Dance your cares away,
Worry’s for another day.
Let the music play,
Down at Fraggle Rock.

[photopress:gmf_021206_02.jpg,thumb,alignleft] On Saturday night, I headed over to the Museum of Fine Arts with Andres for the last of the Beats of Basquiat series, featuring Grandmaster Flash. The Basquiat exhibit was ending on Sunday, so this was the big finale. [If you didn’t get a chance to make it over to the MFAH, you missed an amazing exhibit - one of the best I’ve ever seen.] The Beats of Basquiat events were four evenings of music inspired by Basquiat’s work….and sponsored by, inexplicably, Starbucks. Basically, Starbucks turned the MFAH into a big dance club. There was a cover at the door, a cash bar with wine/beer/liquor, dance music with synchronized videos projected on the wall, and a little Starbucks kiosk in the corner with little Starbucks baristas pouring free coffee for people. Kind of strange. I also wonder what Basquiat would have thought about a corporate coffee company hosting this event. Don’t get me wrong, through - I loves me my non-fat, sugar-free vanilla lattes. But the best part was Grandmaster Flash, DJ Jester (who won me over with his mix of ‘Fraggle Rock’), and of course, all of Basquiat’s work.

The Beats of Basquiat was scheduled to start at 8pm. At 6pm, we stopped by the Museum to pick up tickets before heading out for dinner. There was a small group of people waiting by the entrance, but tickets weren’t going on sale until 7pm. I figured we were safe, so we headed off to dinner (at Aladdin, the new restaurant by the owners of Fadi’s on Montrose….yummmm), drove back to the Museum at 7pm…..and discovered a HUGE line that snaked around the side of the building. We stood in line for eternity, got our tickets, and then got sent around the corner to stand in another line. Finally, at 8:10pm, they let us into the Museum and I had my first glass of wine since July. I stopped drinking when I started training for the Marathon, so despite the fact that the wine was really bad and came in a plastic Dixie cup, it was a special moment.

[photopress:gmf_021206_05.jpg,thumb,alignleft] Over the next few hours, we drank more wine, watched people breakdance and listened to the DJs. The Dum Dum Crue was incredibly unimpressive (they sucked) - all they did was throw an album on the turntable, walk away, then replace it with another one when a couple of songs were over. It was like the Seinfeld episode where Jerry, George and Elaine go to this party, and Jerry’s given CD player duty. The Dum Dum Crue were the Jerrys of the night. Thankfully, they were replaced by DJ Jester, the Filipino Fist, who was awesome. He played lots of 80’s music (always A+ in my book), but he officially became my hero when he played the theme songs from Fraggle Rock and The Greatest American Hero. DJ Jester, I love you.

[photopress:gmf_021206_01.jpg,thumb,alignleft] Grandmaster Flash finally arrived just before midnight. By then, I was really grumpy, tired, irritated by all the college kids and my feet were killing me. But as soon as Grandmaster Flash showed up, the crowds went wild, my energy perked up, and the music - well, he gave an amazing show, of course. We started off on the main floor, but moved upstairs to the balcony to see if we could actually watch Grandmaster Flash spin.

[photopress:gmf_021206_04.jpg,thumb,alignleft] We watched the show from the balcony for a while, then walked around to the other side. The show was literally in the midst of the Basquiat exhibit, and this poor Museum guard ran around nervously as people danced inches away from Basquiat’s original paintings. heh. We finally left around 1am (sometime after he played “Hollaback Girl”, still the worst song ever made, in my opinion). I was exhausted.