This is exactly what I was hoping for but then the set derails for 20 minutes with the band taking over for a song, Morris singing from behind the stage (costume change) and then an endless and stupid piece of business where all”the sexy” girls in the audience get on the stage
“Nothing is until it is and then after it is then it is” is how Pee wee Ellis, the saxophonist with the James Brown Revue once put it and at BB King’s the Icons Of Funk, JB Horn trumpeter Fred Wesley, Meter Guitarist Leo Nocentelli and Parliament-P-Punk keyboard player Bernie Worrell put the question of when what is is to the test
All of the caveats you can imagine, doesn’t change that that is Lala singing “Da Do Ron Ron”, Charlie singing “Sweets For My Sweet” and yes, the real, the indominatable Ben E. singing “Spanish Harlem”. These are immortal pop tracks.
Personal best was the great “Blocka” with all the reggae influences gone and song emerging as a singalong, but a scary one. Pusha T holds the stage very well, maybe better than Fab later in the evening, he is all attitude and intimidation.
There’s a cool caginess about Fabolous, he doesn’t let you see him sweat and his performance has an edge of implied arrogance just because the effort seems so minimal. His connection to the band and to the audience is devoid of anything approaching a big gesture
I find the material distressing ordinary and much much better on covers of Jimi “He taught us 50% of everything we know” Hendrix than on simply mediocre stuff like “Flashback”.
I am not sure if they are doing anything, , since the songs never circle back they aren’t like jazz and since they have no melodies they aren’t like rock and since they certainly are not 12 bar anything, they aren’t blues. They are all function no form
It was very good stuff, relentlessly powerful with “Brooklyn To Ethiopia”‘s bass and drums ridden roughshod and Tomas telling the audience to raise their arms, clap their hands, get involved. “Rise Above” is harder and faster on stage, Tomas is like Carol Kane in the Bill Murray movie “Scrooged”, he pushes us shoves us, bends and bangs us to dance for his vision of Global Soul and Global Peace.
Lulu started her set with “Unchain My Heart by Ray Charles, she also sang “Oh Me Oh My”, “Bell Bottom Blues”, between songs she regaled us with the stories about Atlantic Records, Aretha Franklin, and many other performers from the golden age of rock.
He isn’t a nostalgia act, sure there is “Race With The Devil” but there is also a song about 9-11 and another one about missing nostalgia. Finely crafted folk songs that need no excuse and which he executes in front of an excellent band.
They played nothing off the White Album, one track off Sgt Pepper, two tracks off Abbey Road, one track off Revolver, nothing from Let It Be. As I said at the start, the Incredible Simulators are the Beatles as country rockers, the Beatles as the Byrds. The early to mid-period Beatles.
Swift Technique really put on a show, they dance, they talk, they lay on the floor with their feet in the air, and they take it all the way.
The revellers were boogieing hard all night long and the instrumentals never wandered from that syncopated rhythm at the heart of funk, invented by the likes of the Meters and alive and sizzling in the capable hands of the Metermen
Dolenz has a new album out Remember, “Sugar Sugar” and a tremendous “Good Morning Good Morning” are both on it and I can’t recommend it highly enough. Dolenz was wonderful, he stepped out of his own shadow and performed the set the late great Davy Jones owed us in February
Black 47 were the greatest rock and roll band in the world. Celtic rockers who not only sang of, but lived, the Irish immigrant life in New York City. But not the potato famine refugees become cops and politicians, wild eyed rockers living on the lower East Side and playing CBGB’s twice a month. A one of us first generation American dreamer
Davy seemed to be a little stiff on stage when he performed some dance moves telling the audience that Axle Rose had stolen his dance moves and Justin Beiber had stolen his hair style which got a few laughs. Not so surprisingly at a spritely 66 years old.
Clinton is the master of ceremonies on seriously funked up shit. But he needs some better players behind him. Will I be back next time he is in town? Sure. But just for the funk of it.
the little girls still do understand
a brilliant bass heavy dance band
the greatest bass player ever
