Continuing my quest to review every show I see…
8Jan20 Yola at MHOW.
Loved the Yola show last night. Review here, nothing more to add…
https://thebowerypresents.tumblr.com/post/190159348887/yolamhow
9Jan20
Last year on this 2nd Thursday of the year, I had a pretty killer threefer that included a guitar trio of Anastasio > Metzger > Krantz. That was an all-timer. Last night was also, pretty damn killer, if not quite that good.
Yonatan Gat & The Eastern Medicine Singers @ The Dance
This was my first time to the Dance, a relatively new club/space in a very nondescript spot right across the street from Public Theater/Joe’s Pub. There’s nothing about it that really stands out, but it had a pretty good vibe and definitely some potential. They serve Piels in cans there, which was like, the first beer I ever drank and a staple of my high school drinking days, don’t think I had one of those in several decades, but couldn’t resist. Seemed an appropriate night for a weird blast of nostalgia and that definitely fit the bill.
When I got there, opener Jaimie Branch was performing. Branch is primarily a trumpet player, and a definite rising star in the scene, her Fly or Die releases (second one came out last year) are phenomenal forward-looking jazz records, highly recommended. The last night kind of had a “drone” theme and so she was obliging with her set, mixing in trumpet with synth and effects and creating a lot of fill-the-room soundscapes, some that revolved around catchy themes (there was one that had the lyrics “this is a love song… for assholes,” I think I’m remembering that correctly, something like that at least) and others that were pure vibrations… like you could feel the air rippling your clothes and skin. It was interesting and I think mostly points to Branch being a deep-thinker musician who can do a lot of things, which would become apparent later in the night.
Checking the old database, last night was my 12th time seeing Yonatan Gat, second time with the Eastern Medicine Singers, which is definitely a version/project that has a lot of good energy and momentum behind it. While many of the trio shows I saw with Gat were incredible holyshit sets of music, often in quarter-full rooms, the crowd circling the band in almost religious, ritualistic fashion, last night’s show showed a new level of potential in Yonatan’s music. The show started with Yonatan and one of the EM Singers descending a spiral staircase, Gat taking command of console of effects, creating a whoosh of pulsing, droning sound, the other guy taking a special microphone and kind of just chanting along. Talk about religious, it really felt like a ceremony, cleansing the stage, the air, the crowd, the club, serious ritual kind of shit. Did I mention that these Eastern Medicine Singers are Native Americans, dressed in almost stereotypical garb? Creates an interesting scene compared with Yonatan in his turtleneck and blazer and general European/Israeli vibe. So, anyway, they’re kind of doing this thing and then other people sort of appear down the stairs one by one and join in… more Singers and a bassist and a regular drummer and Jaimie Branch and the Singers all sit around a single drum, each banging it in synch with a single drumstick type thing, and Gat is still at his console and the energy in the room just builds and builds, the drumming on that single drum is like a heartbeat, the entire room pulsing as one, I wouldn’t be surprised if everyone in the crowd’s heart had started to beat in time with that drumming. The drummer on the kit is sort of taking that main beat and building more complex rhythms on top of it and the bassist is taking it and turning it into a rather vicious bass riff and so there’s this main rhythmic theme in the room, that is unavoidably everywhere, possibly coming literally out of the chest of everyone in the room, and then there are all these ancillary rhythms knotting up around it, giving you so much to move to and wrap your head around. I have no idea how long this went on like that, a real modern day drum circle vibe, like we’re preparing for some ritualistic sacrifice to the livemusicgods. Maybe it was 10 minutes, maybe more, but it was totally hypnotic and kind of amazing. And then YG picks up his guitar, at long last. It’s a big ass white double-neck jobby, twelve-string/six-string muthafucker and he raises it up with his left hand and readies his right hand above it, a shaman ready to go and now it’s quite clear exactly what is going to be sacrificed and what fantastically sharp object is going to be doing the job and, I mean, the energy coming from that stage has sort of reached this point, this point of no return and we’re about 15 minutes into this set from guitarist Yonatan Gat and not a single note has been played on Yonatan Gat’s guitar and when he finally brings that right hand down onto the strings, the release was kind of overwhelmingly powerful. I don’t think I’ve ever anticipated a guitar chord quite like that one. What a fucking rush it was!
Of course, that single guitar strike was followed by many more, a gushing wound flowing with blood red Yonatan Gat crazed guitar rage, the rest of the band not letting up at all. Branch played both synth and trumpet during that first tune, at times almost creating a prog-rock’y melody underneath the rhythmic churn. By the time they reigned in the madness, almost 35 minutes had passed. What a crazy freakin’ jam that was. More Singers joined in, so that there were now four of them and the set porceeded from there, I think maybe 4 or 5 “songs” total. And while Gat was clearly the leader, it was nice to see how much he ceded the spotlight. The Singers were dead center on the stage physically and with their constant heartbeat, were the centerpiece of the sound as well. Branch was as much a leader as Yonatan was, totally impressive on both trumpet and electronics and a surprisingly awesome bunch of percussion (she’s as good with the tambourine as the trumpet), making everything better no matter what she was doing and also bringing a real great energy, dancing around and flapping her arms and just kind of loving the music as much as I was. She really elevated the show to the next level for me, would love to see this be a band, because there was so much there. There was some Pink Floydian psychedelic blues and out-there whole-world-in-his-hands kind of exotica with massive Yonatan shred and far-flung improvisation. There was one song that has been in YG’s repertoire for a while, a quieter, almost storytelling lovesong kind of thing with very evocative melodies and ambient energy. For this version, though, Jaimie laid some lovely trumpet takes on the melody, riffing along the way, unbeknownst to me storing all these little riffs in her sampler box, and then she unleashed them all at once, like a dozen different digital trumpets popping up all over the sound, a veritable orchestra of beautifully chaotic trumpets that she kind of dolloped out on top of the guitar solo. Hard to describe, but it was majestic art, totally mindblowing, I thought.
Overall, a triumph of a show, the kind of set I could go on for days with. Like 3 or 4 different “bands” on stage at the same time, intertwined and independent and all rather incredible, like a cacophony of different religions all praying to their own gods, not interfering with each others beliefs and yet all praying, in their own way, for the same thing: peace, love, happiness. You know, the good stuff. I think the show topped 80 minutes, which is long for Yonatan Gat, who I’ve seen smash more sound into sub-40 sets and had everyone walk away quite certain they couldn’t take another minute. Last night was the opposite, this ensemble had so much going on, so much to say, so many different ways to say it, I could have listened for another 80 minutes, but still left having trouble digesting everything they played. A great show.
Wayne Krantz, James Genus, Ari Hoenig @ 55 Bar (late set)
There was no doubt that the next stop would be 55 Christopher. Wayne Krantz is going on tour (!!) starting next week (tell your out of town friends, he might be playing in their city), so this would be the last 55 Bar gig for a little while. I had high hopes as James Genus seems to be the key ingredient to a high-level WK outing and Hoenig more or less in the same category. So, it was kind of surprising that things didn’t quite click last night. Oh, don’t get me wrong, the music was still incendiary, can’t-believe-I-only-paid-$15 for this kind of shit, it always is, that’s why you go every week. Or should, at least. But there was something a little bit off last night that kept things from getting to that rarefied air. And sometimes I wonder if it’s just me, but I could tell that Wayne was also feeling it, he kept trying to force things to work out, bouncing from one idea to another in the jams, Hoenig seemingly never finding the same page as Krantz, both realizing it and then jumping to the next, unfortunately not finding they had jumped to the same place and so on, so that jams ended earlier than I was used to, things never got going. Of course, these guys are fucking amazing, so this just made the music feel looser and sort of out-there jammier, almost psychedelic spacey, free version of a Krantz show. It was not disappointing to me at all, it was actually kind of welcome, it opened up space for new kinds of sounds and exploration, it was fun to watch them struggle a bit and still make incredibly compelling, hair-raising music even as they struggled… like watching Fred Astaire stumble clumsily while looking for his lost car keys in the dark, I have no doubt that he did so with an elegance and grace that could still only be called dancing. Also am very aware that 90% of the people in the room had no clue that this was a relatively lackluster Thursday set at 55 Bar, at their worst, still totally jawdropping, and there were still more than enough money’s-worth moments to keep Wayne as reigning always-the-right-choice champion.
Ilhan Ersahin, Dave Harrington, Kenny Wolleson (& Friends) @ Nublu 151
I took the train last night and at this point I had a choice — hustle to Penn Station for a semi-reasonable train homeward or take a leisurely pace in the wrong direction to see more music. You already know what choice I made. Walked into Nublu about 15 minutes after music had started (that is, the set that was called to start at midnight was 15-minutes old at 1am, for future reference). Ersahin/Harrington/Wolleson is one of those “bands” that plays enough to be a thing, but not quite enough to be a band. Typically it’s in this ad hoc late slot, more of a friends-getting-together-to-jam energy than a “show.” Sometimes they’ll play for 30 minutes, sometimes an hour, sometimes they’ll break and come back, sometimes that’s it, sometimes it’s weird and challenging, sometimes it’s sublime. You never really know. When we walked in Ilhan was on tenor sax and more or less going back and forth with Kenny in a semi-groove, Harrington sitting on the floor playing a little synth bass. Before long, Ilhan invited a woman out of the audience, or what passed for an audience at this point (maybe 20 people in the room, at least half were from the previous show, most of those actually players). Apparently, we found out after, she was just a woman in the crowd, not a professional, definitely not planned. The band kept up this kind of avant-groove thing and she somewhat expertly sang some familiar songs — Another Brick in the Wall verse (need no education) and a couple Bob Marley lyrics from at least two different of his songs. The band barely adjusted to what she was singing and she was very good at kind of making it work. It was the kind of thing that maybe shouldn’t have sounded good, like someone being a little too cute while singing along to the radio, the band kind of locked into this slightly-improv’d groove thing and this woman just sort of singing these familiar songs on top of it. But, it really did work. For post-1am, third-show-of-the-night energy, it was kind of perfect. Groovy and easy to listen to. The key player here was Kenny Wolleson who seemed to relish just sitting on a funk groove and having fun. Ilhan invited another sax player up and another guy to play Rhodes and the woman eventually left the stage and the band just sort of jammed an easy, funky-but-exploratory thing and it was a great 30–40 minutes of empty-room energy. Harrington barely played a guitar solo, this really was the Wolleson show, and there ain’t nothing wrong with that. They finally stopped and Ilhan said “maybe we’ll be back” which could not have been a more perfect thing for him to say. I don’t think they came back. I lingered for a bit, had a nice chat with the guitarist and then made it to Penn Station in time for that 3:07 train. Another year, another awesomely weird, only-in-NYC Thursday threefer.
10Jan20
Part of my 2020 livemusic resolutions is to set a budget and stick to it, and, also, indirectly to see how that affects how much and what kinds of music I end up seeing. So, even though I was tempted by a trip to Port Chester for Trey and hopping around downtown trying to make sense of the very lucrative Winter Jazz Festival lineup, I spent my Friday hitting a couple of my favorite bands in their local habitats with a unique one-of-a-kind set to start things off. All of this was after a pastrami sandwich at Hometown BBQ in Industry City, quite possibly the best sandwich money can by in the 5 boroughs. Seriously. After that it was off to…
Maya Beiser @ Brookfield Place
Four years ago, David Bowie passed away and now I share my birthday with an event that was not only tragic, but also kind of mystic and intertwined not only with Bowie’s death, but the album Blackstar. Yesterday, cellist Maya Beiser released an album which is her cello-led orchestral interpretation of the Blackstar record and last night she performed in the atrium of the Winter Garden to celebrate the occasion and pay tribute to Bowie in an incredibly unique experience. The performance was up in the round atrium part and people sat on the stairs around the performance space, which was the large empty circle of the floor with Beiser set off on the edge. Not only would she be performing, but there was a visual element to the show, with projections filling that empty floor as well as illuminating her (white) cello with images and animations, projections which would, we were told, react to what she was playing in real time. Cool? Cool!
A quick tangent on the idea of “cheesiness.” I don’t know if it’s because I’m getting older or because I’ve seen a lot of weird/crazy/cool shit or because my acceptance of things has mellowed to the point where I think almost everything I see in the livemusic setting is at worst worthwhile and, for the most part good or awesome or it’s because technology has improved to a certain point, but there are so many things I see at shows nowadays that 5, 10, 20 years ago I would have thought seriously cheesy or corny or too much that now I think are good or great or totally freakin’ awesome. I spent a lot of the first piece of this show yesterday thinking about this, because if you had described what I was witnessing to a younger me, I probably would have laughed it off as kind of cheesy and ridiculous and absolutely not for me and yet, I really loved the whole thing. First of all, she played the show solo, but the music was for a larger ensemble, so she just played, more or less, over backing tracks. At times this was mildly distracting because it was, quite honestly, difficult to tell what she was playing and what was just being fed in through the PA. Other than that, I had no problem with it whatsoever, it felt totally natural and Beiser really mostly stood out above the pre-recorded music. She played the Blackstar album straight through and you could really feel how the music lent itself to more grandiose, orchestral interpretation. I will definitely be checking out this album, the music really sounded great. Before the show, her collaborator kind of described how the cello matched Bowie’s vocal range very well and how it also, thematically, matched his stylistic breadth, the ability to sound right in a range of genres and to convey a range of emotions. That sounded a little much when he said it, but when the music was going, those words really struck with me and I felt that energy coming from her playing, like she was channeling the singing voice of Bowie, while the recorded orchestra handled the backing music of the songs.
Which brings us to the visual component, which was way cooler than I was expecting. It was not overdone at all, these kind of animations swirling around on the floor while she played, partly reacting to what she was playing, but only mildly. The lyrics of the songs also appeared as she “played” them and that was cool, it was like the music was being animated in real time, a breathing music video projected on the floor in vivid color with these swirls and geometric shapes floating around. And these projections on the floor were matched on her cello itself, even as she moved around as she played, they tracked the instrument, so it was like she was playing some magical cello out of a Disney film. The effect was particularly cool during a few solos where she really got cooking (she took a few stellar solos mixed in there) and the colors on her cello seemed to be generated by the sounds, like the entire room had a shared case of synesthesia. There was one particular moment where the colors were kind of orange and yellow and red and it looked, almost quite literally, like there were sparks coming out of her strings from the fiery playing. It really was the kind of thing that was almost bordering on well, that’s just too much, but was very cool and also at other times very, very moving. It was the kind of technology I could see other musicians using, like if you don’t see Mike Gordon using something like this during his solo shows soon, I’ll be a bit surprised.
The interpretation of the music and the fantastical visuals and the setting, the fact that this was a free show in downtown Manhattan, steps from Ground Zero, actually on the day of Bowie’s death, it really did feel like some of the David Bowie magic was being channeled into this performance which fed back into the energy, made it more special. My twinge of misgivings about the decision at the very start of the show were completely gone, replaced with a sense of being party to a real live magic show. After the Blackstar performance, she brought out a string quartet and her collaborator on piano and, by way of an encore, they did ensemble versions of Ziggy Stardust and Life On Mars. I must say, the quartet getting into the melody of Ziggy and Beiser playing the vocal part was kind overwhelmingly awesome, it gave me the chills, just a perfect version of this song, which I’m sure has already been done in some sort of classical version many times over by this point. Still, that fantastical energy of the preceding set really bled into those final two numbers. I had a feeling we’d get some old school Bowie to end it and I was not disappointed in the selections or the way they were played. Seriously awesome.
The National Reserve @ Skinny Dennis
From there we headed over the Williamsburg for my first Skinny Dennis hit of the new year and my favorite Skinny Dennis band, The National Reserve, playing Friday nights as the JNO All-stars for some reason I have not yet been able to figure out. We caught the set that started at 10 and ended at 11 and the band sounded so great as they always do. They’re the kind of band that plays songs and owns them so completely in their ice-cold-bottled-beer bar-band style that you’re convinced everything they play is an original, plucking country/rock selections out of relative obscurity and double-guitaring the fuck out of them to honky tonk perfection. They were as good as ever last night, even if the crowd was heavy on the feels-like-an-awful-frat-party-in-here bro scene. I don’t often dwell on the crowd at a show, at least in the negative, but that was one of the worst, not because of who was there and most were totally into the music, but merely for the reason that they could muster very little appreciative energy for the band working their butts of to rock their Friday night. Oof. Anyway, it’s part of the charm of Skinny Dennis and I do like to laugh at the scene in there on a Friday night. For the end of the set they invited a guest guitarist up and it was David Kolker, a player I saw a bunch in 2001 (and may have even booked myself in an opening slot or two) and who used to do a resdiency at Baggott Inn (does this place still exist?) and probably haven’t seen in 17+ years. He ripped a couple solos on a slow-burn version of “Key to the Highway” and then stayed on as they did a very cool set-closing jam on “Black Magic Woman” as frontman Sean Walsh walked around collecting donations in the bucket. That last jam, with Kolker going at it with NR gutiarist Jon Ledeau in impressive fashion, a jam that went from Santana to something more Allmans-y and then back. The fact that these guys can do stuff like that in just-fucking-around mode is one of many reasons I love them, as underappreciated as they are, one of my local favorites. How could I not have checked them out last night?
Kaleta & Super Yamba @ Barbes
Speaking of local favorites in their natural environment, Super Yamba in Barbes is a band-in-the-right-room match on par with Krantz @ 55 Bar and any other perfect-fit residency in New York. I love Super Yamba regardless of where they play and am definitely all about helping them get to the next step, but dancing with them at Barbes late on a Friday night is very little better. As iffy as the crowd at Skinny Dennis was, it was the inside-out awesome opposite of that at Barbes, every single person in the room using what little space they had to dance the fuck down in the-world-may-end-tomorrow gleeful boogie. The band just sounds good in that room when it’s filled, everyone’s smiling and every time I’m there for them I feel quite strongly that there’s no where I’d rather be. They seemed to feel that way as well, pushing hard against the strict midnight curfew (can’t upset the neighbors in that neighborhood!), having to be told twice to stop playing after the clock struck twelve and the funk and the room feeling like it was ready to go for another hour or more. The band seems more willing to let their grooves go feral when they play at Barbes. They’re funky wherever they go, but the funk is some sort of perpetual motion machine inside Barbes, feeding itself on its own volition, positive feedback looped with the people in the room and maybe the room itself, four walls compelling them to keep going in each song, close your eyes and move in what-song-is-this hypnosis. Anyway, it was a lot of fun, even if I was ready for another 60 minutes of it. That being said, I’d gotten like a small handful of hours of shut-eye the previous 3 nights and still miles to go before I’d sleep, miles to go. Worth it.
Good choices last night. Three completely different flavors of NYC awesome at pocket change prices. What’s better than that?
12Jan20
Twas an unseasonably warm day Sunday, ripe for extending the birthday weekend hanging in Williamsburg. After a disappointing Pastrami Denial (#fakejambands), and a quick look-see in the water tower bar spot atop the Williamsburg Hotel (nice!), we walked over towards Skinny Dennis for some music which involved passing by Radegast which involved hearing the music coming out of their outdoor space which led to me remembering the usually-entertaining daytime music from Bout Time who play most Sunday afternoons there, and made the no-brainer decision to go in and check it out. I’d been in there a few times on beautiful Sunday afternoons and it’s usually packed with the young folk doing their young folk thing and the music usually reflects the college party atmosphere, with jazz-funk covers of 90’s hits being a typical kind of thing, definitely entertaining and fun. Yesterday, the crowd was pretty light and the music was much more for-the-music’s-sake. The band sounded great, doing a daytime set of groovy jazz. I was remembering a sax/drum/bass combo and yesterday they had a guitarist who was good enough to elevate the entire band. He also played trumpet on one song and they invited another sax player up on one song who was a little syrupy for my taste. Anyway, good for a couple bucks in the pitcher and a beer-or-so’s worth of listening. Would definitely recommend checking out Bout Time if you’re around there on a Sunday afternoon. From there, it was a block and a half to check out some of Cliff Westfall’s middle set in the Sunday afternoon slot at Skinny Dennis. I was reminded that I had enjoyed Westfall’s last album which featured a little Scott Metzger on the electric guitar. Again, a comfortably kinda-empty scene made for a very enjoyable set of music and a cold $4 bottle of Lonestar. This was pretty straight-up country set, good songwriting, decent band, a good fit for Skinny Dennis and a few handfuls of peanuts and a couple dollars in the bucket. Will definitely check out again, I’m sure. Tough to beat those two spots on a day like yesterday for some great nearly-free afternoon livemusic on a Sunday. A decent burger at Dumont Burger (not the burger at Dumont, but still, pretty darn good!) was fuel enough for…
Hooteroll? + Plus! (Bogie Band w/ Joe Russo opened) @ Brooklyn Bowl
This was a strange show. In this case strange = not normal and, in this case, not normal = a good thing. Let us count the ways… first up, I have seen Joe Russo play probably a hundred or so times, maybe 200 times, in probably 2 dozen or more different projects in all sorts of settings over the past 2 decades; I don’t think I’ve ever seen a show that Joe has been involved in at this level where the majority of musicians were reading sheet music for most of the show. That was, as I said, not normal, but it was also a very good thing. If you hear anything about all these different Russo bands, up to and including JRAD, you basically hear something like we don’t really rehearse. This band rehearsed, they thought a lot about this music and they read the damn shit off sheet music. That makes for a certain thing and you can argue about what that thing is, but from where I was sitting, it made for a thing that was a kick-ass ensemble of people who wanted to get it right. Which leads to the music. Ostensibly, this was, like, a Jerry Garcia thing, like that’s how Joe got into the Hooteroll album, but, like, first of all, I don’t know anyone who’s been clamoring for a live version of Hooteroll to be played. It’s all kind of strange. Like there wasn’t a moment during the entire show last night where was I like ah, yeah, there’s the ghost of Jerry Garcia lingering between the notes, the way you feel at a JRAD show or any other Dead-related project. That’s like, kinda not normal, for this day-and-age of Dead, Dead and more Dead. Also, pretty sweet. In fact, Goldberger’s playing was was more evocative of John McLaughlin or Frank Zappa or just plain old Jonathan Goldberger than anyone else’s and for a project that was born out of a collaboration between a guitarist and a keyboardist (Howard Wales), the music last night was driven, pushed, pulled, mashed, squashed and built to some sick-ass shit by a drummer and a bassist, a bassist who isn’t even really a bassist. Not normal. Awesome, though. And this show was billed as we’re gonna play the album Hooteroll and also a few other things in between that kind of fit, but the show last night almost felt like the inside out of that, like the “other shit” of the set was the meat and the Hooteroll stuff was the just the bread holding it all together and not vice versa. Don’t get me wrong, it was all great, but, to me, the musical highlight of the show might have been the Joe Russo original off his pher-boney album, “Pher-Boney Love Theme.” I really dig that album straight through and when you listen to it, the thought of seeing any of it live is kind of the furthest thing from your mind, it just doesn’t play out that way, so when they were playing it last night, it fit in so well with the band and the album stuff that I kind of didn’t think about why it was so familiar to me, I just thought it was a track from Hooteroll I knew better and that the band was really gelling on then when he announced it, I was kind of gobsmacked. Not normal, but pretty amazing. Another highlight was the Miles Davis Bitches Brew thing they did (was that “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down?” which was so fucking great, so perfectly matched to the skillset of the band. Damn. The other thing about this band was that I spent a lot of time mentally breaking them down into other bands I’d like them to see. Much of my love-me-some-Joe-Russo career has been spent thinking about what you could add to make it more awesome: take the Duo add Scott Metzger; now add Dave Dreiwitz; now try with Mike Gordon… and Trey… etc, etc. etc. I spent the better part of the final half of the show daydreaming about a drums/guitar/bass trio that’s Joe + Goldberger + bassist-Harrington. It also struck me how many of the other combinations and permutations of the members of the band were already other bands, some almost-versions of Pirata and Boyfriends, etc. up there on stage. Kind of strange. Kind of sweet. Also, like how does one guy, Joe Russo, have a set of friends/collaborators that is so damn good. On one hand, it’s not surprising, but, like some of these guys are guys he’s played with for a long, long time; Kendrick & Goldberger in particular are guys he’s been playing with for like almost 25 years(!?). Not normal. Very Garcia-like in that way, such a broad range of friends and collaborators.
Whew! So what about that strange, strange, awesomely strange show, then, eh? As I alluded to in that extended introduction, the band — Joe Russo, Jonathan Goldberger, Dave Harrington, Erik Deutsch, Kevin Kendrick, Jordan McLean, Stuart Bogie — had a lot of different feels. If I had to sum up the range of sounds we got last night by pegging to known reference points, I would say this ensemble was some combination of Frank Zappa’s orchestral-prog-jazz bands, Miles Davis’ 70’s electric nuclear reactors and some combination of James Brown/Sly & the Family Stone/Grant Green funk machine. There were long stretches where they were reading off the sheet music, like a rock orchestra, doing justice to the compositional nature of the music, sounding super-proggy in a great way; there were stretches of improvisational freak-outs, the band an overpowering more-is-more machine, decades of musical interaction and friendships on the stage manifesting themselves in my-jaw-done-dropped fashion and then, particularly as the show went on, they would suddenly dig deep into a serious, late-night-Wetlands-circa-2000 groove jam of don’t-ever-stop epicness. That’s a lot for one band to do and do so well, but they did done it last night. There were great solos from all the principals on stage, but really the name of the game was that rhythm section. We all know and love Joe Russo, the guy is a the best of the best and we’ve all known it for a while and you can pretend someone else is the best of the best, but deep down inside, you know he’s the best of the best. Drums or anything else you got. go on, I’ll wait…. but Dave Harrington on the 4-string bass guitar? Daaaaamn, dude was Bootsy Collins and Chris Squire and some amalgam of anyone who played bass for Miles 1968–1975. And I have no idea why I was surprised, because in a way, for all his guitar brilliance, the dude can take a glorious, breathtaking guitar solo like any other, I’ve seen it many a time, but for all that Dave plays guitar with the mindset of a bassist, with the mindset of what can I do to make the other musicians around me sound better, which is what the best bassists do, in my bassist-listening opinion, that’s the way Dave Harrington plays guitar and that’s what he did last night on that bass. Totally crushed it and, combined with Joe’s typical wormhole-shredding work on the kit, was the focal point of a rather awesome night of music.
That night started, it needs to be said, with a fantastic debut set from Stuart Bogie’s new thing Bogie Band, which featured a lot of familiar faces, up to and including Joe Russo on drums. Everyone else besides Joe and percussionist Mauro Refosco was on a horn — two saxes, two trombones, trumpet, tuba. I think I got all of them. A couple flutes for a stretch. A lot of horns. And they turned Bogie’s songs into a rather joyous dance party, a sort of progressive hornfunk that was maybe the best Stuart Bogie-led set of music I’ve ever seen? It was damn good and a perfect warm-up for the strangeness that was to follow. Looking forward to hearing more from those guys.
