I spent a bit longer than two hours looking out of the Sears Tower observatory. After coming down I found a pizza place on Adams St and ate some Chicago stuffed pizza. I couldn't fully eat the smallest possible serving for one person. It looked more like a quiche than a pizza. In general the pizza here is quite good, but also expensive. The thin crusts are lighter and sweeter than in Australia. All have been less oily than Broadway Pizza. On the way out I gave one of the homeless dudes a dollar then caught the CTA uptown.

Patricia Barber and her quartet were playing that night at The Green Mill. Patricia usually plays there on Monday nights when she's not touring. This was her last show before leaving to perform in France. She has quite a few devoted fans in Chicago, going by the people I talked to. The Green Mill is a jazz lounge where Al Capone used to hang out. Nowadays it's for serious music fans - everyone sits down, there's no food served, and we were asked to not talk during the performance. It's a pleasant, intimate atmosphere.

I would call Patricia's style contemporary pop jazz. A lot of it is instrumental and her sparse lyrics were pretty simple. I think she sung just to complement the music, which is a shame because she had a very seductive voice. Her piano solos were very cool. She writes all of the songs and obviously led the group well. Often she would communicate to the drummer by drumming with her hands on the top of the piano. Sometimes when playing she would let out a strange howl. I'm not sure whether this was because she was unhappy that someone made a mistake, or whether it was just a howl of satisfaction with the awesome music (often pianists sing da da da be de da while they're soloing). She made a funny stuff-up with one of her songs. The song began with her playing the piano and singing, "one and one is two; two and two is four," continuing with the sequence 2ⁱ. However she sung, "one and one is two; two and two is four; four and four is six." They had to start the song again which was quite amusing.

She also had a folder stuffed full of loose pages of music which she sat on the top of the piano. I'm not sure why she brought it with her given that she knew all her songs off by heart or made it up on the spot... perhaps there was a set list in there or she needed it to jog her memory. Anyway, when they came back from a break there was a buzzing sound coming from the piano mic. Patricia was asking the sound guy like WTF is going on??? It took them about 5 minutes to find that a paperclip had fallen out of her folder onto one of the low piano strings.

It was a really enjoyable show. My disappointments were that Patricia didn't sing enough and didn't solo enough. Also I think there were opportunities for a change to a faster tempo in some of her songs, to make them more interesting. Most were slow paced and quite chilled out. The drummer's solo's were pretty amazing though. Sometimes drummers can overdo their solos and leave the audience wondering about whether the rhythm is 7/5, or 13/8, or whether it has rhythm at all!? But this bloke kept it together, and kept it interesting. I recommend checking out their website and downloading the MP3s.