: 8:51

Yeah, that's great. Can we just go back to the Neil Diamond concert for a minute? What do you remember about that show? Are there any memories that stand out?

Jeff Greenblatt: 8:59

Not a heck of a lot, to be honest. The one thing that I still remember is he had an album that was tied into Jonathan Livingston Siegel I don't know, it's like a storybook or poem.

Alex Gadd: 9:12

I remember that and I remember like coming to America right, I imagine that was his big song at the time. Yeah, definitely that was his big single.

Jeff Greenblatt: 9:20

I would say it must've been like 84, 85, like some, somewhere in that range. Those are the two things that probably stand out the most. We were like up in the nosebleed somewhere.

Alex Gadd: 9:31

Had you gone to the garden before for a sporting event?

Jeff Greenblatt: 9:35

No.

Alex Gadd: 9:36

So that was your first time in the garden.

Jeff Greenblatt: 9:38

Yeah.

Alex Gadd: 9:39

Did it seem big and weird. You're a little kid, it's a big arena.

Jeff Greenblatt: 9:45

I honestly don't remember Cool, I was pretty young. Those things don't don't stand out to me as much. I'm trying to remember the first time I was in Madison Square Garden. After that it must have been for a Knicks game, nice.

Alex Gadd: 9:57

So you go off to college in 94. Is that correct?

Jeff Greenblatt: 10:01

Yeah, I was a freshman, and so you go to GW, you go down to Washington DC.

Alex Gadd: 10:02

Yeah, I was a freshman and so you go to GW, you go down to Washington DC. Did you see shows down there while you were in college? Cause the club scene in DC is very easy to get around to? Yeah, I found, and I love the clubs. The nine 30 club and the other clubs down there were fantastic.

Jeff Greenblatt: 10:18

Yeah, I wish I had gone to see more. I just think, just out of being in college and being an attorney and all that stuff right, you're being in the city too. It just you know these things are going on but you don't really take advantage of them. Um, I did see my first fish show my first semester in there. I, uh it was at, uh, george Mason university up there small arena, and then I went to go see the dead the next night at the cap center, uh, and then I went to go see the dead the next night at the CAP center, uh, and then we saw there was a local band that we saw, uh, uh, probably you know a good amount of times.

Jeff Greenblatt: 10:48

This band called the empties. Um, and they were sort of a, a Dave Matthews band and the lead singer was in our fraternity and graduated, you know a bunch of years. So we were tied into that band because we had that connection. But so saw them a good handful of times and I think I saw Blues Traveler at the Sun Pavilion and saw a handful of shows at the Bayou, which was a very cool venue. Looking back on it, like I wish I had gone to more and been a little bit more independent. And but you know it's twofold, right, you're a college student, you don't have a lot of disposable income, and the other thing is convincing people to go with you to a concert. And when it's not the big name, right, and it's hey, come see. You know, this random jam band with me, sure, didn't really happen that often.

Alex Gadd: 11:33

All I'm really interested in is when did it click into you that, hey, going to concerts is something that I love to do?

Jeff Greenblatt: 11:41

Yeah, that first fish show. That that was the moment I had hoist and I knew those songs and a bunch of people were going to that show. I didn't even have a ticket. It was just like word of mouth hey, we're all going to go to how? Many weeks beforehand? Like we're all going to go, I just want one people. I didn't have a ticket. We took the Metro out there. I got off the train, I bought a ticket from somebody at the Metro stop. I think the face value was $18. I think I gave the guy 20 bucks and we called it a day and went to the show and I pulled the story to my friends a bunch.

Jeff Greenblatt: 12:13

I just thought they were a rock band, right. I had no idea that it was this sort of hippie jam band thing. I just didn't know. I knew there were people that were into them. But you sort of get into the world of doing your own thing and you really don't interact with the upper class fan that much or you try to avoid them a little bit. I went to that show and it just hit all the notes. It was like sort of the right time to find that band and it was just a show that was hit on all of their greatest tips kind of things at the time. Right, they had brought out the trampoline. They did an acoustic like blue grassy foreplay long time and not in the encore.

Alex Gadd: 12:51

Did they do an acapella thing up at the front of the stage?

Jeff Greenblatt: 12:54

Yeah, they did.

Alex Gadd: 12:56

Harmonies for sweet Adeline, or whatever.

Jeff Greenblatt: 13:00

So they did foreplay a long time the Boston cover and then they did Rocky top. But they didn foreplay a long time the Boston cover and then they did Rocky Top, but they didn't do a complete acapella thing. They did Purple Rain, fish and Tame Out, like these things. It was so not like you just think of the band gets up on the stage and play their instruments and that's it. That's not what Fish is, right. I mean, yes, there's a lot of that, but there's a lot of goofiness and there's a lot of inside jokes that you would come to learn and there's a lot of mythology and a lot of they did purple rain, but they don't do it like Prince does it. They do it. They do a ridiculous version of it.

Alex Gadd: 13:32

I found that to be a really good time for them too, because they had enough original material that they could do the long shows that they were doing without doing a ton of covers, and so they got more selective about the covers they did, but they still did covers and they got to mix them up. So maybe you get a loving cup from the stones or maybe you get. Rocky top was a good one, cause that was really fun and not standard rock and roll, but they made it cool. I really liked that period for fish. That was a really good period to get into fish. So fish gets you off and running. Which band have you seen the most in your life, do you think? Yeah, it's definitely. That was a really good period to get into fish. So fish gets you off and running. Which band have you seen the most in your life, do you think?

Jeff Greenblatt: 14:08

Yeah, it's definitely fish, but other bands are sort of creeping up the list. But I mean, I've seen them 75 times. That's a decent amount for one band, but there's other bands that I've seen 20, 30, 40 times. It was a combination of you fall in love with that band and you want to keep seeing them and then, being in the Northeast, like the ability to see them pretty frequently, even if you don't even have to travel that far or you know they played MSG so much. It all adds up.

Alex Gadd: 14:36

Sure, I mean I've seen them 30 something times, 31 or 32 times and I've never seen them outside of Burlington, vermont, to Philadelphia that's as far a range as I've ever seen them. So I've never gone on tour, I've never gone overseas to see them and I've still seen them a decent amount of not a hundred or 50 or 75 times. So you've seen them a lot. You've never gone on tour.

Jeff Greenblatt: 15:02

No, I mean I did maybe four shows in five nights or something like that. But yeah, I mean that's probably the most I've done with them. Sure.

Alex Gadd: 15:12

What band today is the band that you seek out? Anytime you hear that they're going to play, you're there.

Jeff Greenblatt: 15:22

There's a bunch, to be honest. I'll always go see Wilco.

Alex Gadd: 15:25

Yeah, we've gone to a Wilco show not together, but the same show and met up beforehand. So I know you really are into Wilco. That was good.

Jeff Greenblatt: 15:32

That was at.

Alex Gadd: 15:32

Beacon good, that was a beacon theater. That was a great show.

Jeff Greenblatt: 15:34

Yeah, yeah, I'm going to go see them again in a few weeks there. Yeah, wilco is definitely up there and I have gotten on a plane to go see. But that was like one of those. Hey, you gotta go see Wilco in Chicago.

Alex Gadd: 15:45

So I did do that. If you're going to go somewhere, go there.

Jeff Greenblatt: 15:49

Yeah, uh. So Volko Dyrtik, who is a band that I really love, and, um, the Felice Brothers is another band. There's like a good like these handful of bands that like sort of popped up in the late, early 2010s era that, as my tastes were sort of gravitating more towards Americana kind of stuff, that became very, um, important to me those were yeah, d Deer, tick, police Brothers, dr Dog, but they've sort of taken a hiatus from playing shows.

Alex Gadd: 16:20

I know you were really into Miss Margot Price.

Jeff Greenblatt: 16:23

Yeah, she's great too. I really like her. Yeah, I mean Ava Brothers, who I just saw a couple weeks ago. So, yeah, bands that I like I tend to, you know, keep going to see them Right on.

Alex Gadd: 16:34

Now we covered your first concert it was the Avid brothers and your most recent concert.

Jeff Greenblatt: 16:38

That was my most recent yeah, so that that week I saw Yo Young and Crazy Horse and then I saw the Avid brothers within, like you know, three nights of each other. But yeah.

Alex Gadd: 16:47

Where was the Avid brothers show?

Jeff Greenblatt: 16:50

Uh, Forest Hills, Tennessee yeah.

Alex Gadd: 16:52

I saw a yes there in 1983. Oh, wow, on the 9 0, 1, 2, 5 tour. Yeah, that was good. I like that place. They do good concerts there. It's just hard to get to. Yeah, so how many concerts overall do you think you've seen?

Jeff Greenblatt: 17:08

So I keep a spreadsheet and I have them all. In the last I looked it was $1,260. That's awesome, awesome.

Alex Gadd: 17:17

Yeah, Some people may ask how do you come up with the funds for that? But I don't really care, as long as you keep pulling it off. Good for you.

Jeff Greenblatt: 17:26

It's like a mix of things, right? I mean, the majority of those shows are smaller club shows, right, I do go to the arena shows and those obviously cost more money. But to go see a band at Bowery Ballroom or Mercury Lounge or any of those places, generally you're spending $30 or less, or you were up until maybe a little bit more recently because of the pandemic. I think the market is still readjusting and it seems like ticket prices are kind of completely out of whack. But there was a lot of probably you know shows that cost $15, right.

Alex Gadd: 18:01

Oh yeah, Like I said, I don't care how you do it, the fact that you've done it is so impressive. Do you have and I don't know if this is even reasonable with that number of concerts do you have a most memorable concert?

Jeff Greenblatt: 18:13

I mean, I think it's a fish one at George Mason. That's the one that it made me fall in love with live music. That's the one that, like you keep chasing it right. You're like this was. It was this experience that I didn't really know anything about going into and it was so impactful just in terms of like that show, that time just being in college and new experiences. But also it was just, it was fun. They were just doing fun, silly things. You know, it was just a good experience and they were they've always been consistently good. Like I don't really. You know, maybe there's a couple shows that I'm like this one was, but like for the most part, they're not a band that like disappoints, you know, but that first one was just I was like, okay, I want to dig in deeper and I want to not only see this band but I want to see other bands too.

Alex Gadd: 19:00

And it's very different from Neil Diamond.

Jeff Greenblatt: 19:01

So if that's what you're going in, with that as your background, and it was very different from going to see the Grateful Dead at Giant Stadium, right, I mean, it's a totally different experience.

Alex Gadd: 19:11

I agree. Have you ever had the experience of having an unannounced guest come out and play with the band you're singing?

Jeff Greenblatt: 19:17

Yeah, definitely. Like a good amount of times Two sort of pop up, but like the first one I don't think I got it as much then. So when I went to see the Dead for the first time and I mentioned like Traffic was opening, terry Garcia came out and played dear mr fantasy with traffic and I guess he only did that like twice on that tour. Um, I really didn't know traffic but you kind of knew something special was happening because he had come out to play with them. I think I think back on it now. I'm like, oh, that was a very cool moment and I've seen trace it and with a bunch of different bands and Warren Haynes, a lot right, the one that is probably the the weirdest and biggest surprise was Bob Weir was playing. It was like the I think it was the 10th anniversary of the wetlands, um, and he had done a string of shows there and he was doing like a trio was him and rob wasserman and I think jaylene was drumming with him and there was rumors that there was gonna be the special sin in at the end of the show and there was like equipment on the stage but it was all covered up and like the whole night people were trying to guess who was gonna be and let people, like it's gonna be the beastie boys, I don't know like where, like anybody came up with that from, and you finally get to the end of the show where the guest comes out and it's Hanson.

Jeff Greenblatt: 20:32

One more Saturday. One more Saturday night and this is 1998. So, yeah, this is sort of still like peak Hanson. There was camera crews there from MTV. There was already like doled up to the show beforehand. There was going to be this once in a lifetime weird pairing. Nobody knew what it was and it ended up being Hanson and they weren't bad. They did some blues songs. I think they did like going down the road, going bad. But the other distinct memory of that is this thing that was supposed to be a super tight guarded secret. I remember walking out of that show and there was a younger girl wearing a Hanson t-shirt and I'm just like how did you get in, how'd you get in here and how'd you know about that? Who tipped somebody's parents off that this was happening?

Alex Gadd: 21:33

One of the things I'm really interested in is again you've seen a lot of shows. Have you ever discovered a band only by going to see them, not knowing anything about them? And for me that's always been exclusively been opening acts. Where I go to see them, the headliner and I happen to pick up the opening act and get blown away by it. So that's happened to me a couple of times. I was curious if it's ever happened to you.

Jeff Greenblatt: 21:58

I think the, the, the, the discoveries for me have more been at music festival than they've been, just like going to see the band and not knowing who's opening Cause. At a certain point you know who it is, you could listen on Spotify or whatever it was. You were able to do some digging.

Alex Gadd: 22:14

Well, that leads into my next question. I know that you go to a number of festivals, including Newport Folk, and you go down to Austin City Limits. I believe you've been down to or South by. You go to South by.

Jeff Greenblatt: 22:26

Yeah, I've been there. I've gone to South by a couple times, yeah, so that's another great place to discover bands.

Alex Gadd: 22:31

What's the band that you discovered there that you weren't aware of before?

Jeff Greenblatt: 22:35

I think there's a couple from just going to Newport. This is going to be my 12th or 13th time this summer. You try to do your research and you see the schedule and you plan it out, but there's just sometimes you just kind of like stumble into it or you've listened to it and you listen to a song and it may not grab you. But two really stick out to me. One was rain wolf. When he was booked, like had zero internet presence, I think maybe have like a song on spotify or maybe a song on youtube that you can listen to. So I had no idea what that was going to be, uh, and he played. I think it was like the first thing I saw that year and it was just wild right, and I know you've you've seen him or you've seen him I've seen him.

Alex Gadd: 23:18

He was featured on the cameron crowe written tv series roadies where every week they had a different opening act for this fictitious headlining band that the roadies worked for, and he was one of the opening acts and I was lured by his playing and his presence was just amazing let's not get lost in the deep end that's one of those ones where you're just kind of wowed.

Jeff Greenblatt: 24:06

Right, it's a two-piece thing and he's standing on his speaker, he's getting in the crowd. He's standing on his speaker, he's getting in the crowd, he's standing on chairs, he's playing back at the stage and it's just this guzzy, real sort of blues rock and it's heavy and it's weird and you have no idea. He's singing through a fuzz box and you don't know what he's singing about.

Alex Gadd: 24:24

But so that one definitely the energy is off the charts with him.

Jeff Greenblatt: 24:34

And so that one I was with David Schultz, who you interviewed for the show, and immediately after that set was done we saw he was playing at Bowery Ballroom, I think, and bought tickets to go see him, what he was playing.

Jeff Greenblatt: 24:41

And the other one for me that sticks out as sort of a discovery was seeing the Milk Carton kids, who are a folk duo, and that's another one. We walked into Newport Maybe I'd listened to a song but we went to go see them like first thing, and these two guys are just like the Smothers Brothers meets going well with Stephen Rawlings and Simon and Garfunkel, Real great folk songs but just this great stage patter, great banter, funny guys and they're dressed in suits and real traditional like yeah, this is sort of what plays here, but also very modern take on it. But they were just so endearing and funny that you just you just fall in love with it. It's like it's hard not to and the songs are amazing. But you know, those are two that sort of stand out as a few things that definitely wasn't anything that I had listened to, or wasn't anybody that was that into beforehand before going, and I'm sure there have been others there too, but those two sort of are top of mind.

Alex Gadd: 25:45

Are you still covering Newport as a journalist?

Jeff Greenblatt: 25:50

No, I gave it up, I retired as a journalist. No, I gave it up, I've retired. It started to be. I've run out of words to say how great this experience is. It's like, at this point, either you know or you don't know. And now it's like everybody sort of knows.

Jeff Greenblatt: 26:04

And you know, the first year that I went it wasn't sold out and it was a super mellow vibe and you know, it started to sort of gain a reputation for being this place for this certain type of music, but also a place that was different from all these other music festivals because it wasn't corporate, it didn't have a ferris wheel people were there to to watch music and and not there for Instagram nonsense or it's an independent, nonprofit music festival. The nice thing is, because it's at a old civil war fort, it's at it's a state park, so the drinking it's separate from the stages, so it's sort of it's a really nice balance. I, I just yeah, I couldn't, I couldn't find any, couldn't find anything else to write about it. You've run out of words even talking about it.

Jeff Greenblatt: 26:54

It's a special place, you know, to see music and it's a special festival where special things happen. You've seen it, the coverage the last few years between, like Joni Mitchell and Paul Simon, the expectation and Dolly Parton, like the expectations have been through the roof and last year was a little bit of a reset, just in terms of like, yeah, we're still going to have these things, but it's not going to be every year. Now, like we're going to try to like bring some new bands you may not know in. I wouldn't call it a reboot, but it's sort of a, you know, a reset.

Alex Gadd: 27:24

Yeah, I've still never been, but I figure one day I'll get there. I've heard from you and others it's nothing but great things. My sister goes every year too, thinking about venues where you've seen shows. What venue have you seen the most shows in?

Jeff Greenblatt: 27:40

Fairly confident. It's Barley Bar. That's probably the place that I was, you know, going to a lot. I still go on all the shows but like when I was doing you know, 50, 60 shows a year, I was probably there once a month or more. You know, probably more than once a month. But yeah, that, that that's probably up there. Um, brooklyn bowl probably seen a lot of shows there too.

Alex Gadd: 28:01

I mean it's great. You can see a ton of on the way up and on the way down artists, so you get both sides or you get the secret, sort of like hey, we're going to play the warmup show at the mall.

Jeff Greenblatt: 28:15

I mean, bowery Ballroom is a great place to see a concert. Does it get a little too crowded sometimes? Sure, you know, it's sort of the right size, the right energy. You know, I think yes, you could see great stuff at like a Mercury Lounge, but like half the people there are people that are really into the band, half of it are some people that like friends brought along, but once you hit, like Bowery Ballroom, this is sort of the audience that's going to grow with the band.

Alex Gadd: 28:37

So enough for the ticket that you're not just showing up casually. You have to at least know the art or be a huge music fan and be brought along by a friend. Yeah, conversely, a least favorite concert venue hands down at terminal five.

Jeff Greenblatt: 28:52

It is poor term, miserable to do a concert, terrible. It was never fun. I'm glad I'd probably will never have to go back there, but you know, not built for concerts. I saw some good shows there but I was never excited to go. Oh great, this is rhythm.

Alex Gadd: 29:07

No, when I see the bands that I like are playing there and they have to be on the way up bands for the most part I uh pass, Won't go.

Jeff Greenblatt: 29:15

Yeah, and it's a pain to get to, even for me, right, it's like you know. Hey, let's go all the way to the West side highway and the 50 is in no man's land.

Alex Gadd: 29:23

Thinking about live music media, do you have live record that you gravitate to more than others? I ask this cautiously because at a certain age, live album means nothing right For people who grew up with the internet. They had access to music in all kinds of ways and once YouTube came around but even before that with LimeWire and Napster people were trading live stuff on the internet for free and you didn't need a live record to hear a band. But for me, growing up before MTV, a live record served two incredibly valuable purposes. One was it was a greatest hits record, so I didn't have to buy the greatest hits record and a live record to hear how my favorite bands sounded. But then you also got to hear how your favorite band sounded, because until you went to see them play live, you had no idea. So did. Was that still a thing for you eight years later, nine years later?

Jeff Greenblatt: 30:27

It's a tricky question to answer because it's like sort of two things Like, hey, I was a really big tape collector, a bootleg collector, so you know, once you got into fish then the floodgates open, right, right. So you know, I was really into tape trading and I definitely had two, three hundred, four hundred tapes at the peak of it. But there were still a lot of albums. There's two that come to mind. One is Jerry Garcia Mende, almost Acoustic, almost acoustic, which the more I think about that record is probably the album that really made me sort of fall in love with traditional folk music and country and old blues.

Jeff Greenblatt: 31:09

It's like you look at the track listing, it's Lead Belly and Elizabeth Cotton and these traditional songs and old country songs. And that one, I think Mississippi John Ker John, they'd cover one of his songs. That album when I first heard it when I was in college, like that, that one has always been a constant for me, um, and the other one is the old and in the way album. So sort of two grateful dead related ones and that is a live album as well and I would credit that one. I'd like probably every other person that had listened to that album made you fall in love with bluegrass music. It's the number one selling bluegrass album of all time.

Alex Gadd: 31:43

So those two great live albums, but also great sort of musicology records too right, look, one of the things I'm enjoying most about doing this podcast is learning about things that I missed on picking up on things that other people know, that I didn't know, so that's great, thank you. Yeah, have you ever been backstage at a concert and, if so, have you ever hung out with any musicians?

Jeff Greenblatt: 32:03

I'm trying to think of, like what I was backstage for. One was like like I got oh you know what, that was a post-show thing. That was when I met Willie Nelson, which was yeah, tell me about that.

Jeff Greenblatt: 32:15

A friend of mine at the time was a writer. I think it was at Maxim at the time and we had gotten tickets to go see Willie Nelson at PNC Bank Art Center. And we had these passes and I don't even know what the designation I had, like a bunch of things. Most of them were crossed off. We wait until the end of the show and we go down and create All right, you know, follow us through.

Jeff Greenblatt: 32:40

So we're going back through, you know, the backstage of PNC. We're standing sort of like in the, I guess, dressing room, like cafeteria area there. They'll, hey, keep on going. And now all of a sudden we're outside where the buses are. I mean, it was like a meet and greet thing, but we really didn't know what that meant. We just thought we're going to go to this table and backstage and he's going to be there and like maybe you take a picture or something, sure. And so yeah, now all of a sudden, like we're, we're standing outside, like we're standing in front of his tour bus and we're like he's just gonna come outside. Right, he's gonna come outside, he's gonna shake everybody's hand, thanks for coming to the show. Next thing, we know like all right, cool, all right Now, everybody, we're going to go on the tour bus and it was crazy.

Alex Gadd: 33:12

How many people were you?

Jeff Greenblatt: 33:14

with I don't remember how many total was in, like this designation. So I mean I would say you know probably 15 or 20 people that like you know, so unexpected, like that's what the next progression of this was going to be. So all of a sudden we're on the tour bus and it's like Willie Nelson, with a stack of eight by tens that he's assigned it. Hey, what's your name, thanks for coming, and yeah, that's you could see it behind me it's hanging up on the wall.

Alex Gadd: 33:37

That's so great.

Jeff Greenblatt: 33:39

Yeah.

Alex Gadd: 33:39

That's a good story. That's exactly what I'm looking for. That's fantastic. All right, I want to talk about your bucket list. What concert venue would you like most to go to, but you haven't yet been to?

Jeff Greenblatt: 33:52

Yeah, I'd love to go to the Ryman. That's definitely the top right now. For a long time it was a Fillmore and I went there a little over a decade ago now, but that was that one was like the one that I really wanted to go to, but now it's definitely the Ryman. You know the mother church of country music and right everybody that's been there said that. You know that's an experience that you need to cross off.

Alex Gadd: 34:13

I'm dying to go there too, if you could see any band that's still playing that you haven't yet seen. Who is that band that's missing from your?

Jeff Greenblatt: 34:26

1260 something show spreadsheet. Um, I'd like to see cat stevens but he doesn't really play that often anymore like he has played. He did a festival last year, he put out a record within the last year and I still kick myself because he played a beacon within the last decade and and I decided I was like I don't know, he's just gonna play his new stuff and I don't think it's gonna be that distraining and then he played all the hits and I'm like great, I missed out on that and he doesn't play live all that often anymore. So I think that that one probably up there. I would have to really think some more on some of the the other bigger names. Yeah, I sort of passed up on going to the Rolling Stones, but I have to tell you they were great it was too expensive, but it was great.

Alex Gadd: 35:14

All right, we're getting close to the end. What's next for you? Do you have tickets to any upcoming shows?

Jeff Greenblatt: 35:26

Uh, yeah, I'm going to go see this band, Bonnie Light Horseman, on a couple of weeks at a musical called Williamsburg, a folk rock band that I really like. Have you seen them before? Yeah, I've seen them. Yeah, probably, I don't know three, four times. Uh, trying to think of what else I have, oh, wolko, I'm going to go see the Beacon and then, yeah, next month is some good stuff coming to town. My bands are going to be here, which is the Fleece Brothers and Hooray for the Refraffs, deer Tick, old Crow Medicine Show. They're all around in July and then off to Newport.

Alex Gadd: 35:57

Really good. My last question is really trying to get at the crux of what this podcast is all about, which is what is it about live music that keeps you seeking out shows? I mean, really for you? It's your primary hobby, I would think, other than fantasy baseball.

Jeff Greenblatt: 36:15

Or texting with me about.

Alex Gadd: 36:16

Yankees games.

Jeff Greenblatt: 36:20

Which, by the way, is a great hobby.

Jeff Greenblatt: 36:21

Don't end that one, I think you know it's the excitement of it, it's the community aspect. They are experiencing this thing with other people and you know you can look to the right and somebody is just weeping from a song that moves them so much. And then you look to your left and it's just like people that are just like so happy. There's a range of emotions.

Jeff Greenblatt: 36:44

You have connections to songs or bands or whatever it is. It's also a thing to do with your friends. Once they've got married or have kids or whatever, you sort of get to see them less. But it's your time to have an experience with your friends going to do something while seeing the bands that you like, people that are passionate about live music. Those are the people that I have always connected with. It's something to talk about, it's something to do this kind of thing or tell somebody about a great album, or invite somebody to a show and say, hey, I think you're going to like this band and they may fall in love with them, they may hate them, but you hope that they have the same experience that you have out of just wanting them to come with you to have that experience.

Alex Gadd: 37:22

Well, that's it for today's conversation. Thank you so much for joining us and thank you, jeff, for sharing your experiences with us. Now we'll be back next Tuesday and if you like what you heard today, we'd appreciate it if you'd subscribe and follow or like to make sure you get notified about each new episode, and please tell your friends Also. We have a product note. We're releasing a playlist for every episode, so look for the Rock-N- Roll Show podcast playlist on Spotify every week, featuring songs by the bands mentioned during the episode. So look for that. Finally, we want to know what you think, so please leave us a comment and we'll try to respond to every one of them. The Rock-N- Roll Show podcast is a World Highway Media production. I'm your host, Alex Gadd, and you next time.