In an effort to continue reviewing shows, here’s a brief (lolololol) synopsis of what I’ve been up to the last 5 days… 13 shows in all!
Friday 7Oct22
Friday night started with a trip to the west side, an art gallery in Chelsea called Atlantic Gallery, where Bill Frisell’s wife Carole had an art show, and lo!, who should be playing music at this show?, and lo!, whose wife got us on the list to attend such? The answers, of course, in order is Bill fucking Frisell, and me. Lo!
The gallery was a small space with (surprise!) cool art on the walls on sculptures and shit and Bill played with Luke Bergman, both on acoustic guitar, playing composed music. The music alternated between woozy weirdness and beautiful Americana-ish. It was all rather dreamlike, given the setting and the circumstance and the players. Dreamy af, tbh. Bill took some artistic-liberty solos that seemed to float around the room as sentient beings. The two sat in front of this rather large canvas that was busy with sort of abstract floral shapes and then there were these intersecting lines and it was all rather chaotic but beautiful and I felt the music playing to the colors and geometry of the painting. But in the middle of this art was three almost perfect circles, interlocked, like it was 3/5 of the Olympics logo and there was something out-of-place and wonderful about these nearly perfect circles in the middle of this chaos and my mind kept returning to the sanity of these rings, and the anchor of melody, harmony, rhythm, even when things get out there. This was some special shit. If you can see music in an art gallery, goshdarnit, please do! If you can see Bill Frisell, goshdarnit, don’t be a fool, just do it. Magic every time. A work of art, masterpiece, no matter what room he’s in.
From there we headed to Bushwick. I was wanting to see Of Montreal, but it was sold out, but we figured we’d see if we could get in. I was not optimistic, but worse thing was we could head to a show I was also intrigued by at Sultan Room or even head to Williamsburg from there. There were options, so it seemed worth it to try. Walked right up and asked to buy tickets and I was surprised that they just sold us two without a word and we walked in literally as this guy in a mask was introducing the band. Fortune smiles upon the bold.
So, if you’ve never seen Of Montreal before a) you should and b) it’s very hard for me to describe. There’s a lot of performative weirdness, some of it just weird for the sake of being weird. About every second or third song these three “actors” or “performers” came out in different costumes, some quite elaborate, and there was some sort of choreography that may or may not have had anything to do with the song. It’s fun as hell, but also, like I said, somewhat weird and psychedelic and kind of sexual in a nightmarish kind of way. There’s sort of this alternate reality at an Of Montreal show and you kind of just need to give yourself to it. Thankfully the music is good, occasionally great, the crowd is just way into it, groovy, psychedelic, like a bouncy hallucinogenic disco. I wonder if the music would sound as good without the envelope of weirdness it’s ensconced in, but why bother wondering, right? Friday’s show was fun, perhaps not the best I’ve seen them, the newer material not as strong as the older stuff, but enough of the older stuff to keep the crowd dancing and singing along. I love the chaos and the surprises and there are enough really fucking great songs to make it a show worth hitting. I’ve seen em a bunch and would highly recommend it!
Saturday 8Oct22
Since we moved to Brooklyn, Fort Greene Park has been part of my daily routine, just a couple blocks from our apartment, so there wasn’t any way I was going to miss great music on a stage built right where I play with my dog every morning! No way!
Saturday the lineup included a band called the Zig Zag Trio, which consists of Vernon Reid, Will Calhoun, and Melvin Gibbs. The lawn was pretty full and these guys come out and start blasting this kind of freeform jazzrock on this mixed crowd there to see some free jazz (not necessarily free jazz, though). But one thing to love about the neighborhood is that they were not fazed at all, even though this shit was at a volume I would describe as “inescapable.” Like you were not having a good convo with your neighbors over Reid’s squealing guitar. It was pretty great all around. Don Byron came out to sit in for a Pharaoh Saunders tribute and it all kind of went from there. The headliner was Jack DeJohnette who is, by some accounts, one of the best (jazz) drummers ever to play. His discography is something else, so getting to see him play with his quartet for free a short walk from my apt was pretty special. His quartet included a percussionist, a bassist and Byron on saxes. I thought it was a quite pleasant, park-ready set of jazz and Jack sounds pretty remarkable for 80 years old. We ended up leaving before the end, because we had to make it uptown for…
Another episode of Ambient Church. This was my 3rd Ambient Church show and it would take a bit for me to miss another one again. Just a very special, serene, mind-bending experience. This one featured two sets, the first from pedal steel player Chuck Johnson, who played with a violin and cellist. They played a very ethereal, quiet, slow-moving composition while these fluttering strobes of digital light were projected onto the walls of the church. This is like a massive, beautiful church and the result of hearing this droning, ambient music in that space with this music is truly a form of religion equally as powerful as any organized version sweeping the globe. There’s this tension between wanting to just let your mind and body drift into sleep and wanting to stay awake with your eyes open to watch these awesome projections seemingly interact with the contours of the building’s architecture. It is in this tension where the mind starts to do weird things. Weird, wonderful, whoah!, kind of things. It’s pretty special. The second set was from Sarah Davachi who played the church’s massive organ. Except she kind of played it “small” stretching out single notes and chords for what felt like universal infinities, the time it takes for light to travel from one galaxy to another, astronomical slowness. It is in this slowness that small changes feel gigantic and that is what this music is all about. Again, the projections were kind of the “event” of the event, and for Davachi’s set, they went to the next level, full color animations that turned the church into a giant dynamic painting. Lightning storms turned into trips through the monolith, turned into the walls are burning with orange fire, to the walls are now crayons melting into pools of color under direct heat…. just all serious mindfuck visuals while this music slowly, slowly, slowly, moves from one note to the next. It’s downright geological, and again, the consciousness drifts between eyes-open awake and soprofic near-dream weirdness and it’s a pretty wonderful thing. Ambient Church. You should go next time they have one. There’s really nothing like it.
Sunday 9Oct22
Sunday there was so much free music in Brooklyn, I had no choice but to make a day of it. I’ll keep this one short, but suffice it to say that CitiBike + free music + Brooklyn made for an excellent day. The day ended up being like a parenthetical sandwich, which was even matched by parenthetical sandwiches at the beginning and end, so I went with a whole roasted hog sandwich from Hometown BBQ for lunch at the start of the day and then a brisket sandwich from Hometown BBQ for dinner at the end of the day. In between was the meat…
So, the day was Hometown > around the corner Red Hook Sunny’s > Barbes > Fort Greene Park > Barbes > around the corner Red Hook Pioneer Works > Hometown. Pretty great, right?
The music was: Brooklyn Boogaloo Blowout/The Yards > bluegrass jam > Clube do Choro > Ivan Neville > Arnt Arntzen’s Strummer’s Ball > Samir Langus > The 41 Players with Scott Metzger. Not bad, right?
The scene at Hometown was idyllic, the stage set up block party style, with lots of room, a good crowd, great rockin’ tunes, and the whole hog was pretty damn fantastic, I have to say. The Yards feature Levon Helm’s grandson playing all Meters tunes and playing them with the enthusiasm of someone who thinks he’s the first person to discover the Meters. I mean that in a good way. It was endearing and also the band, featuring at least 3 teenagers, was pretty good!
Bluegrass jam outside on a beautiful day at Sunny’s is just a lovely in-between’er. I had been wanting to check out the Clube do Choro for a while. It’s actually in the front room at Barbes, every Sunday at 4pm, and it’s sort of an open jam, similar to a seisun in an Irish bar, musicians around a table up front, except they’re playing Choro music from Brazil. This was pretty great. Highly recommend stopping by some Sunday if you’re in the area. I will definitely be returning! I have decided once and for all that I do not like Ivan Neville and never have and should try to remember that so I stop pretending maybe I will. So I give that a big fat meh, but I did get to hear some music while walking the dog which is a bonus, so I’ll take it. The Strummers Ball is basically like a round robin of songs. Barbes was sort of half full, but half of the half was musicians and they each got up and either played a song by themselves or brought in other musicians. When I got there this guy was doing a really fantastic version of “El Paso,” but things bounced between old country, jazz, swing, etc. tunes. It was super enjoyable and a very good vibe. There is nothing, nothing, that happens at barbes that is not worth checking out. Samir Langus was playing at the Pioneer Works Second Sundays which is like a free (did I mention that all of this music Sunday was free!?!?!) open house so you can see the art and artists and shit and they have music there too. I had not yet seen Langus play and holy shit he and his band kind of blew me away. He plays Gnawa music, but unlike a more traditional act like Innov Gnawa, which is awesome, but perhaps lacking in dynamics, Langus combines it with what I can only describe as a sort of Electric Miles thing and it fucking rules. Groovy dance party with a sintir front and center. I loved every bit of what I caught on Sunday. He plays regularly at Barbes and Lunatico, etc. I will definitely be seeing more of him. Wow! From there it was a short walk back to Hometown where the 41 Players had just started their block-party-ending set. Flamethrower NOLA music of the Meters/Dr John/etc variety and they just know what they’re doing, even when they have to substitute folks in. Metzger (happy birthday Scott!) makes everything he plays in better and that was definitely the case. Any day you get to see Scott rip a couple solos is a good day. He crushed it, the band crushed it, great party put on by Hometown, great food at both ends, great sandwiches-within-a-sandwich day of livemusic.
Monday 10Oct22
We had off Monday, so there was some out-and-about’n in lower Manhattan, which included a stop at the final In Gardens day put on by Art for Arts in various spots, including the First Street Cultural Garden in the LES. I love shit like this, just whack-o out there music for free in the afternoon in this little “park” in the Lower East Side. People walking by kind of like what’s going on in there. The trio we caught was sax-through-effects, trumpet-through-effects, saxes and it was all over the place and delightfully experimental and free and delightful. What a city!
A long day Monday ended up in Long Island City where we caught Scary Burton playing on the street outside Fifth Hammer Brewing. Scary Burton, for those who don’t know, is a (mostly) Gary Burton “cover band” although they play some other stuff of the era/style. The band is led by Kevin Kendrick on vibes, Jonathan Goldberger on guitar (both those guys from Fat Mama), Dave Dreiwitz on bass, and Jeff Davis on drums. The fact of the matter is, these guys are phenomenal. They’re having a great time, they clearly love the music (esp Kevin who is totally in his element), and they’re all just so talented that it all adds up to an excellent show. We caugh the second set and it was top-to-bottom excellent, with some excursion jamming, some fun interplay, and a lot of laughs. These guys should play more often. What a great band!
Tuesday 11Oct22
Finally, last night, we went to the new David Geffen Hall at Lincoln Center for Chris Thile. The space is quite wonderful: comfortable, sounds great, kind of nice to look at, even the carpet had this extra sponge to it that made it enjoyable to walk on. Everything was just so very, very nice there. And that included the music. Since Live From Here ended, Thile has kind of taken the fractured spirit of that endeavor and applied it in different ways to different shows.
Last night’s show really felt like a the-fat’s-been-trimmed version of Live From Here in a way that felt sustainable as a model for future shows. Which is to say that it just worked with a lot of the extraneous stuff from LFH gone by the wayside. The thing about Live From Here that always made it for me is that it was a show about loving music. Like the show itself loved music in a deep way and that shone through into the music itself. I got that feeling very strongly again last night. It’s a really nice feeling.
The show featured Thile, Brad Mehldau, and Tune-Yards. They all appeared in different combinations and permutations, together and separate, playing original music, improvising across genres, and then interpreting music by Dylan and Hendrix and Fiona Apple and Bach. Yes, it was that kind of show and it all worked together as one cohesive thing. It was a tight 2 hours, 7:30–9:30, every second filled with some bit of joy-making. I’ve seen Thile and Mehldau in duo before, twice at Bowery Ballroom, which is a soul-fulfilling experience, believe me. Seeing them from afar on this magical stage in this magical space, felt different, like a whole different ballgame. Their time together in duo was definitely the highlight to me, their backgrounds and styles are at such odds with each other but they are also both so malleable, so good at playing with others, and, it must be said, about as fucking talented as anyone who plays the piano and mandolin in the world, that it just works so well. Brad also played a version of “Hey Joe” that was {drools after lobotomy}-good. Merill from Tune-Yards joined them in trio, she led her own band through a mini-set of 5 originals, including two with Thile sitting in. Again, her music and style and background and look were at total odds with the rest of it, but it also just worked.
That’s the magic of Thile. He is both the catalyst and the reaction caused by the catalyst. He is both the diehard fan and the lovingly fawned-upon. He is all these things simultaneously. He is the type of musician we should all be thankful to be sharing the planet with at the same time, because where he goes and who he plays with, there is something otherworldly sure to follow. The Bach piece featured Hilary Hahn on violin and it was just a masterpiece of violin, piano, and mandolin. How often do you see something like that? How often do you see something like that after someone like Merill Garbus lays these sample-loop-vocal dance numbers out there? How often do you get to see something like that in a room like that? I could go on, but it was a slap-your-head-in-amazement kind of show, well worth whatever it was they charged. I wouldn’t miss the next one if I were you. The spirit of Live From Here, the essence that made that show magical, that spirit lives on, I’m happy to report. Savor it while you can, because maybe it won’t always.
Anyway, pretty good week of music, I think…
