…and once again…
Continuing to write monthly about my livemusic adventures…
ICYMI: all my FY2024 writing
ICYMI: October 2024: Special Moments
Unfortunately wasn’t able to write about November in a timely manner, but it’s probably for the best as I’ll combine the last two months at once. Time as a concept and how it relates to the livemusic experience was on my mind a lot in November and it seems an appropriate topic as I look back on the year’s end. When you think about seeing a show, often the notions of “set times” and the lengths of songs and sets and shows are useful ways of characterizing the experience, sometimes for good and sometimes for bad.
This idea struck me significantly during the Brooklyn Folk Festival, one of my favorite annual November livemusic experiences. So often a festival is indeed a festival because the sets happen at certain times and are posted as a schedule you can reference and plan around. Like, that’s the definition of a festival, no? Brooklyn Folk Festival seems to take this concept and invert it: sets start late, go long, afternoon sessions ending after the evening session should be starting, parallel sessions going completely perpendicular. This year seemed particularly egregious and while it messed with my planning, it also led to some fortuitious moments and, once I fully grasped that, perhaps unintentionally, the complete inattention to the clock on the wall, was part of its charm, I just went with the flow. There lots of great sets this year, with a couple in particular that stood out. Of course, Nora Brown is a favorite of mine, I’m sure I’ve mentioned her in this space many times. I first saw her at BFF many years ago, as a youngster, and catching her again and again, nearly yearly, has marked the passage of time as she has matured as a musician. And while that maturation and growth will likely continue for years and years to come, this year felt like an especially good time to stop and take stock of that growth. While she once seemed to come off as the eager student of old timey Appalachian folk, she has morphed into a master, a teacher that both channels the music and bends it to her will. Truly inspiring stuff. The second night of the festival saw a favorite musician at the other end of the spectrum. Bill Frisell who doesn’t only bend the music to his will, but also takes the weight of his years and seems to bend time itself. Hearing him in the big cathedral of St Ann’s church in Brooklyn Heights, angelically solo, folk music in its timelessness, was as heavenly as it gets. One of the best BFF’s in memory.
The meat of my November livemusic was an out-of-state mini-tour with King Gizzard and the Lizard Wizard. The Gizz utilize the concept of time in simple ways that seem revolutionary. They take the stage when they say they’re going to and sometimes, as was the case for their Austin “3 hour marathon” show, tell you exactly how long they’re going to play for, almost to the second. How novel! If there was any concern that this takes away from the spontaneity of their live show, it actually seems to be liberating. It allows them to fully explore the fractured and mutated myriad of genres they dabble in, from psych rock to metal to electronica and all permutations in between. I caught the Austin > Houston > NOLA run and I think Houston was the highlight, but all were hair-raising, no-place-I’d-rather-be nights in the Lizard Wizard universe. Seeing multiple shows in a row, out of town and “on the road” was a bit like being in a time machine, taking me back to my on-tour days, but I also appreciated that the crowd was young and vibrant and fully tuned in to what KGLW is doing. As big of a fan as I am, I’m happy to cede the floor to the next generations. Time moves on…
Right before leaving for the trip, I caught a special show from Squid, a late-night underplay at Drom in the East Village. This was a case of time working against me, the venue late to open the doors, the band late to begin, it colored the experience and not in a good way. Squid is a great band and I appreciate them going out of their way to do something cool in NYC, but this one felt like a miss to me. Overcrowded and starting way too late is not a good combination, although the music was good. Good, not over-the-top good.
A different kind of passage-of-time when it comes to seeing shows is the concept of nostalgia. Perhaps that’s a topic for a completely different essay in the future, but worth mentioning two nostalgia-laden shows in November. First was “the RuDeal” with Joe Russo combining forces with 2/3 of the New Deal at Sultan Room as part of this highly awesome “This is Going to be a Blast” series. The livetronica jams were both throwback delight and in-the-moment, no-time-has-passed-at-all monsters. Next-level improv that both brought the crowd back to the old Wetlands and also had them wondering when the tour was happening. A great show. Simlarly, catching TV on the Radio was a turn-of-the-century callback, but the band felt as alive and vibrant as ever at Webster Hall. That they were celebrating a particular passage of time with this run, that is the birthday of Bowery Presents, made it all the more poignant. I’ve been a peripheral part of the BP family for a long time myself, writing for their House List blog for many years, so it felt especially good to be able to catch this. They were phenomenal.
The time of day of shows almost always can effect the context and enjoyment of the music. This is part of why I love the Friday “happy hour” sets at Barbes. When I looked back on my livemusic stats for 2024, I noted that I caught this particular set, usually (but not always!) occupied by Oscar Noriega’s Crooked Quartet almost 20 times. Like over 1/3 of the Fridays of the entire year saw me heading to Park Slope for the 5:30–7:30 set. Three of these were in December, twice with the Quartet (which is often not a quartet at all, just as often a trio or quintet or more) and once with a version of Marta Sanchez’s trio substituting. Something about that moment in the week, the time of it, late afternoon/early evening when the workweek is behind you and the weekend in front of you, adds an extra layer of specialness to an already excellent residency gig. And you never know what might happen! One of these nights I was ready to take off after the first set, and I saw Chris Potter walking in. I U-turned it, sat back down, and was treated to a transcendent set with Potter on bass clarinet matching Noriega’s saxophone, and a killer backing band (Sanchez, Matt Pavolka, Jason Nazary…). What a time it was!
The magic seems to increase the further you get from standard 8pm start time, and so seeing the New Masada Quartet at the Village Vanguard (which is kind of peak livemusic as it is) at 3pm on a Sunday is some sort of extraterrestrial wormhole of awesome. The latest of this semi-regular occurence might have been the best yet. The Masada material seemed to be mere suggestions or launching off points for high-degree-of-difficulty jamming, Zorn more or less ceding control of the improvisation to guitarist Julian Lage. Lage operates best (IMO) when he’s not the bandleader and this is ever-apparent to the extreme when he plays with NMQ. His playing was time-bending, made all the more magic by the fact that we were all in the dark underground lair that is the Vanguard while above us, regular-afternoon NYC proceeded apace. This quartet is one of the most special things going and somehow, impossibly, they are improving with time.
The end of the year was marked in the same way as last year, a holiday run featuring both Yo La Tengo and Phish. When you think about time, you might think about the calendar and when it comes to the holidays, the way that Hanukkah moves around the calendar due to the incompatibilities of different ways of marking the time. Which is all a long way of saying that YLT’s run directly overlapped with Phish’s in ways it never has and probably never will again. Me, I caught four nights of Yo La Tengo and three nights of Phish. Highlights abounded at each show. My favorite YLT was 12/26 with its magical opening set from William Parker, Mixashawn Rozie, and Michael Wimbrey that bled its inspired spirtual jazz vibrations into the headlining set, one of the best Hanukkah shows I’ve seen. My favorite Phish show was 12/29, the night that, in my opinion, all the elements I love in a Phish show (setlist choices, show flow, collective improvisation, crowd energy, surprises) matched up perfectly. I also wrote up the NYE show for JamBase which has become a nice annual tradition, super grateful that they continue to put their faith in me to write up the biggest show of the year.
In the end, there is no better way to mark the passage of time than with your favorite bands playing at a high level in perfectly-matched room with your friends and loved ones, year after year after year. That time then and once again… happy new year, friends!
November/December Roundup:
42 shows = $84 donated as part of the #livemusicchallenge to ProPublica.
Five Star Shows seen in November/December:
! Derek Gripper @ St Ann’s
! Brooklyn Folk Fest (Bill Frisell) @ St Ann’s
! King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard @ White Oak (Houston)
! King Gizzard & the Lizard Wizard @ Mardi Gras World (NOLA)
! Adrienne Lenker @ Kings Theatre
! LaMP @ Brooklyn Bowl
! Jeff Parker @ Public Records
! New Masada Quartet @ Village Vanguard
! Yo La Tengo @ Bowery Ballroom (12/26)
! Phish @ Madison Square Garden (12/29)
Reviews (for Bowery Presents) from October:
Adrienne Lenker @ Kings Theatre
