My goal for 2019 is to write at least a little something about every show I see, preferably by the next day, we’ll see how it goes. I will compile weekly and post here as-is.
So, in that spirit, this is the twelfth of hopefully 52 posts…
18mar19
Comet Is Coming (Will Shore opens) @ Mercury Lounge
If you read any of these reviews with any regularity, you probably picked up the fact that I like to find different themes in a show or an evening, helps focus my thoughts on the music or vibe or whatnot. Last night’s music theme, the thread that wound its way through the two shows I caught was transitions. For a lot of bands I see, the movement is usually the climb-to-peak: starting kind of slow/quiet and building to fast/loud which creates a certain release in the music and also for the listener.
What struck me last night watching Comet Is Coming, one of several ridiculously good Shabaka Hutchings projects (and another reason why you should always follow the #recommNeds… you’ll know before everyone!), burn the fucking house down at the Merc last night, even though it was the early show on a random Monday night in March, what struck me is that they deliver on the release but don’t do it in the climb-to-peak fashion. They create transitions of different sorts, moving from order to chaos, to a lot of notes to an infinite number of notes, from head-bob to raging-dance-party.
I caught these guys — Hutchings on sax plus drums and synth (guy playing two different Rolands, doing a lot of bass synth) once before a little more than a year ago at LPR as part of a WJF thing. They were awesome that night, a capper on a sweeet, sweet bill, a total electronica dance party that reminded me of something you might have heard at the Wetlands circa 1999. In that 14 months, though, with the release of a brand new album, they’ve grown into a formidable object. There’s no “pretty” in this band, just deep, dark, fuck-your-Monday-up jazzfunk with a swirl of some Middle Eastern vibes. Hutchings is a ridiculous player, if you’re not familiar, you should change that. He’s somehow created a wholly unique sound on the saxophone without using any effects or gimmicks. He’s removed all subtlety from his instrument, just brute-force just bowling you over with torrent after torrent of notes, one on top of each other so that it almost sounds like he’s playing distorted chords on a guitar rather than blowing a horn. His bands range from a more spiritual Afro-jazz to total two-drummer rock band, but this is definitely his dance band. The heavy synth sound and triggering beats are totally hard to resist.
Last night’s set was an absolute explosion of ecstatic sound, heavy and engaging and fun, 75 minutes of raging fist-pump spacedisco. Shabaka was a sweaty music machine, blaring one solo after another taking the music from one place to another, internalized roadmap, the band totally in sync the entire time. Pretty fucking awesome.
Will Shore was the opener playing solo with his vibraphone and a laptop and a mixer and he created some really cool old-school electronica, old school beats and looping vibes that stretched or squeezed his notes into cool little bits of sound. I’ve seen Shore in several different groups/formats (his two-vibraphone group with Kenny Wolleson is maybe the coolest) and he is definitely one of the more interesting vibes players out there.
Simon Jermyn Group (w/ Dave King, Jonathan Goldberger, Mat Maneri) @ LunAtico
From there I hopped over to Brooklyn to catch this very intriguing lineup at LunAtico. Settled in close to the stage arriving probably 2/3 into the first set and was more or less immediately transfixed. The band is Jermyn leading on electric bass, King, Goldberger and Maneri on drums, guitar, viola respectively. When we first got there the sound was kind of this fractured beautiful thing, delicate, but also angular and weird, befitting the players who were kind of dancing around a theme, some sticking close giving structure, some fluttering around decorating with hairiness.
The instrumentation and sound kind of reminded me of a band with Bill Frisell and Jenny Scheinman backed by drums and bass, with Goldberger and Maneri playing inside-out versions of those two and Jermyn/King bringing a slightly off-kilter energy. But then there was this transition, as the music kind of turned and moved from floral to something much peatier. After a couple of beats they went from something quite lovely to something rather vicious, from a Frisell band to the freaking Mahavishnu Project, the viola/guitar combo going from delicate to all-out raging. Holy shit, pretty awesome transformation and the place where they ended up was rather spectacular, I have to say.
They took their break and we settled into seats right in front of the stage for the second set and were rewarded with some A+ shit. A song started in a sort of traditional jazz space, Jermyn laying a running bass riff giving the players space to take solos, somewhat standard with a sort of standing-the-precipice energy until, finally, they fell off the cliff and things started to transition to mindblowing. They built from the base to a rather scintillating thing, Goldberger absolutely shredding, shredding his guitar. I was sitting close enough to try and follow his fingers, but what’s the point?, they were moving so fast. The band found that second-set freedom and chemistry and a don’t-know-what-to-expect set went deep into thank-god-I-made-the-treak territory. As good as you might expect based on the players in the band.
Every time I’ve seen/heard Maneri it’s been heavy on the avant garde, to say the least, the dude can get out there and weird on the viola. Last night he was a bit restrained and in-the-moment and the music was so much better for it. He took some phenomenal solos and worked some great back and forth and in-between with Goldberger, who was as good as I’ve seen him. Dave King is fucking Dave King, the more he gets involved in things outside the Bad Plus the more impressed I am with his playing (and yet, he still makes me smile when he takes the same damn toys out that he’s been using since the beginning). The way he was introduced, it seemed like he doesn’t play with this “group” regularly (whatever that means), but couldn’t tell, he was and continues to be one of the best drummers on the scene today. A treat to see him in a setting/room like that. Jermyn was the leader and as good as the rest — bands led by bassists have a certain feel to them, a feel I tend to really dig and this was no different. Plus the Irish accent one day after St Patrick’s Day really hit the spot.
I wasn’t sure exactly what I was going to do after that early show at the Mercury Lounge, but sometimes the livemusic gods steer you right and Jermyn & Crew were an A+ option. Will definitely be looking for more from Jermyn and hopefully this band with or without King again…
19mar19
Ryley Walker @ Union Pool
We walked into Union Pool to a set that was already in progress for maybe 10 minutes. It was less of a concert than a performance, Ryan Jewell was scraping his drum kit, treating it more as a freeform percussion set than anything Buddy Rich might recognize. Ryley Walker was on the same page, his (acoustic) guitar also a total percussion instrument. Hitting strings felt as much like an accident when he was tapping and scraping away at the body of his instrument than any attempt to play notes. What an amazing, fascinating human being Ryley Walker is. In the past fwe months I’ve seen him a handful of times and to say “every time is different!” is an understatement. He even looked different last night, sitting down, wearing glasses, deeply curled into his guitar on his knee — he was an avant garde experimentalist at the old Stone, not the singer-songwriter, banterer extraordinaire he was the previous week on the same exact stage with the same exact drummer.
The performance was challenging to say the least, but it was not bad, not at all, it was engaging in interesting ways. And then it shifted. It was like we had been flying on a plane ascending to its cruising altitude and hit a constant stretch of turbulence, the music jumping up and down unpredictably, uncomfortable, but no real danger… and then, we popped through the clouds. Walker and Jewell found a serenity in the now blue sky and sunshine. Walker’s playing found that cruising altitude and for a few minutes it was a guitar show, just beautiful, lush guitar picking. Not soon after that, things started to dissemble, but not quite to the point where they were before. Some middle ground. A few people in the crowd started to leave, creating space and allowing me to get closer.
And then… the unpredictability of a live show. A crash was heard and while it took a second to realize what had happened from the middle/back of the room, it soon became clear that someone was having a medical issue. The music stopped, the lights went on and the person was attended to. 911 got multiple calls from the same room and a few minutes of uncertainty passed until finally the passed-out fellow came to and was helped to his feet and to an ambulance waiting outside. Scary and bizarre and a sort of weird intrusion into an already weird set. Many people took the opportunity to leave, but Walker kind of shrugged and said “we cool?” and the rest of the crowd moved toward the stage as the duo started up again.
For the third time, the mood shifted completely. Whether by design or as a direct result of that rush of fear/concern/and yes, even excitement, Walker and Jewell immediately launched into what I could only call musical adrenaline. They somehow played a musical version of that rush that had filled the room. Walker played a furious open-tuned, droning raga-esque thing, gorgeous and urgent, just blazing fast and beautiful all the while. Jewell added unnecessary urgency to it, mallet-pounds and headtrip rhythms, like the soundtrack to a Martin Sheen mirror-smashing. It was probably only like 5 minutes or so, maybe closer to 10, but it felt like an infinity of music, a showering of notes that gathered that adrenaline and fear, the immediacy of a live performance and the fragility of live… washed it clean from all in the room. Intense and awesome!
And then the show ended. It couldn’t have gone on any longer really, but I think people in the room wanted more. It was barely 40 minutes and, frankly, perfect. I thought a bit about this, about how Walker is playing just whatever he wants. I don’t think he has this grand plan for this residency, he’s just doing what he feels like. He starts when he wants and ends when he wants. I’ve seen this a few times with him, he hits a point and he just knows he’s done. There’s a refreshing openness to his whole thing, so little pretense, so little pretending. The banter is part of that, it’s not performative, it’s how he feels. I think more than most other musicians, he has a very good feel for playing live, he understands what it means to play music live, he’s seen a lot of shows of all sorts and he’s aware of but completely untethered from all conventions. I find him to be an utterly fascinating human being. Musical id. I think I have more thoughts on this, to be continued, but that’s enough for now…
Subtonics @ Letlove Inn
I had designs on a couple other options after, but heading back to Astoria seemed the most logical. I am becoming more and more convinced that this residency is one of the best in the city. The band last night was completely different than last week. Drums/keys (Adam Klipple)/bass (Evan Marien) backing Costas on guitar… so basically guitar is the same and everyone else is different. There’s this sort of anti-Krantz thing going on with Costas, like he plays the negative space instead of the positive space, he doesn’t come to you, you have to go find it… but when you do, it’s a pot of gold, brain-twisting, hypnotic, totally stupefying. The music last night was even more transportive than usual, I was utterly transfixed. The music had these shades of sort of smooth-cheese jazz, like just on the border of being a little too slick at times and then it just melted into a liquid, taking the shape of the container it was poured into, sloshing and flowing and oozing through cracks and pores. It was maybe a little less groovy than last night, but it was better for it. There are many late night options, but few that will just take your mind on a post-show journey quite like Subtonics. Yes, you have to go to Queens to get it, but you will not be sorry you made the trip. And what a trip it is.
20mar19
The Bad Plus @ Village Vanguard (early show)
About 10 seconds into “Everywhere You Turn,” the opening song for The Bad Plus’s early set last night I got the chills. It started on my right arm and then spread to my whole body. Within a minute, my eyes started filling with tears, a totally involuntary reaction to the music. So beautiful, so perfect. There are several TBP songs, Reid Anderson compositions, that have this kind of bell curve narrative, they start in a very quiet place, built slowly and subtly, hit a peak and then ebb on the other side, back to a quiet place. But not quite as symmetrical as that, because the climb was so blissful, so dramatic, so fucking amazing, that you cannot just return from where you came, you are changed. For the better. Everyone in the room is. These songs are everything, perhaps my favorite compositions of the last 20 years.They are love, life, the universe beginning and ending. When I hear them I marvel that a human being wrote them, that the laws of physics brought creation from the Big Bang to the moment where I am sitting in a club like the Village Vanguard listening to them. It’s more than just music, it’s everything, the entirety of all passing through my mind. So yeah… chills and tears. Felt appropriate. Not sure I’ve had a physical reaction to a song quite like I did to that one last night… and that was just the first song!! (this song is on repeat as I write this, sill getting the chills, though not quite as bad…)
They followed up with “Big Eater” (both of these songs are off the seminal These Are the Vistas album, 16 years old and as vibrant and amazing as ever. If you’ve ever seen TBP in the past 15 years, you might recognize this song, it’s kind of their “hit.” If you had to play one Bad Plus song to sum up their sound, their we-imploded-jazz combination of Radiohead art-rock and Charles Mingus forward-thinking with a slice of Zeppelin and some disco, well, you might say “Big Eater” is that song. It’s the song they usually end their shows with. To play it in the #2 slot felt like something new and it was. While the song in its ubiquity and familiarity has found some room for the band to explore, last night it was, for lack of a better word, a “jam” song. A vehicle for improvisation, full-trio exploration. That is new, because these guys have never been a big “improv” group. There have been solos and little jaunts, but never anything like what I heard last night. Maybe here’s a good place to point out that the Bad Plus I saw last night is a relatively new thing and not nearly the same trio that recorded “Big Eater” back when. A little more than a year ago, pianist Ethan Iverson left the group and was replaced by Orrin Evans. I saw them once last year and was surprised at how good they sounded. I mean, losing the pianist in a piano trio is like losing the lead guitarist in a rock band. It’s not the same band, right? Like, how can you even go on? Well, what I learned last night and what, in retrospect I guess I had a subconscious sneaking suspicion about, is that it’s quite possible that Iverson was holding back Anderson and drummer Dave King. There was always tension between the bass/drums and piano in this group, a clash of styles and musical conflict… but the kind of conflict where great art is made. Even visually, Iverson in a full suit and tie, shiny shoes and manicured facial hair stood out from the other two clad in jeans and t-shirts, halfway between a beard and laid-back uncertainty. Iverson’s Bad Plus compositions were challenging — challenges to the jazz of history that he reveres and challenging to the listener. This was a counterpoint to Anderson’s glorious works or King’s rock-rhythm pieces an it worked. It worked really fucking well. I saw that band over 50 times, perhaps as much or more than anyone else out there, so this is not a criticism in any way. But in Evans, they’ve found a t-shirt-and-jeans player, a collaborator. Maybe that conflict is gone, but oh, the harmonies they’re making together! Big Eater and the following “Thrift Store Jewelry” each had extended, left-turn middles where it wasn’t a solo, but a real three-man improv and it was really great. The other thing that’s happened over the past few years is that Dave King has infiltrated the improv/explorative music scene, especially the NYC-based scene… he’s played extensively with Julian Lage, performed with John f’in Zorn amongst others, and heck, I just saw him on Monday in a killer quartet laying it down in some monster jams. He’s apparently brought back that energy to his home base and man, does it show in the best way.
I won’t go song-by-song, but needless to say, those first three songs were not some aberration, but rather the new normal. I think it maybe was my favorite Bad Plus show ever. The chemistry, the beauty, the thrill. They played 10 songs and 6 of them were Reid songs which was just total bliss. Ranging from educated grooves to prog puzzles to the mid-set take on “People Like You,” another one of those parabolic, up-down-up songs, perhaps even more gorgeous, more dramatic, more mindblowing than the set-opener. Last night it was a quiet ambiance, minimalism at its finest and then built to a introspective peak, a mind-eraser that left you alone on a mountain top with your thoughts, all the good and all the bad, all the happy and all the sad, all of it right there in front of you in blazing piano-bass-drums. I love the social aspect of a concert, I love going with people, but every once in a while the pure zen of sitting in a jazz club by yourself listening to time-bending songs like “People Like You,” is rather cathartic. So, yes, more chills, full-body goosebumps, head-to-toe awe, and yes, more tears. An overwhelming set of music.
The setlist for anyone that cares:
Everywhere You Turn (Anderson), Big Eater (Anderson), Thrift Store Jewelry (King), Salvage (Anderson), Undersea Reflection (Anderson), Wolf Out (King), 1983 Regional All-Star (King), Boffadem (Evans), Trace (Anderson).
The Mandingo Ambassadors @ Barbes
Typically they’d announce that you could stay for the late set for free (or another drink), but they didn’t for some reason… I was debating asking if I could, but then figured I had had my fill and decided to continue my resideNYC tour. (there was no one waiting outside for the late set, I’m curious how many people they had for it). I headed to Barbes for their Wednesday residency; The Mandingo Ambassadors.
Holy crap, these guys are so freakin’ great. I’ve seen them a couple times and they do not disappoint. The NYC residency shows are all so great in their own way, I love diggin more and more into these and finding what they have in common and what’s peculiar to each one individually. I think these are the hidden lifeblood of the NYC music scene, the neighborhood happenings in odd little spaces where quality musicians make amazing music week after week in obscurity. The one thing I’m finding, which struck me last night after having seen Subtonics twice in 2 weeks, is that most of these residencies are anchored by a very strong musical personality, a single person around which the music orbits. So even though it’s called the “Subtonics” it’s really the guitarist Costas, with the musicians and music spiralling around his personality and playing. Sometimes this is obvious (Wayne Krantz! Stephane Wrembel!), but for some of these it’s more subtle. Anyway, this is all to say that Mandingo Ambassadors are guitarist Mamady Kouyate and whoever else is orbiting around him. It’s typically him and another guitarist who plays a sly counterpoint rhythm, bass and drums and some percussion, sometimes maybe a horn, but not last night. Last night there was a female drummer I had not seen with them before, two guys banging what I would call a “conga” but probably has a different name, bass and the two guitars. But really, it’s all Kouyate who just plays a constant stream of happy, downright gleeful notes, a cheery non-stop trinkling of irresistible Guinean melodies. There’s something almost Garcia-esque to his flowing guitar. But it’s funky as all hell and with the backing band, it is always a smile-per-person dance party inside Barbes every Wednesday night. This is not some throwaway funk band, but a legit Afrogroove machine, the kind of thing you have no choice but to dance to, with songs that go on forever and when they stop you’re bummed because they could go on forever and you’d never tire of them.
If you live with a short cab ride to Barbes and don’t go there at least a couple times a month, you’re an idiot. Some of the most magical, accessible only-in-NYC music happens there on a nightly basis for whatever you want to throw in the bucket. It’s a magicshow and a steal, you should go.
21mar2019
Alternative Guitar Summit @ Le Poisson Rouge
The show was a sort of tribute to Woodstock a little under 50 years after the date and without waiting to see what happens this summer, I am going to declare that it was a more inventive, awe-inspiring spectacle of music than you’ll see at any official anniversary shows.
To me, this was all about the final two sets (which delivered mightily!), so I won’t dwell on the earlier stuff, but they were not without their merits. Host Joel Harrison led a pretty great band through an interesting medley that went Richie Havens > Grateful Dead > Sly & the Family Stone, all sort of drawn out in unexpectedly funky and surprising ways — Stephan Crump on bass really seemed to shine during this stretch… I don’t think I’ve ever heard such a soul-funk-flavored version of Dark Star and going into Sly from there was a nice move. Ben Monder and Jo Lawry did a duet on two John Sebastian songs and while I thought that Lawry pushed her voice to some spots her range couldn’t handle on the first song, the “I Had A Dream” was appropriately weird and beautiful. A sort of bonus filler version of “Woodstock” that sort of floated between the Joni and CSN versions with a dollop of soul featuring great vocal work from the Everett Bradley Choir members and Harrison’s slide (or was it lap steel, I couldn’t see) playing. That was a nice highlight.
But as mentioned, the real meat of the night was in the final two acts, the bills for which caused me to drop all previous plans on my calendar for 3/21/2019, to ignore all the amazing shows going on in various parts of NYC last night (and there were a crapload, even by NYC livemusic standards). There was just no fucking way I was going to miss Nels Cline playing Santana and Scott Metzger playing the Who. No fucking way. And when those two sets that was exactly what I was say… “no fucking way!!!!!”
It wasn’t so much that Nels channelled Carlos Santana. It was equally as much that he assembled a band that was befitting the old school Woodstock-era Santana. Josh Dion on drums, Cyro Baptista and Elizabeth Pupo-Walker on percussion were the lifeblood of the set which just pounded with rhythm like nothing you could believe. I’ve seen Santana a few times, but I can’t imagine what it was like to experience his shows during this primal, visceral phase, when his “songs” were mostly back-of-the-envelope ideas surrounded by a whole lot of intense Latin percussion and drumming. After the show when I was sort of standing around outside LPR debating/waiting on the next move, a woman comes up and stands next to me, smoking a cigarette and it takes a second, but I soon realize it’s Pupo-Walker and she just starts chatting with me about the show. Like, I didn’t say anything, she just starts going on very amicably, and she just said that the Santana stuff, “it’s simple, it’s just the heartbeat. Just a heartbeat, very primitive.” I loved that. I loved that she was so friendly and kind of awestruck about the show (how niiiice all the musicians are… she’s a fan, too!) and also that, you know, sometimes you don’t want to talk to musicians because you aren’t appreciating the music at the level they’re making it. Like I can say “that jam was siiiiick!” but there are musical reasons that made it so, things that musicians study and practice and perfect and to speak about it in my braindead terms is to reduce it and maybe erase some of the genius and subtly behind it. But she didn’t complicate it all: Santana’s music is so great because of its visceral simplicity. I mean, “Jingo” is just a single phrase, a single rhythm and a guitar riff and it’s fucking magic. To hear Nels play it last night, with that rhythm section plus Brian Marsella on the organ — another key nugget of the band, you forget how central the organ is to the Santana sound, but it’s at least one of the ventricles in that heartbeat — and Chris Morrissey on bass, to hear this band tackle Jingo and Soul Sacrifice and Fried Neckbones, was to find your prehistoric, prehuman roots. Nels was phenomenal. To think I saw him less than a week ago making beautiful ECM-jazz in an apartment and now he was all decked out in his version of hippie clothes and just shredding, shredding the Santana licks, fiery, too-fast/just-fast-enough guitar playing, up and down the fret board. Not long, drawn out solos, but flash-bomb explosions of guitar and then back to the beats, back to the beats, back to the beats. The set was about 30 minutes long and it was 30 minutes of August 1969 perfection. You think about the practice and preparation that goes into just that 30 minutes of music and you wonder if it’s even worth it for the musicians… then you look up and see how much freakin’ fun they’re having, taking on this music, this piece of rock and roll history, deeply psychedelic music and just owning it. I think it was worth it. The other cool wrinkle about this band was how Dion and Morrissey are the “usual” backing band for Jim Campilongo for his Monday night shows @ Rockwood 2. The resideNYC is everywhere, but that thing where you see enough music that all the pieces start to fit together is a cool phenomenon and I just love how those two guys were just kind of a unit that came out of a much different guitar world like Campilongo and plopped in perfectly here. Along those lines, Marsella and Baptista are the backbone to the Banquet of the Spirits, so there were like two duos from other bands plugged into the Cline Santana band and they were all fantastic. I was super psyched they played “Fried Neckbones.” In college, I used to have this kind of live Santana bootleg CD which had a killer long version of that song and I convinced my friends’ band to play it and they started incorporating the riff into their jams at shows and when they played the “pub night” at school I got up and sang a verse and it remains my only live performance, so it holds a soft spot in my heart.
So, how the heck do you top that!?!? Next up was Scott Metzger, Dave Dreiwitz and Josh Dion (again!) playing The Who. I fucking love the Who so much and have been wanting to hear some version of a Bustle-type band do the Who for a long, long time, to no avail (my powers of persuasion only go so far, apparently). To say I was psyched about this set would be an understatement. This was it, as far as I was concerned. I joked beforehand that I’d be happy with whatever they played, but I’d be drop-dead blown away to hear an Amazing Journey > Sparks. Well, you know what happened, right? They come out and Metzger was kind of like “how the heck do you follow that!?” which I know he really felt, but also a little only-in-his-humble-way saying “look the fuck out, freaks, because I’m coming at ya!” He proceeded to open just playing solo, running up and down his fretboard, incorporating all these little tricks, but mostly creating this gorgeous tapestry of guitar music. For everything awesome that had happened on that stage already last night up to that point, for all the Nels Cline incendiary boogie-down, nothing had come close to approaching the beautiful riff magic Metzger created during that opening little solo. It wasn’t quite “showing off” but it wasn’t not showing off either. It was an amazing journey and an announcement that not only do I belong here on this stage, I deserve to close this amazing show. And close it he did… eventually the solo came to, the trance ended, and the rest of the trio joined in and, lo!!! the opening chords to “Sparks” were played. And at this point, for the second time in two nights, my entire body was covered in goosebumps, I had a flu-like chill take over and tears filled my eyes. I realized I had never heard any songs from Tommy live before and what a feeling it was. Pure emotional bliss. And if you’ve read this far, I have no problem telling you this, but Tommy holds a special place in my heart. It was one of my dad’s favorite records. My father didn’t listen to The Who, he listened to Tommy. Pretty often. In retrospect, I love to think about my dad’s musical taste, all these little peculiarities in it that feed my present-day tastes. he listened to that record a lot. My brother’s Twitter avatar is a picture of a stack of my dad’s old records with the cover of Tommy featured prominently on top. That record is deep in my subconscious and a direct link to my dad and when Scott, Dave and Josh dropped into that Sparks, it was a bit overwhelming, a bit surprisingly so, but… wow. They fucking killed it. Everything I could have wanted and more, as they took a zig and then a zag and kind of jammed out in the middle. If you could have gone to this show and you didn’t, know that you missed something incredible during this set. They transitioned into fucking Pinball Wizard and, pretty much the same reaction as before, total mindblower. The chemistry between Scott & Dave has always been A+++, as good as it gets and it really paid off last night, a total comfort level, they were really digging into this material. You see Metzger in JRAD or in someone else’s band or even in Wolf! and he’s an animated player and he gives it his all every fucking solo. He’s somewhere between soft-spoken and throw-the-gauntlet-down in his day-to-day, totally balance. Last night, he was bordering on unhinged in the best way possible. I have no idea what his connection is to this music, the songs and the ethos of the Who, but damn, was he in some sort of almost-violent fever-trance of vicious guitar playing last night. On top of all that, perhaps the nuclear weapon on the arsenal for the set was Josh Dion who somehow continues to fly under the radar and blow people away in equal measures. He killed in the Santana set, but that was just a prelude to his Keith-Moon-transforming take during this set… and also, you are happy to learn, can sing really, really well, He killed the Daltrey on Pinball Wizard, going back-and-forth with Metzger… when they did the ‘how do you think he does it!? “I don’t know” “What makes him so good?” They could have been talking about each other. Neither deaf, dumb nor blind, all three of these guys were absolute wizards. They closed with the Who’s version of “Summertime Blues” which was played at Woodstock and at the Live From Leeds… kind of the big “jam” song for The Who back in the day. Metzger & Co did a total instrumental version, with some cool slow-down/speed-up shit during the “vocals” section. And really, that was already super cool and totally awesome, a raging end to the set. But, no. No, no, no. It turns out this was a prelude to the real jam of the night. An electrifying mic-drop of guitar pyrotechnics, Dave and Josh just pounding away while Scott just went to fucking town. That jam was Scott Metzger’s “You put me after Nels f’in Cline?!?!? Challenge accepted motherfucker!” I have been a huge, HUGE Scott Metzger fan/fluffer/acolyte for a couple decades now. There may be bigger Metzger fans out there, but… maybe there are. I’ve always known he’s good enough to be “in the conversation” with guys like Nels. He’s proven it again and again, but it’s still pretty great to see him leave a stage that had just featured some of the named-names in the NYC-guitar-world (i.e best guitarist in the world) in a burning pile of rubble like he did during that last jam. If you could bottle the ridiculous guitar/bass/drum shit that those guys did in that last stretch, you could put every power trio in the game out of business. Cream who?
They closed with an everyone-on-stage take on Lovelight (not a solo version of Star Spangled Banner that was maybe too obvious, but would have been awesome… would I have paid $10 more just to see Nels channel Hendrix and another $5 to see him light his guitar on fire… yes, yes I would have.)
Wayne Krantz, Cliff Almond, Orlando le Fleming @ 55 Bar.
Best guitarist in the world tour continued up the avenue a bit with WAYNE! I can only say so much about Krantz week-in/week-out, so let’s just say that last night, caught the second half of the early set and the whole late set, was B+ Krantz. It was as good as I’ve seen le Fleming with him, something seemed to click last night, he was really out front, totally in a comfort zone and sounded really freakin’ great. The whole night felt very aggressive. Wayne was animated and moving around and really feeling the crowd, I thought. A group of us were standing behind the band in the bathroom alcove, kind of crowded and dancing in there and at one point Wayne turned around, came right up to one of us and just laid one of those heavy freakriffs on her like “this is for you!!” Almond has very little patience for anything other than drum-poundage and he was pretty heavy and quite awesome as usual.
As is typical, the late show was a looser, more enjoyable affair. Space to breathe for both the audience and the band who always seem to relax and just flow for the second set. At one point, after a particularly siiiiiick jam had ended I was like “yeahhh!!!” And Wayne goes “yeah? yeah?” and then just dropped another kiloton of Krantz on us. Requisite “Manic Depression” closer found its way out and back and out and back and out and back and then… it wasn’t the closer (they’re feeling it, baby!). Tacked on a U Can’t Touch This which is both fun and fiery and was a bit quicker than usual last night, but it was the bonus… a capper on a ridiculous night of guitar music.
It had been a 2019-record 3 weeks since my last Kratnzing and man, did it feel good to be out of the literal rain and cramped into the back of 55 Bar — a ridiculously shitty bar by any other measure, they somehow had just one beer on tap and midway through the second set were serving drinks in red plastic Solo cups like it was a college party. Good to be back! Love Live Wayne Krantz!
22mar19 Widespread Panic @ Capitol Theatre
I realized at some point this week that the first time I ever wrote a concert review was when a friend of mine who edited the arts section of the college newspaper convinced me to write a review/preview of Widespread Panic playing in Providence and Boston in March of 1994. That was exactly 25 years ago a couple weeks back. While I’d like to say that I caught the writing bug right away, it wasn’t until a few years later that I started writing anything about music when I would pen very long, somewhat ridiculous and inane reviews on the Spreadnet. While I have yet to see a paycheck from it, writing about livemusic is definitely a hobby and head-clearing activity for me and it all started with reviewing Widespread Panic shows…
So here we are! 25 years later and still doing the same shit, writing about Widespread Panic shows. Not going to get into last night’s Cap Theatre show quite like I would have back in 1999 or 2000, but maybe I will revive the infamous Ned-O-Matic. I enjoyed the heck out of the show last night, a perfect balance of old-school nostalgia and in-the-moment skullcrush. Earlier this week I was listening to the monster JGB box set and when the Let It Rock from 1987 came on, I had a very strong “JRAD should play this” feeling. Little did I know I’d be seeing Widespread Panic bust it out to open the show Friday night, looks like a first time played in 2 years according to the old trusty Everyday Companion (disappointed the setlist from last night isn’t up there yet, I’ll have a word with the webmaster over there…). That was a killer way to kick things off followed by a rather electric “Radio Child” which was an early Jimmy’s-off-down-the-rabbit-hole jammer, felt a little more relished than usual. The whole first set featured a very old school/made-for-the-vets song selection, which was fine by me. Total pedal-to-the-metal Panic pounder, although I can’t say one thing stood out too much above the rest. Just a strong, consistent set with characteristically rocking versions of Pleas and Henry Parsons. The B of D > Conrad set-closing doublet was easily my highlight, have always loved the WSP instrumentals and B of D was always a rarity anyway. Thought they nailed it and the pairing with Conrad was perfect as far as I’m concerned. Can’t get much better than a Conrad set closer.
Set 2 definitely got into that dark, whiskey-soaked, lose-yourself zone. I feel like the sound and the band and the crowd all have to be dialed in pretty well to make a “You Got Yours” set opener to work right, a molasses sludge of a song, serious darkness. Last night it was the shift from setbreak social hour, to an all-business, headspinner of a second set. Earplugs in, mutherfuckers, it’s gonna get dirty in here! Heck, I even danced to Blackout, my absolute least favorite WSP song! PAYMH > Ribs & Whiskey is always a treat and Slippin’ Into Darkness was exactly what the band had been doing all night: dirty Friday night Panic.
It’s funny the things you remember, but I remember writing about that Providence Panic show back in 1994 and how I described the Pilgrims they played last night and how writing about it made me like it even more, in describing it I found things in there I didn’t realize were there. That’s one of the many things rwiting about music does for me. I’ve loved that song ever since, quintessential Panic with its poetic imagery, impassioned JB growl and twinkling light guitar riff. Pilgrims is Widespread Panic at its best and so I was more than happy to hear them encore with it last night, more chills in a week filled with them. The Red Hot Mama to cap it off felt like a big bonus designed to take the party right up to midnight, which it did.
I had a blast last night (back Sunday, but not tonight), but I also think it was sort of a get-the-party-started kind of show, not necessarily the die-happy-now throwdown I think is coming in one or both of the next couple nights. A safe set of Widespread is still a great freakin’ time and it was fun getting down and drinking whiskey with friends old and new last night.
Ned-O-Matic: 5 (a perfectly average, excellent Widespread Panic show)
24mar19 Widespread Panic @ Capitol Theatre
Couldn’t make the Saturday show, but was back in the good place for the Sunday Panic show, ready to party… and if Friday (and reportedly Saturday) were on the darkPanic side, the band was in pure party mode, playing a largely jubilant, fist-pump, smiles-abound soundtrack while the WSP-starved NYC/Northeast crowd shook out every boogie left in their bones before they left town for who knows how long…
The show kicked off with Holden Oversoul, a personal favorite and one of the songs that was on my shortlist of want-to-hear. A perfect mix of literate songwriting, vivid imagery in the lyrics, an unmistakably-Widespread melody and a heady jam-out. Jimmy seemed to find his too-many-notes/just-enough-notes balance from the get go and the place was whipped into an early frenzy. You proverbially don’t miss a Sunday show because the band has had Friday and Saturday to warm up and that was clearly evident across an excellent Holden opener. The first set was more or less a non-stop string of old-school favorites, full-throated rock-outs, and fun sing-alongs. The atmosphere was exceptionally festive, I have to say.
One thing that struck me particularly in the first set is how there’s sort of two things going on with WSP’s music. There is this very heavy concoction of guitars, drums, keys and bass, so much sound it’s almost too much sound. If you enjoy Panic, you really love that onslaught of music, the density of rock and roll that overpowers in a good way, the stiff burn of a slug of whiskey. But if you really love Panic, you take great joy in the little bits, barely perceptible subtleties that are hiding in that musical morass. The needles in the southern-rock haystack are maybe little guitar riffs, moments where things click between a couple of the band members for a brief second, lyrical lagniappes from JB, etc. There are so many of them hidden in plain sight in a Panic show and I was just taking great joy during the first set tracing a linedrawing from one to the next to the next. I loved everything about the first set, a real first set focused on great, classic songs with a couple monster jams in there. Airplane was a hillclimber, felt like Jimmy and Duane were scaling a cliff, one making it to one point and anchoring in the rock wall face and throwing down rope to the other who made his way up and together they went higher and higher and higher. Little Lilly was so great to hear for so many reasons… and wasn’t that part of the fun of the weekend, the nostalgia mixed in, these songs being part of my life for so long, having been at the shows when Lilly was debuted as a little instrumental riff, having named our daughter Lily, remembering after she was born and (obviously) not making it to the NYE shows the following week, but getting a phone call from Atlanta that they had opened up the run that year with Little Lily, the first song they played after she had been born (may or may not have been a coincidence, but doesn’t matter either way). This was a crowd and a weekend and a show when they had no choice to play “Blue Indian” to have everyone shake and sing along to “we’ve got a party going on, many spirits strong!” which seems to be true every time they play it, but feels special when it’s you in the room feeling it.
The set closed perfectly with Last Straw > Life During Wartime, it was the metaphoric straw that broke the camel’s back as far as this Sunday show was concerned. Things had been building and when Wartime started up, the room kind of exploded. Even though it was part of the first set, the monster Talking Heads cover was sort of part of a second set that was hopping from one classic rock cover to the next. If the first set was marked by the glorious little subtleties of Panic originals, the second set was terrifically subtlety-free, a sing-along/dance-along everyone-knows-this-song cover-o-rama. Lawyers Guns and Money and North (holy shit, Jimmy Herring raining down the liquid-hot-magma licks in North!) and One Kind Favor and I’m So Glad. Almost every song in the second set felt like a show-closer, I completely lost track of time and was surprised when they just kept playing. Like I was, on more than one occasion “great show, that was awesome” only to realize that there was much more to come. And speaking of covers, perhaps the best came with the distinct Other One jam out of Mercy, in some ways the (at least) 3rd nod to the Grateful Dead of the weekend and recognition of the room we were in.
But here I have to back up to earlier in the set for a short anecdote that made me laugh… we had a nice crew up front, a couple dozen or so friendly faces, friends and friends-of-friends. Of course, that doesn’t mean the crew is impenetrable and other people would squeeze in and make room for themselves, that’s fine, that’s what happens, I’ve been on both ends of that equation. So this one guy came down during setbreak and he’s wearing a shirt that had a Steal-Your-Face on it and a JGB Cats Under Stars cap on, so like, a head, right. And at one point early in the set, maybe North or One Kind Favor the band is jamming on a bluesy thing and it is slightly, slightly reminiscent of the Other One riff. Probably unintentional, but people like you and me are conditioned to hear these things, that’s what we do, so yeah, I caught it. So this guy gets all excited and is like “Terrapin!” And I was so flummoxed by what he said I actually stumbled a bit, like whaaaa? 10 seconds later he says “no, wait, Other One!” Like those two songs could be confused? Cool t-shirt, dude. Anyway, I was chuckling a little bit when they actually did drop into an unmistakable Other One jam, Schools and Trucks really accenting the rhythms and bass riff while Herring just uncorked on the crowd. That was one helluva Mercy jam.
Mercy was one of the other songs on my list to see, a longshot, but an absolute favorite. My second Panic show, my first WSP headliner show, was at the Paradise in November 1992, a few short months after my first show (on the HORDE) that summer. I remember a bunch of things about that Boston 92 show, but two things stick out. I’ll get to the second in a short bit, but the absolute highlight was a jam out of Mercy. At the time I was familiar with their two studio albums a little bit, so I knew the song Mercy and liked it, sure, but I had no idea it could do what it did/ I still remember quite clearly certain portions of that very extended jam. The setlist online even reads “Mercy > Jam” it really got out there. That was the moment for me, the moment when Widespread Panic went from a band I liked alright to a band I fucking loved, a moment that takes me through last night and beyond. The crying shame of it is that show was not recorded (as far as I know). My absolute holy grail is to hear that Mercy jam again, to see if it’s as good as I remember it being. Damn shame, but, but to hear that Mercy last night makes it a little less painful. That was one helluva jam.
The set ended with a three-song punch thad had one clear message. I mean: I’m So Glad, Postcard (I don’t ever want to leave!) and Ain’t Life Grand… yeah, guys, we’re having a good time, too and wish this could go on a bit longer or at least become a regular thing! Set closer > Set closer > Set closer. Ain’t Life Grand was the soundtrack to the years when northeast Panic was equally as lean as it is now and we had to fight for scraps and hear ALG encores every time and still love the everloving shit out of it. I don’t think you can top a lyric like “and in my mind I was a child, and it felt good.” Especially when a couple thousand are dancing their asses off singing it at the top of their lungs. Ain’t it true, though.
As they came out for the encore, we had had our fill of killer covers, but we weren’t even close to being done yet. A poignant This Part of Town will never fail to give me the chills, it’s JB and the band channeling Houser in the best way possible. So many great lyrics shining through the rock last night and, I mean… “‘Cause where there is love, there is hope.” Again, they could have ended there and I would have been supremely happy. But the best was yet to come. And here, again, that 92 Boston show came into my mind, as that show encored with a lengthy, free-ranging take on “Low Spark of High Heeled Boys,” a song I didn’t know they played and was very excited to hear from my new favorite band. That version probably didn’t get quite to the places that last night’s did, as the band locked into a groove that somehow flipped into a WTF? segue into “Disco,” which explained why a disco ball dropped down midway through the jam. Low Spark > Disco > High Heeled Boys is a dream I never knew I had had before, but good lord, that was a flabbergastingly awesome way to end the show, pure Panic jamdown with a love-me-some-Panic-instrumental Disco and back again? Put me out to pasture, I’m done. But WAIT, there’s more!! One more sweet cover, a guess-who? take on the Guess Who’s No Sugar Tonight/New Mother Nature. That was unexpected. Always a favorite of Sasha’s, it felt like it was just for her… and everyone else. Dance party to the very end what a great show…
