Right up my alley, Schubert! The first time I heard the concerto for four harpsichords I got as high as I've ever been. Psychedelic! I'm devoting as much time as possible in my remaining years to hearing as much J.S.B. as I can. |
Exactly---I had an actual out-of-body experience. Who needs drugs when there is Bach?! |
The organ pipes were melting. |
Joan Osborne, last night in a 600 seat theater with excellent sound. Just Joan singing and a guitarist and pianist accompanying her. Marvelous! |
She was fantastic Spencer, as were her accompanists. A really good guitarist on Gibson acoustic and Gretsch electric (into a small Fender combo amp---looked like a Deluxe), and pianist on an acoustic grand and electronic with Leslie rotating-speaker. I thought I would miss drums and bass, but their absence made Joan’s voice and the players parts and excellent harmony vocals all the more audible. And, for a change, excellent sound-reinforcement! All three sang into Shure SM58’s, so there was the to-be-expected presence elevation, but very mild. Our seats were third row center, so when Joan backed off the mic I could hear her voice acoustically, and the amplified sound was pretty true to it. And not too loud---a very welcome change from normal live sound. The very good acoustics of the room (Portland's Aladdin Theater) was welcome too. If Joan comes to your town, I highly recommended spending the $32.50 per ticket (cheap these days!) I did. |
Swampwater---Isn’t Lyle live just SO fine?! Great dry humor, too. When I saw him Kunkel was playing drums, great as ever (for you who aren’t familiar with Russ’ name, he was with Linda Ronstadt and James Taylor in the 70’s, and it is he playing the great part on James’ "Fire and Rain", with brushes). |
Swampwater---it was with his Big Band that I last saw Lyle, and what a band it was! What makes a band that good is just what makes Russ Kunkel such a good drummer---what each musician plays serves the song above all, the parts being "musical", serving a musical purpose. A lot of musician’s play so to as impress other musician’s with their technical prowess, the results often being rather amusical, the part serving no purpose to the song itself, or being musically related to what any other musician is playing. I have found that the better a songwriter is, the more he values "musicality" in players , not necessarily technical prowess. The two are very different things. As the old spiritual expression goes, you can’t serve two masters ;-). Not that a very technically endowed musician can’t be very musical, or visa versa, but that is a rarity imo. I have found the two to have an inverse relationship. Others may, I have no doubt, disagree. |
Excellent swampwater! Speaking of Pat McLaughlin, he is himself a fine songwriter, singer, and guitarist, with some great recordings worth seeking out. |
Ah yes swampwater, the dying art of subtly and taste. It's what separates the men from the boys. |
Last Friday, Jerry Douglas in Portland Oregon. There are two main strains in Bluegrass---Traditional, and Progressive. Jerry as a sideman (Alison Krauss, Iris Dement, Dolly Parton, hundreds of others) is involved in the Traditional wing. As a soloist/bandleader, he is more Progressive. While his dobro playing was fantastic on Friday, I didn't like his band or the music very much. There were no real "songs", just some chords strung together to give a structure for the instrumentalists to play off of, know what I mean? The band was too jazzy for my taste, the guitarist playing in "flurry of notes" style---no phrasing, no lyricism, no elegance or poetry. The drummer, though very accomplished technically and fairly musical, was way too busy for my taste, to the point of distraction. That's just my taste though, admittedly. I'm all about songs, and playing for them. I also love Bluegrass harmony, of which none was heard that night. A big disappointment, unfortunately. Still love Jerry's playing though! |
Ricky and his band are great live. I saw him and them, along with Rhonda Vincent (fantastic!) and Junior Brown, a few years ago. Quite a bill! |
Oh yeah, Rodney is great live! I saw him on his The Houston Kid tour, at The Roxy Theater. He was accompanied by only a guitarist and bassist, the latter Jerry Scheff (Elvis Presley, T-Bone Burnett), the absolute best bass player I've seen live. And I saw John Entwistle and Rick Danko! |
Richard Thompson is okay, but he's no Jerry Garcia ;-). Love Richard, seen him a few times, have all his albums, as well as all the Fairport Convention ones. |
Wicked good. A unique and interesting singer and songwriter too. |
Marty, have you seen any of the pics of Lindsey and Stevie when they were in The Fritz Reiner Memorial Band (original name, later shortened to merely Fritz)? They were just another local San Jose cover band, playing at local High Schools and Teen Centers like the rest of us. There are pics of her on stage in a Prom dress, with a bouffant hairdo! I saw them live only once, as the opening act at the Santa Clara (valley) Folk Rock Festival in the Summer of '68. Also on the bill were The Electric Flag (fantastic!), and The Doors, who closed the show. Maybe it was San Jose's The Doobie Brothers getting a Warner Brothers record deal that inspired them to move to L.A. in '72 or so. They've done pretty well for themselves ;-). |
Man, what a pleasure it is to read comments about music from listeners whose taste is so in line with my own! |
I saw Dylan in the early 1990’s at The Hollywood Bowl, the worst show I’ve ever witnessed by anybody (though The Stones at The Staples Center a decade later was close. Time to hang it up, fellas). Both he and his band (G.E. Smith / guitar and mugging, Kenny Aaronson / bass, and Christopher Parker / drums) were atrociously bad. I then saw him in the early 2000’s at The Hollywood Palladium (a beautiful Deco-style theater on Sunset Blvd.), and it was one of the best shows I’ve ever witnessed. Bob was on fire, absolutely spitting out the lyrics, fully engaged with both his excellent band (Larry Campbell / guitar, mandolin, and harmony vocals, Tony Garnier / standup and electric bass, the great David Kemper on drums, and Bucky Baxter / steel) and the audience. Bob even played some Chuck Berry-style guitar solos as Larry looked on, bemused. A great, great night of music. |
