Praise Jah, man!

I’ve never been much of a churchgoer, to put it mildly. Even so, for years I’ve had a dream of attending Sunday service at the St. John Coltrane African Orthodox Church in San Francisco. Sometimes dreams do come true, and so it was on this sunny May day that having jumped off the grueling 13-hour flight from Sydney and dropped my bags off at the hotel, I suddenly found myself warming the back pew.

Praise the Lord and pass the French fries!

The service was composed of two parts. For the first two hours, the church band played what can only be described as gospel music according to Coltrane. It was quite obvious that they had not only studied Coltrane’s music but also internalised the spirituality that St. John had wanted to express. The last hour was taken up by a funny and poignant sermon from Archbishop King, who was not too shabby on the tenor sax either. If you’re in San Francisco on a Sunday and have a few hours to spare, you could do much worse than to stop by at the service and get some worship action happening – and I say this as a devout agnostic. How’s that for sitting on the fence? You can ask for your money back tomorrow.

Darn, just missed out on the Allman Bros.

As if this exalted experience hadn’t been enough for one day, I also had tickets to see Ben Folds at the fabulous Fox Theater in Oakland. I was kind of hoping to hear The Last Polka, but at least he played Narcolepsy, so all is well. Check out Pete Rosenblum’s pics from the gig on Flickr.